ABSTRACT
During the 1970s The Searchers achieved a very unusual status among Hollywood movies – celebrated both by critics and by young American film-makers who quoted it, re-worked scenes, or re-cycled its narrative. 1 Once a work achieves such widespread acclaim the judgement implied can seem both natural and permanent, even when we are attuned to the ways in which styles and reputations are commodified and consumed. The implications of a film's or a film-maker's status, the cultural meanings of reputation, the history of debate and polemic that produce shifts in the canon, are often rendered invisible in the assumption of common assent. The Searchers is just a single case in a process by which the cultural status of Hollywood cinema has been transformed, but it is also a striking example of how the past is constantly mined and re-forged to reflect the concerns of the present.
