And no, I'm not talking about the motel chain.
The "Western" genre of film is an interesting one, and more complex than it might seem on the surface since the era it mythologizes (usually post Civil War to the start of the 20th Century) is a turning point in American history. There's expansion of the United States from sea to shining sea across a "frontier," and the resistance of Native Americans in various "Indian Wars." There's also migration, settlement, and exploitation of this frontier, with new towns like Deadwood, South Dakota dealing with lawlessness.
The American Film Institute (AFI) defines the Western as "a genre of films set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier." It's also a genre with many sub-genres, and also shares a lot of tropes with other distinct genres. Most modern crime dramas & action films borrow from Westerns, as does a lot of science-fiction, which deals with "The Final Frontier." ("Star Trek" was originally sold to NBC as "a wagon-train to the stars.")
So... Which are the best?
I thought this might make for an interesting evening topic after seeing the new trailer for Joel and Ethan Coen's version of 'True Grit.' The 1969 film adaption of the story earned John Wayne a Best Actor Oscar for his role of Rooster Cogburn.
Most Westerns have often used story features & character archetypes.
- The
Knight Lawman/Cowboy who is duty bound to offer protection to the Princess town hottie & her family, or defend the Castle fort/town from all that would threaten it.
- The anti-hero drifter, who is an unequaled gunfighter, either drawn into the goings-on of the town (he decides to help defend the townspeople against the bandits), or manipulates events to his advantage.
- The heist. A group of anti-heroes attempting to pull off some form of theft, and escape.
- A person who's been wronged, and can find no justice, setting off on a journey of vengeance.
Over at
Cracked.com, they once had an article on "
6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True)." They cite a
source which claims during "
the peak years of cattle towns, the average number of homicides was only 1.5 a year for each town."
You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count: three) and the town's most violent year ever.
Although, I do have to wonder how precise the record keeping of the time was? If someone killed somebody that cheated at cards, might that be justifiable homicide by a town sheriff's understanding of 19th century Arizona Territory law? I'm also guessing not everyone was killed within town for someone to take note.
When I've done these "list" diaries in the past, I could have called them "How many YouTube Videos can be embeddded into a DKos diary before it explodes?", since I listed so many movies/scenes & used so many embedded videos to the point it caused browsers to crash when opening the diary. So I'm not going to so much create my own list, as spotlight some films to get the ball rolling, and then open up the floor.
► ['The Searchers']
As TV Tropes puts it: 'The Searchers' is a 1956 Western film directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, and Monument Valley, Utah. It's listed as AFI's pick for the best American Western of all-time. 'The Searchers' is also a film that is pretty damn dark for a movie made in 1956. John Wayne's Ethan Edwards is one of the most compelling and complex characters in almost any film. The "search" referenced in the title is not a search to save someone, but an obsessive search to kill a family member that's been "tainted" by a culture Edwards hates to the depths of what's left of his soul.
This is also one of the first Westerns to look at racism & genocide against Native Americans. The old-school Westerns depicted a "black & white morality." Good lawmen fighting evil bandits, and cowboys/settlers resisting the savage "injuns." (which is a motif Ford used himself in 'Stagecoach') 'The Searchers' has its lead protagonist be a virulent racist, who's been twisted by an act of violence against his family to the point he shoots the eyes out of the Comanche he comes across, just to deny them peace in the afterlife.
From Roger Ebert:
John Ford's ''The Searchers'' contains scenes of magnificence, and one of John Wayne's best performances. There are shots that are astonishingly beautiful. A cover story in New York magazine called it the most influential movie in American history. And yet at its center is a difficult question, because the Wayne character is racist without apology--and so, in a less outspoken way, are the other white characters. Is the film intended to endorse their attitudes, or to dramatize and regret them? Today we see it through enlightened eyes, but in 1956 many audiences accepted its harsh view of Indians... In ''The Searchers'' I think Ford was trying, imperfectly, even nervously, to depict racism that justified genocide.
► [The "Dollars" Trilogy]
The "Dollars" Trilogy is a series of "Spaghetti Western" films directed by Sergio Leone.
- 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964)
- 'For a Few Dollars More' (1965)
- 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' (1966)
They all share "
The Man with No Name," with Clint Eastwood's character being a reworking of Toshirō Mifune's ronin from Akira Kurosawa’s '
Yojimbo.' (
according to the A.V. Club, after the release of 'A Fistful of Dollars,' Kurosawa is said to have sent Leone a note saying, "It is a very fine film, but it is my film.")
The usual consensus is that of the three films, the best is 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.' Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes is a total & complete sociopath who is "essentially greed and ruthlessness given human form and no redeeming qualities."
Ennio Morricone's score for 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly' is almost as iconic as The Man with No Name's poncho.
► ['Unforgiven']
"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
Of all the films, this is probably my favorite. It is an absolute masterpiece. The movie basically dissects every Western trope, with Clint Eastwood deconstructing his own "Man with No Name" character with William Munny in 'Unforgiven.'
Not one of the characters in the film can be called "innocent" or "good" (with the possible exception of the prostitute who's cut up, and even then she does nothing to try & stop the wrath & destruction that surrounds her).
Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" takes place at that moment when the old West was becoming new. Professional gunfighters have become such an endangered species that journalists follow them for stories. Men who slept under the stars are now building themselves houses. William Munny, "a known thief and a murderer," supports himself with hog farming. The violent West of legend lives on in the memories of men who are by 1880 joining the middle class. Within a few decades, Wyatt Earp would be hanging around Hollywood studios, offering advice.
Eastwood chose this period for "Unforgiven," I suspect, because it mirrored his own stage in life. He began as a young gunslinger on TV and in the early Sergio Leone films "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More," and he matured in "Coogan's Bluff" and "Two Mules for Sister Sara," under the guidance of Don Siegel, the director he often cited as his mentor. Now Eastwood was in his 60s, and had long been a director himself. Leone had died in 1989 and Siegel in 1991; he dedicated "Unforgiven" to them. If the Western was not dead, it was dying; audiences preferred science fiction and special effects. It was time for an elegy.
► ['High Noon']
Gary Cooper stars as Marshal Will Kane, who the trailer for the film says is "a man who was too proud to run." Because of a legal technicality, four criminals who've vowed revenge on Kane are due in town. The movie is structured where it runs almost in real-time on a buildup of tension as Kane, his wife (Grace Kelly), and the town plan what to do when the four get there. After debating whether to stay or run, Kane finds himself all alone, with no one in the town willing to help him face down the bandits that are coming.
On one level, the film is centered around themes of courage and duty.
"It’s no accident that politicians see themselves as Gary Cooper in High Noon. Not just politicians, but anyone who’s forced to go against the popular will. Any time you’re alone and you feel you’re not getting the support you need, Cooper’s Will Kane becomes the perfect metaphor."
-President Clinton, who's cited 'High Noon' as his favorite film
However, the film also has a separate subtext. 'High Noon' screenwriter Carl Foreman was deemed an "un-cooperative witness" by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and blacklisted in Hollywood while the film was being shot. Foreman is on record as saying the film's story is an allegory for HUAC and Hollywood's response to it. Just as the townspeople in 'High Noon' know a bad thing is coming & refuse to help Marshal Kane, many in Hollywood knew the blacklist was wrong & refused to speak out against it.
It's also interesting that 'Rio Bravo' was made as a direct response to 'High Noon.' Howard Hawks & John Wayne (who wasn't exactly fond of suspected commies) are said to have loathed 'High Noon,' with the contrast between the films being Cooper's Marshal Kane asking the community to come together to stop the problem before it, whereas 'Rio Bravo' plays up the individualism of Wayne's Sheriff John T. Chance who refuses assistance from those he believes would just get in the way.
Hawks later said in an interview, "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help.... We did everything the exact opposite of what annoyed me in 'High Noon.'"
► ['The Wild Bunch']
One anecdote about the film is reportedly Sam Peckinpah used more blank rounds during the production of 'The Wild Bunch' than live rounds were fired during the Mexican Revolution of 1914, around which the film is loosely based. The movie tells the story of aging outlaws, led by William Holden's Pike Bishop, at the very end of the Wild West, and how their last "big score" dead-ends in Mexico.
"We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can't do that, you're like some animal! You're finished! We're finished! All of us!"
Upon its release, the film was controversial for its amount of violence. (just like almost every other Peckinpah film) 'The Wild Bunch' is about old & tired men, trying to hold onto the last bit of "honor" they have in a world that's changing. Along the way, they shoot, screw, and drink almost everything in Mexico.
► ['Shane']
From TV Tropes:
One of the greatest Westerns ever. So great, when TNT had an "All the Greatest Westerns Ever Made Movie Marathon", they added an asterisk with a footnote: "Except Shane". It is based on the novel of the same title by Jack Schaefer... Subject to a famous debate about the ending: Is Shane dead, or did he survive?
► ['Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid']
From the A.V. Club:
With one foot planted in the world of traditional Westerns and the other in the playful, French New Wave-inspired new Hollywood ushered in by Bonnie And Clyde, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid had a little something for everyone. The first film to pair Newman with co-star and lifelong friend Robert Redford and with director George Roy Hill, it lets the stars irreverently goof their way through Old West adventures that glow with a sad romance. The leading men radiate youthful exuberance, but Hill and screenwriter William Goldman shot the film with nostalgia for ways of making movies and methods of seeing the past that were on their way out.
► ['The Ox-Bow Incident']
From AMC's Filmsite:
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) is a grim, low-budget Western masterpiece from director William A. Wellman - based upon the famed novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark of the same name. Produced and written for the screen by Lamar Trotti, this is an intense, blunt, and downbeat examination of frontier 'justice' with simple characters that represent various philosophical stances, opinions, or attitudes. It is an authoritative indictment of angry mob rule and violence that lead to a brutal lynching of three suspicious outsiders - all innocent of the trumped-up charges.