Get Three Coffins Ready -- The Western Thread

[Grazioso]

Any other fans of Westerns here? I've long found the genre fascinating because

* It's uniquely American and was long a pervasive element in our culture, but it has also extended and cross-pollinated to other regions and cultures (e.g. Spaghetti westerns, American Wild West remakes of Kurosowa samurai films)
* It has attracted many great storytellers, filmmakers, and actors
* It's been reinterpreted in countless ways (e.g., Firefly, a Western in outer space)
* It's inherently symbolic, thematic, and moralizing, usually dealing with questions of the nature of evil, justice, courage, liberty, the limits of civilizing forces, individual versus group needs, and so on

I was watching this classic



which makes very explicit many of the traditional concerns of the Western. Here the conflict between the necessity of force and the desire for "civilized" non-violent law and order is embodied in twin protagonists, Wayne's independent gunslinger and Stewart's idealistic law-school graduate.

Lee Marvin is the utterly nasty villain Liberty Valance, who terrorizes the town and makes Stewart's life miserable. It's telling that Valance's evil is never explained or justified--it just is, and it needs to be faced.

It's telling, too, that the representatives of civilizing forces are mostly drunks or cowards: the town marshal, the newspaper editor, the doctor... Only Wayne, the outsider with the gun and the courage, has the immediate power to bring any sort of justice or safety to the town. But maybe Stewart has a chance... Wayne certainly doesn't think so, looking on him with a mix of bemusement at his at his seemingly suicidal idealism, interest at his courage, and jealousy at his evolving relationship with Wayne's girl.

Can't say more without giving away the twist and the ending, though both should be clear as you're watching.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

[DavidW]

That's a great movie Grazioso!

Off of the top of my head westerns I really like:

Movies:
My Darling Clementine
Destry Rides Again
High Noon
The Searchers
The Shootist
True Grit (the original)
Rooster Cogburn

TV Shows:
Gunsmoke
Bonanza

I need to watch more tv shows!

Novels:
Lonesome Dove
True Grit
The Time It Never Rained

I need to read more novels! 

[DavidW]

Oh how could I forget one of the best... Shane!!!

[eyeresist]

I've been resisting the lure of the western, because there are so many watchable films in the genre. I always ogle the cheapo westerns in the bargain bin at Kmart, but that way madness lies.

I make an exception in my collection for Magnificent Seven and Good, Bad, Ugly. They are both absolutely terrific, the latter something like Apocalypse Now as a comedy!

[Grazioso]

I need to read more novels!

Look no further!


Appaloosa and its sequels. Like Hemingway writing violent Westerns. Appaloosa itself was made into a decent film with Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, Jeremy Irons as the villain, and Renee Zellweger as a lady who squints too much The book is better.

Oh how could I forget one of the best... Shane!!!

The original novel of Shane is good, too.

[Mirror Image]

Tombstone is the best Western movie I've ever seen. The Quick and the Dead, Wyatt Earp, Magnificent Seven, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and A Few Dollars More are some of my other favorites.

[Grazioso]

I've been resisting the lure of the estern, because there are so many watchable films in the genre. I always ogle the cheapo westerns in the bargain bin at Kmart, but that way madness lies.

I make an exception in my collection for Magnificent Seven and Good, Bad, Ugly. They are both absolutely terrific, the latter something like Apocalypse Now as a comedy!

Yeah, I made the big mistake of watching a Western back in the day and got sucked into the genre for life There are tons of great western films. For anyone venturing into the genre, a few I can suggest (covering different styles, themes, and eras):

The Searchers
High Noon
Rio Bravo
Lonesome Dove
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Unforgiven
Wyatt Earp
Tombstone
The Wild Bunch
The Proposition
Dead Man
The Shootist
Winchester '73
3:10 to Yuma (original version with Glenn Ford)

[Grazioso]

I'll have to hunt down my anthology of westerns, all the movies made and organized by decade.  Usually the ones I like best were made in the '50s and '60s - but some modern westerns, e.g. the Clint Eastwood films, are right up there in quality.

Late 40's into the 60's was probably the heyday in terms of the quality matching quantity. Funny to think there were over two dozen western shows on prime-time TV in 1959. How culture has changed: now we're lucky to get one Western a year in the theaters.

But some of the more modern ones have been darn good:

the Eastwood films, like you say
Tombstone
Wyatt Earp
Lonesome Dove
Open Range (with one of the best gunfights ever)
Silverado (has its fans, but I never much liked it)
The Proposition (a gut-wrenching, hyper-violent Australian Outback Western)
Dead Man (trippy revisionist art-house Western)
Quigley Down Under (for lighter popcorn fare)
Desperado (funny modern-day south-of-the border Western)

[TheGSMoeller]

I love Westerns. To me there is one that stands out above them all...

[springrite]

I generally don't like Westerns. Can't stand John Wayne. But I do like a few that has a sense of humor, such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

[Lethevich]

I generally don't like Westerns. Can't stand John Wayne. But I do like a few that has a sense of humor, such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

I wouldn't have commented if your opinion hadn't exactly mirrored mine. Not so big on the sweat-and-boredom aspect of it (especially of the slow paced John Wayne-style ones), but I like the Dollars trilogy a lot for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of.

[Todd]

I consider Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy in the Western genre - and a fantastic novel, one of my favorites.  His Border Trilogy is also in this area, but BM is far and away in a class by itself.

Blood Meridian is a great novel.  Ridley Scott was going to direct a movie adaptation, but he dropped out and it is in limbo.  It's hard to imagine it on the big screen.  Who could play Judge Holden?

[TheGSMoeller]

But some of the more modern ones have been darn good:

The Proposition (a gut-wrenching, hyper-violent Australian Outback Western)

The Proposition is the best of the more recent Westerns.
Another good recent Western is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Very long and slowly paced, but well told and beautiful to look at, was shot by Roger Deakins, the same Cinematographer on all of the Coen Brother films.

[DavidW]

Look no further!


Appaloosa and its sequels. Like Hemingway writing violent Westerns. Appaloosa itself was made into a decent film with Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, Jeremy Irons as the villain, and Renee Zellweger as a lady who squints too much The book is better.

The original novel of Shane is good, too.

I've seen the movie, think I'll take your advise and read the novel (Appaloosa).  I should read Shane too.

[Todd]

I had heard that and was hoping that if it did make it to the screen it would be done faithfully to the book, in all its bloody horror.

If it's made, I'd love to see that, but even The Road was softened up compared to the book, so I can't see how anyone would make a truly faithful Blood Meridian.

[Josquin des Prez]

> all.

[Bulldog]

"Unforgiven" is easily my favorite western movie.

[Bogey]

5 I never tire of:

Rio Bravo (my son's favorite, as well)
High Plains Drifter (love the "look" of this one)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Tombstone
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Also, love The Lone Ranger tv show as a kid....6 AM every day before getting ready for school in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  I have since found some of the old radio shows, which I enjoy as well.  Just happens that this is on my bedside table for a second look as soon as I finish my current reading:


Also have some short story westerns from Robert E. Howard on my Kindle to read here and there.

PS GREAT name for a thread!

[Grazioso]

5 I never tire of:

Rio Bravo (my son's favorite, as well)
...

Perhaps my all-time favorite Western, certainly one of my all-time favorite classic Hollywood films. The great Howard Hawks directing the Duke, sexpot Angie Dickinson, and great character actors like Walter Brennan. Dino was fun to watch in this one, too.

It makes an interesting film response to the story of High Noon (another classic, with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly). "In his Playboy interview from May 1971, Wayne stated he considered High Noon 'the most un-American thing I've ever seen in my whole life'." Hawks explained, "I made Rio Bravo because I didn't like High Noon. Neither did Duke. I didn't think a good town marshal was going to run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help. And who saves him? His Quaker wife. That isn't my idea of a good Western." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon#Reception

The Hawks remake, El Dorado, with Mitchum as the drunk and James Caan with a ridiculous shotgun, is entertaining if over-long for the material.

Gotta love the character names in Rio Bravo, too: Chance, Dude, Stumpy, Colorado, Feathers... Sounds like world's worst team of comic book super-heroes

PS GREAT name for a thread!

Fistful of Dollars FTW 

[Marc]

"Unforgiven" is easily my favorite western movie.

Not my genre really, the Western, with the exception of some Leone's and Eastwoods. Of the latter, I think Unforgiven is a true masterpiece.

The burial of so-called true heroism?

Man, the final scene still gives me the chills:

http://www.youtube.com/v/ccqdEhytKOk