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List of 10
The western in ten films, from the stagecoach to the last gunfighter: the myth as it was built, questioned and taken apart.
10 of 10 films in Cinespective.
Log in to tick films off as you go →The western in ten films, from the stagecoach to the last gunfighter: the myth as it was built, questioned and taken apart.
10 of 10 films in Cinespective.
Log in to tick films off as you go →Ten films that built the western and then took it apart, chosen because they changed what the genre could say rather than because they were the most popular. Each one is a step in an argument that runs from the founding myth of the frontier to its reckoning.
It is not a list of the ten best westerns, nor a survey of stars. Several great films are missing (Shane, Johnny Guitar, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, McCabe & Mrs. Miller) because another film on the list already makes their point.
The test for each film was simple: would a history of the western have to mention it? Every one of these ten, it would.
The idea in one sentence
From Stagecoach to Unforgiven, ten films in which the western builds its myth, doubts it, exports it and finally counts its dead.
It begins with John Ford, three times. Stagecoach (1939) gives the genre its landscape, its star and its seriousness. My Darling Clementine (1946) shows a town being civilised, one church dance at a time. The Searchers (1956), the darkest of the three, turns the hero into a problem.
Between them, Howard Hawks and Fred Zinnemann argue about what a man owes his town. Red River (1948) is the founding epic of the cattle drive. High Noon (1952) leaves a marshal alone against the clock. Rio Bravo (1959) is Hawks's reply: a sheriff who does not want help, and a film happy to sit with its people.
Then the western leaves America. Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) makes it opera, all silence and close-up, and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) mourns the frontier as the railroad arrives.
Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) ends the classical western in slow-motion blood, and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), made by the genre's last star, counts the cost of the myth and closes the argument.
The list as a route, stop after stop. Tap a film to see why it is on it, twice to open its guide.Thin red arcs link films that speak to each other.