westerns: s/d

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

bit of a tall order, maybe, but this being a genre i am COMPLETELY unfamiliar with (except for, uh, blazing saddles...uh), where do i possibly begin and what should i avoid like the plague?

― joseph (joseph), Thursday, 27 January 2005 23:29 (twenty-one years ago)

search these two in particular:

Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time In the West, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More)

Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Ride the High Country, Major Dundee)

also, westerns directed by Anthony Mann and John Ford are generally quite good, obviously. Bend of the River for Mann, especially, and The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance for Ford. Oh and Red River directed by Howard Hawks.

Also investigate some of the post-Leone Eastwood westerns like High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, and Unforgiven (obviously). Open Range is a solid western from last year. I've always enjoyed Tombstone, despite it being fairly stupid. And Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch, which I thought was pretty good, some people think it's one of the greatest films from the past twenty years. So it's worth seeing.

There's more I'm missing, doubtlessly.

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 27 January 2005 23:43 (twenty-one years ago)

well you hit all my favorites (even Open Range!)

― ryan (ryan), Thursday, 27 January 2005 23:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't like westerns much. But DO go see "Johnny Guitar." It's great. Certainly one of the most unconventional westerns you'll ever watch.

And the Leone films are worth watching, especially "Once Upon A Time in the West." They're entertaining, and not to mention, have had huge cinematic and societal impacts since they came out.

― mj (robert blake), Friday, 28 January 2005 00:38 (twenty-one years ago)

The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman, 43)

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Friday, 28 January 2005 00:46 (twenty-one years ago)

"High Noon".

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Friday, 28 January 2005 00:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, skip "Butch Cassidy" - eeek, imo.

― mj (robert blake), Friday, 28 January 2005 01:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Not mentioned so far:

My Darling Clementine

Man Of The West

Winchester 73

The Naked Spur

Wichita

Run Of The Arrow

Vera Cruz

Django

The Professionals

The Hired Hand

Ulzana's Raid

Monte Walsh

Heaven's Gate

Rio Bravo

The Magnificent Seven

Shane

The Long Riders

The Shooting

― David N (David N.), Friday, 28 January 2005 01:06 (twenty-one years ago)

high noon & rio bravo make a compelling double-header, since the latter is conventionally seen as a response to the former, though when you watch them back to back you realize that it's a lot more complicated than a simple bianary. rio bravo is by far the better film, IMO.

― a spectator bird (a spectator bird), Friday, 28 January 2005 01:29 (twenty-one years ago)

btw, is anyone familiar enough with budd boetticher's westerns to give me a sub-S/D of just those? i've been meaning to check out his stuff, not sure where to start.

― a spectator bird (a spectator bird), Friday, 28 January 2005 01:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Search: 3:10 To Yuma

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 28 January 2005 02:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Which was directed by, I neglected to add, the great Delmer Daves.

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 28 January 2005 02:07 (twenty-one years ago)

rio bravo is by far the better film, IMO.

I'll beg to differ on this one--"High Noon" is a much smarter film & deeply philosophical below its surface.

"Tombstone" is also a much smarter film than it's given credit for, possibly because of Kurt Russell's weak performance. Val Kilmer is absolutely brilliant as Doc Holiday.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Friday, 28 January 2005 03:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Let me make it real simple for you. Start with Howard Hawks and John Ford, continue on to Sergio Leone and Anthony Mann, then try Monte Hellman's The Shooting and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man. If this doesn't make you a western fanatic, I don't know what will.

― Anthony (Anthony F), Friday, 28 January 2005 05:43 (twenty-one years ago)

--"High Noon" is a much smarter film & deeply philosophical below its surface.
High Noon? High Noon is kind of annoying and preachy. The best thing in it is Katy Jurado who plays the real woman as opposed to goody two-shoes Grace Kelly. (Not that I don't like Grace Kelly, mind you, but in this movie her character's a pill)

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 28 January 2005 14:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm talking beyond simple plot line & acting here. It's a groundbreaking film in terms of its temporal formal experimentation & really pioneered the relationship/conflict between individual and community. It's a deceptively simple film, which is what I appreciate most about it. It's what appeals to me about films like "Rashomon" as well.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Friday, 28 January 2005 16:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Jay, with all due respect, I never know exactly what you are talking about. It seems to change from post to post.

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 28 January 2005 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

High Noon, most overrated western ever. Shane close.

Anything here, really:

http://www.filmforum.com/films/western.html

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 January 2005 17:01 (twenty-one years ago)

At the risk of repeating myself, Dr. M is OTM.

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 28 January 2005 17:06 (twenty-one years ago)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/colonpipe/grandesilencio.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/colonpipe/mccabemrsmiller.jpg

― bass braille (....), Friday, 28 January 2005 17:15 (twenty-one years ago)

hah i forgot that mccabe and mrs. miller is the OTHER only western i've seen ;)

― joseph (joseph), Friday, 28 January 2005 20:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Jay, with all due respect, I never know exactly what you are talking about. It seems to change from post to post.

with all due respect, i don't really give a shit.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Friday, 28 January 2005 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

High Noon, most overrated western ever. Shane close.

Dr. M, maybe you think your strong opinions don't need any kind of formal backing, but some of us do.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Friday, 28 January 2005 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost:
That's kind of what I figured.

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 28 January 2005 21:41 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost:
This is not a rare opinion he holds. I know of at least one famous critic who hated both those movies. Here's a hint: she was a short, non-auteurist.

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 28 January 2005 21:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Am I the only person who thought Johnny Guitar was, well, boring? Perhaps it was my fault for seeing Gunslinger first.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 29 January 2005 02:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, it is kind of boring, especially if you view it as a straight Western. But as a camp classic, as the catfight of all catfights, it's pretty entertaining. There are plenty of memorable bits in it, especially the "lie to me" thing that appears in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

― Ken L (Ken L), Saturday, 29 January 2005 02:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I saw it with a handful of gay men in a brownstone in Chelsea. We really wanted to enjoy its campiness. But, eh.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 29 January 2005 06:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Johnny Guitar is NOT campy; that's a Film Forum Crowd attitude. That Crawford-Hayden "say you love me" exchange is one of the most wounding and poignant in all of Hollywood films.

Meh, sorry jay, I'm was just too bored with both those "classic" westerns to analyze my indifference. The key is Zinnemann and Stevens are both several levels down visually from Hawks Ford Mann etc. I have also never understood why Gary Cooper was a legend, esp after his youth. (On top of everything else, Bill Clinton named High Noon as his favorite film...always telling the media what they want to hear. You KNOW it was likely Shampoo.) And jeez, in long scenes of Shane you have to endure Van fucking Heflin. (I heart Jean Arthur, but in great screwball comedies more.)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 29 January 2005 15:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Johnny Guitar is NOT campy; that's a Film Forum Crowd attitude.
Hm. I wasn't trying to put the movie down- I'd hate to be lumped in with the inappropriate chucklers at the FF. Maybe I should have said it was more about the women than the men, or that it was more like a Douglas Sirk than a Howard Hawks.

I heart heart heart Jean Arthur, but in S-H-A-N-E she is a shadow of her former self- she seems kind of depressed, none of the fizzle she had in those black and whites comedies with Capra or with George Stevens, for that matter. Maybe both Jean and George were both past their prime at the time.

― Ken L (Ken L), Sunday, 30 January 2005 00:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Both Shane and High Noon are slightly stiff, wooden, very 1950s American films. Didn't Bazin characterise both (particularly Shane) as the ultimate in Super-Westerns - Westerns about nothing other than the western? Of course Leone and Peckinpah later perfected the super-western but they both approached it via Ford.
Neither Zinnemann nor Stevens really seem to have any feel for the genre - watch any scene from a Mann western and you can feel his affinity for the material. His eye, his use of landscape, his casting were all suited to making Westerns. You get the feeling that both Zinnemann and Stevens were condescending to the genre, and so both try to transcend it.
But both films have a power. High Noon has that crane shot of Cooper alone in the street, which is what I think of first whenever I think of the film. His solitude in doing his duty is beautifully visualised in that shot.
And Shane - for all its self-conscious myth-making - succeeds. Its ending somehow possesses a mythic power, for all that it is utterly corny and studied. It works.

Having said that, Rio Bravo is better than the two of them put together. Damn, so is El Dorado. Though I draw the line at Rio Lobo.

― David N (David N.), Sunday, 30 January 2005 01:37 (twenty-one years ago)

That was a great post, David N.

I just thought of another sleeper that I saw by accident a few years ago on TV- Broken Lance, starring Spencer Tracy as a tough old patriach with three children- it is basically a Western King Lear! Also features Katy Jurado, as an Indian or a half-breed, I believe.

― Ken L (Ken L), Sunday, 30 January 2005 02:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Isn't Broken Lance another Delmer Davies film?

Another couple of Westerns I like :

Hombre

Bad Company

― David N (David N.), Monday, 31 January 2005 00:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Nope, it ain't Delmer Daves, it's Edward Dmytryk.

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 31 January 2005 02:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, the crane shot from HN is a highlight, along with the last gesture with the sheriff's star (which apparently appalled John Wayne). Katy Jurado is also in Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett," and Dylan says she was the chief inspiration for "Knockin on Heaven's Door."

I do like Ladd, Palance and Brandon deWilde in "Shane." (And I always thought Jean A's peak was in Wilder's underpraised "A Foreign Affair."
"I -- oh -- waaay...")

Godard also uses "lie to me" audio in JLG/JLG, I think?

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 31 January 2005 14:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I love the Raymond Chandler ( I think) line on Ladd : "A small boy's idea of a tough guy".

― David N (David N.), Monday, 31 January 2005 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.