The Western movie holds a unique fascination in cinematic genres. I thought I would explore why this is and then list 10 favorite movies that not only bear repeated watching and enjoyment, but that I have had the pleasure of doing so.
Frontier: Perhaps it is the frontier spirit that is at the base of that fascination. We live in a civilized world - which means that there are layers upon layers of rules and codes of conduct within which we live and take for granted. Whereas in the frontier, all such norms are stripped bare and we exposed for who we are - both as individuals and as a community.
Journey: In addition there are some additional features and qualities that seem to set apart the Western genre. Typically there is a journey. Whether it is a cattle drive, or the search for the West Coast, there is a sense of a trying to get to a destination that powers the story. Which can stand in as an implicit metaphor for our own condition.
Entertainment: Clearly, there is entertainment as a given in every western, what with six shooters and bar brawls to liven any plot.
Vistas: Given the frontier nature of the setting, the vistas are typically spectacular (think Monument Valley and John Ford).
Relationships: With everything on the line (food, shelter, security) somehow the relationships explored in Western movies have an elemental rawness to them, that allows us to examine these in a fresh light. Father-Son, Husband-Wife, Sheriff-Citizen and so on.
Global: Of course the American cowboy is the iconic symbol of the Western, and there little one can do to debate that. But global cinema has contributed to the western genre whether it is the spaghetti western, the curry western or the sushi western.
Here then are 10 movies that make my subjective list of best western movies ever made:
10. 3:10 To Yuma
A father and husband, to prove himself not to be cowardly has to escort a dangerous convict on the 3:10 to Yuma train to a prison. What is delightful about this movie is the evolving dialogue between the prisoner and the escort. Terrific chemistry between the two actors.
9. Stagecoach
The first classic western to hit the screen. John Ford the legendary director made this movie and the one that made John Wayne a star. There was an interview with Steven Spielberg where he talked about visiting John Ford as a young boy. John Ford asked Spielberg to look at three similar pictures on his wall and asked him to spot the difference. It turned out that the only difference in the three pictures, that mattered, according to Ford, was where the horizon line was on the frame (top, middle or bottom of the picture). I have never watched a movie since then, without this particular reference of where the horizon is on the frame.
8. Yojimbo
This sushi western was made by the legendary Akira Kurasawa. Any decent student or fan of films must watch at least 3 movies made by this artist par excellence. My favorite is Roshomon. But since we are talking westerns here, Yojimbo makes the list. Yojimbo inspired the Magnificent Seven. 'nough said!
7. Red River
John Wayne for his stature and iconic status gets another entry. This is a marvelous exploration of a father - son relationship with a superb turn from Montgomery Clift. Includes a great cattle drive as well.
6. Sholay
Curry Western! Think about it. The most adored movie to ever to be made in India explored the frontier, community, lawlessness (with plenty of horses, six shooters and revenge!). Awesome, awesome movie. My son and I gorged on Westerns recently. And he took to Sholay big time. Wants to see other movies with Sanjeev Kumar.
5. Searchers
John Wayne gets yet another entry! To be honest I am not a John Wayne fan. I'd personally rather watch a Gary Cooper western. But the Searchers is so amazing, that one cannot ignore it. No air brushing of bigotry in this movie - rather John Ford takes this head on. John Wayne puts in a rather complex performance. The last scene and its visualization is nothing like I have ever seen.
4. Good Bad Ugly
Spaghetti Western. The director Sergio Leone, an Italian, was a huge fan of the Western. So he brought the at that time unknown Clint Eastwood over to Europe and shot the movies (the Dollar Trilogy) in Italian. And they were dubbed into English. Sergio Leone put a new stamp on the Western genre by making it more gritty and grimy. But certainly turned Eastwood into an international super star. This movie pretty much has all the elements I had discussed above that form a western.
But Eli Wallach as Ugly totally steals the show. It is a rather long movie. But I woudl highly discourage skipping any part - pick up a beer and let it unfold.
3. Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood gets two entries - no surprise. He has made a greater mark as a director than as an actor. But this movie perfectly combines both talents along with his original searing reputation as the man with no name. He takes that figure, ages him with wisdom and reluctance, and forces him back into the frontier. Many of my friends argue this is the best western ever made. But then, they have not reflected long enough on my top two!
2. High Noon
Cinemas are about the climax. And the build-up to the climax. This movie has everything. Incredible suspense, a brilliant performance by Gary Cooper. Every man wants to live his life out as a climatic battle at High Noon. President Bill Clinton said this was his best movie. High Noon is a metaphor for how we want our lives to be - that is, we are tested, all alone, and will do the right thing, when all else is shorne.
1. Shane
I can't say enough about this movie, other than perhaps confess that I shed a guilty tear every time I watch it. My favorite movie of all time is The Godfather. Shane transcends its genre and comes close to taking the crown from that other venerable movie. The beauty of Shane is that it explores how we can't change inspite of the world changing around us. In Godfather III, Al Pacino laments that 'everytime he tries to get out (of the mafia business), they pull him back in'. Shane is trying his best to put his gun fighting days behind him. But they pull him back in. Also Alan Ladd who plays Shane was pretty much done with his career, and then he pulls this off!
There is indeed one last gun fight left in all of us.
Frontier: Perhaps it is the frontier spirit that is at the base of that fascination. We live in a civilized world - which means that there are layers upon layers of rules and codes of conduct within which we live and take for granted. Whereas in the frontier, all such norms are stripped bare and we exposed for who we are - both as individuals and as a community.
Journey: In addition there are some additional features and qualities that seem to set apart the Western genre. Typically there is a journey. Whether it is a cattle drive, or the search for the West Coast, there is a sense of a trying to get to a destination that powers the story. Which can stand in as an implicit metaphor for our own condition.
Entertainment: Clearly, there is entertainment as a given in every western, what with six shooters and bar brawls to liven any plot.
Vistas: Given the frontier nature of the setting, the vistas are typically spectacular (think Monument Valley and John Ford).
Relationships: With everything on the line (food, shelter, security) somehow the relationships explored in Western movies have an elemental rawness to them, that allows us to examine these in a fresh light. Father-Son, Husband-Wife, Sheriff-Citizen and so on.
Global: Of course the American cowboy is the iconic symbol of the Western, and there little one can do to debate that. But global cinema has contributed to the western genre whether it is the spaghetti western, the curry western or the sushi western.
Here then are 10 movies that make my subjective list of best western movies ever made:
10. 3:10 To Yuma
A father and husband, to prove himself not to be cowardly has to escort a dangerous convict on the 3:10 to Yuma train to a prison. What is delightful about this movie is the evolving dialogue between the prisoner and the escort. Terrific chemistry between the two actors.
9. Stagecoach
8. Yojimbo
This sushi western was made by the legendary Akira Kurasawa. Any decent student or fan of films must watch at least 3 movies made by this artist par excellence. My favorite is Roshomon. But since we are talking westerns here, Yojimbo makes the list. Yojimbo inspired the Magnificent Seven. 'nough said!
7. Red River
John Wayne for his stature and iconic status gets another entry. This is a marvelous exploration of a father - son relationship with a superb turn from Montgomery Clift. Includes a great cattle drive as well.
6. Sholay
5. Searchers
4. Good Bad Ugly
But Eli Wallach as Ugly totally steals the show. It is a rather long movie. But I woudl highly discourage skipping any part - pick up a beer and let it unfold.
3. Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood gets two entries - no surprise. He has made a greater mark as a director than as an actor. But this movie perfectly combines both talents along with his original searing reputation as the man with no name. He takes that figure, ages him with wisdom and reluctance, and forces him back into the frontier. Many of my friends argue this is the best western ever made. But then, they have not reflected long enough on my top two!
2. High Noon
Cinemas are about the climax. And the build-up to the climax. This movie has everything. Incredible suspense, a brilliant performance by Gary Cooper. Every man wants to live his life out as a climatic battle at High Noon. President Bill Clinton said this was his best movie. High Noon is a metaphor for how we want our lives to be - that is, we are tested, all alone, and will do the right thing, when all else is shorne.
1. Shane
I can't say enough about this movie, other than perhaps confess that I shed a guilty tear every time I watch it. My favorite movie of all time is The Godfather. Shane transcends its genre and comes close to taking the crown from that other venerable movie. The beauty of Shane is that it explores how we can't change inspite of the world changing around us. In Godfather III, Al Pacino laments that 'everytime he tries to get out (of the mafia business), they pull him back in'. Shane is trying his best to put his gun fighting days behind him. But they pull him back in. Also Alan Ladd who plays Shane was pretty much done with his career, and then he pulls this off!
There is indeed one last gun fight left in all of us.
3 comments:
You got the list upside down, 3:10 to Yuma (both the old and the recent remake) would be my #1. BTW Continental has a few of these on the transpacific flight library, I have reacquainted myself with a few of them. Sholay should be higher on the list.
Not having steeped myself in Westerns since, well, since the cultural revolution of the ‘60s, I can neither add nor subtract from your list. And also because this looks like a pretty strong list to me.
But it did spur thoughts of two films that, while they perhaps wouldn’t show up on any such list, are my favorite modern ‘Westerns’ – that is, if you permit my rather wide latitude for what can be called a Western, in this case, those that take place in the modern West. And both of them are from the Coen brothers.
First, perhaps one of best films of any genre in the last few years, I would add No Country for Old Men. While not offering the sort of moral vision of the classical American Western (in fact, it might appear rather nihilistic); it instead simply sidesteps all such morality tale purposes to explore the intermingling in life of chance and fate. “The novel's motifs of chance, free-will, and predestination are familiar territory for the Coen brothers, who presented similar threads and tapestries of "fate [and] circumstance" in earlier works including Raising Arizona, which featured another hitman, albeit less serious in tone.” (Wikipedia)
Perhaps this explains my fascination. This movie (faithful to the novel) is the mythopoetic exploration of what is also fascinating to modern scientists and philosophers – the place where reductionism meets emergence, aka, complexity. And, as you say, dramatized in a more primitive environment, the American West (in some places, primitive even today) as it allows the mythmaker to set his fable where “all… norms are stripped bare and we [are] exposed for who we [really] are” as animals, in a state much closer to our animal nature.
In The Village Voice, Scott Foundas writes that "Like McCarthy, the Coens are markedly less interested in who (if anyone) gets away with the loot than in the primal forces that urge the characters forward... In the end, everyone in No Country for Old Men is both hunter and hunted, members of some endangered species trying to forestall their extinction."
My second addition, and second favorite Coen brothers’ film is the afore mentioned Raising Arizona – what NYT movie critic David Denby called a "deranged fable of the New West." Though much lighter in both tone and theme, it offered a seriocomic take on a theme of many latter-day Westerns: the clash of frontier and civilizational cultures at the end of the era, “trying to forestall their extinction”. And in the Coen brother’s inimitable style, they up the ante.
While many films noted the civilizing effects of the eventual inclusion of women en mass to the frontier, the Coen brothers make the point by making Hi’s wife Ed a correctional officer. Still not satisfied, she even delivers a haymaker to Hi’s jaw when she catches him pulling another heist.
And what better sums up the clash of cultures than the following line by one of the Snoat brothers (love their use of names), who were his jail buddies and wanted to convince Hi not to allow himself to get civilized:
Evelle: “H.I., you're young and you got your health, what you want with a job?”
;-)
Not having steeped myself in Westerns since, well, since the cultural revolution of the ‘60s, I can neither add nor subtract from your list. And also because this looks like a pretty damn strong list to me.
But it did spur thoughts of two films that, while they perhaps wouldn’t show up on any such list, are my favorite modern ‘Westerns’ – that is, if you permit my rather wide latitude for what can be called a Western, in this case, those that take place in the modern West. And both of them are from the Coen brothers.
First, perhaps one of best films of any genre in the last few years, I would add No Country for Old Men. While not offering the sort of moral vision of the classical American Western (in fact, it might appear rather nihilistic); it instead simply sidesteps all such morality tale purposes to explore the intermingling in life of chance and fate.
Perhaps this explains my fascination. This movie (faithful to the novel) is the mythopoetic exploration of what is also fascinating to modern scientists and philosophers – the place where reductionism meets emergence, aka, complexity. And, as you say, dramatized in a more primitive environment, the American West (in some places, primitive even today) as it allows the mythmaker to set his fable where “all… norms are stripped bare and we [are] exposed for who we [really] are” as animals, in a state much closer to our animal nature.
My second addition, and second favorite Coen brothers’ film is the afore mentioned Raising Arizona – what NYT movie critic David Denby called a "deranged fable of the New West." Though much lighter in both tone and theme, it offered a seriocomic take on a theme of many latter-day Westerns: the clash of frontier and civilizational cultures at the end of the era, “trying to forestall their extinction”. And in the Coen brother’s inimitable style, they up the ante.
While many films noted the civilizing effects of the eventual inclusion of women en mass to the frontier, the Coen brothers make the point by making Hi’s wife Ed a correctional officer. Still not satisfied, she even delivers a haymaker to Hi’s jaw when she catches him pulling another heist.
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