|
Re: What killed the Western?
rw2516's insights reminded me of something I read a long time ago, so I dug up the quote.
Mark Jacobson wrote a piece in the Village Voice (New York) on Jan. 6, 1975 that blamed Sergio Leone for the death of the western in an essay on the movie theaters of Manhattan's 42nd Street. It was called "A Film Freak’s Plea: Nationalize 42nd Street!" Here are some key paragraphs: The Street was a creep’s Greyline tour through the Grade A and B obsessions that the movie mind had consolidated into genres. All you had to do was call out WAR! and the Harris had it. That’s why I’m concerned now. I’ve been cruising the marquees now and coming up empty. “Sergio Leone is responsible. I’d like to shove a harmonica into Leone’s mouth for what he did to the Street. He understood that in times of no foreplay, the souped-up revenge themes he craved were not to be found in the pageantry of John Ford. Ford’s long shots weren’t nearly visceral enough. So Leone came copping from the maniacal and self-centered Kurosawa, to create a cinema of scowling cracked lips and wide-screen nosehairs. With one overwhelming pan-shot in ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,’ he swept away the waning genres. Eli Wallach is foraging through a vast graveyard, because he knows that one of those tombs contains all the money in the world. Leone’s camera swirls madly. There is a crescendo of Jew’s harps and trumpets. The shot might have lasted a week, but it ended when Wallach fell drooling and exhausted at the Man with No Name’s feet. It was awesome, Yeatsian. Who could watch another cavalry charge after that? “It wasn’t long after that the Times Square stopped showing American Westerns. Leone had bulldozed all the Hathaway and Hawks prototypes into the cloying arms of television. But that’s not all. He had created a hero who was too big for any genre to contain. It used to be that there were reasons and limits to the exercise of vengeance. The hero would chase the bad guy and set right the damage he had done and at the end of the film things would be back in place, ready to be upset again during the second half of the double bill. “Leone’s films don’t work that way. You never feel that Clint Eastwood has avenged himself because his paranoia tells him there are still people out there who deserve to be killed. This makes inescapable sense on 42nd Street where most of the audience is very street wise and knows that there are no hard and fast, good and bad guys, that everyone is a potential enemy. A man who kills everybody according to the theory that a good offense is a good defense, is a personality to be reckoned with. It was easy to transport the Eastwood character from riding the range to stalking the streets. A convincing case can be made for Sergio Leone as the godfather of the new genres that came to prominence after the Man with No Name hit it big on the Street. |
Re: What killed the Western?
The cowboy archetype lost its pop culture cachet around the dawning of the "space age." Kennedy's New Frontier, if you will. As people became more fascinated with science and technology and the population shifted from rural to the suburban and urban, the simple cowboy became irrelevant to the masses. The generations raised since John Glenn orbited the Earth in a Mercury capsule lost their fascination with the cowboy. High performance automobiles have replaced horses, Gloc-9s have replaced six-shooters, and everything from Hopalong Cassidy to John Wayne seems twee and provincial now.
The majority of the Western films that get made in the past three decades have been either deconstructionist or post-modern... see Young Guns, The Unforgiven, Django Unchained. Straight-forward Westerns are quite rare these days; something like Tombstone would probably qualify, though a case could be made that some postmodern/deconstructionist elements pop up from time to time in it. |
Re: What killed the Western?
What is Die Hard '65?
|
Re: What killed the Western?
A lot of great suggestions to check out in this thread. I've become a western junkie over the past five or so years, but I'm having to play a lot of catch up. I do agree with whoever called Fort Apache boring as shit though. I blind bought the BD, and just can't make it halfway through without my mind wandering or just wanting to do something else. The movie is so slow to build, devoid of action, and I can't relate to the characters or the actors performances. It has scared me away from westerns from before the 50's for damn certain.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Ky-Fi
(Post 11624497)
I was going to post something similar. I love spaghetti westerns, but I don't exactly agree with the idea that they were necessarily darker or more complex than 50s American westerns. Just in The Searchers, I think you could make a very strong argument that Wayne's Ethan Edwards was a darker character than Eastwood's Man With No Name. In The Searchers, it's hinted at the beginning that Edwards is a bank robber, and over the course of the movie he shoots several men in the back, mutilates a corpse, displays a vicious racism towards Native Americans, and spends a good deal of the movie tracking down his niece with the intention of killing her.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by IIG
(Post 11630666)
A lot of great suggestions to check out in this thread. I've become a western junkie over the past five or so years, but I'm having to play a lot of catch up. I do agree with whoever called Fort Apache boring as shit though. I blind bought the BD, and just can't make it halfway through without my mind wandering or just wanting to do something else. The movie is so slow to build, devoid of action, and I can't relate to the characters or the actors performances. It has scared me away from westerns from before the 50's for damn certain.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Supermallet
(Post 11630715)
The Searchers is very much an exception to the traditional western, and the reason it's one of the few John Ford westerns I can actually stand to watch.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
I didn't say it was the only Ford film I can watch. I said it was one of them.
And I don't care how good the filmmaking is if the movie is about a bunch of one dimensional white hats heroically gunning down savage Indians. It's just not a view of the west I'm interested in watching. |
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Supermallet
(Post 11630760)
And I don't care how good the filmmaking is if the movie is about a bunch of one dimensional white hats heroically gunning down savage Indians. It's just not a view of the west I'm interested in watching.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Supermallet
(Post 11630760)
I didn't say it was the only Ford film I can watch. I said it was one of them.
And I don't care how good the filmmaking is if the movie is about a bunch of one dimensional white hats heroically gunning down savage Indians. It's just not a view of the west I'm interested in watching. |
Re: What killed the Western?
My point is I'd rather see a film like The Wild Bunch or The Assassination of Jesse James, films that actively deconstruct the mythology of the west. That's why I like The Searchers.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Supermallet
(Post 11630802)
My point is I'd rather see a film like The Wild Bunch or The Assassination of Jesse James, films that actively deconstruct the mythology of the west. That's why I like The Searchers.
Originally Posted by Supermallet
(Post 11630760)
And I don't care how good the filmmaking is if the movie is about a bunch of one dimensional white hats heroically gunning down savage Indians. It's just not a view of the west I'm interested in watching.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Mabuse
(Post 11630788)
I don't recal a single Ford Western that was that simple. Maybe Stagecoach.
Stagecoach deals with more complicated issues of "anti-heroes" and the hypocrisy of paternal morality than just simply good guy cowboys versus bad guy Indians. If anything, a case could be made that Stagecoach deconstructed the genre as it was at the time. It showed drunk cowards, a moral man ready to kill an innocent woman, and a hero that spends nearly the entire film under arrest while on a cold blooded revenge mission. |
Re: What killed the Western?
Replace the Indians in Stagecoach with "generic gang of thugs" and you have a perfect movie. The performances, direction, storyline, and otherwise interesting morality are all dead on with this movie.
It is difficult to watch though. You really do have to mentally swap out the Indians because it's hard to root against them. And many lesser Westerns out there also had Indians as the savage villains. But how far do you take it? Do you never watch any movie made prior to 1965 because there are no black actors in prominent roles? No movies prior to 1995ish because no positive gay portrayals? |
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Mabuse
(Post 11630888)
To fully appreciate the deconstruction one needs to be familiar with the classics.
Originally Posted by Mabuse
(Post 11630888)
One could argue that what killed the western was people with rhetoric like yours that dismissed the genre and painted it as racist, misogynist, imperialist, shallow, etc. when in fact it was a rich genre filled with nuance and differing points of view often reflecting ambiguity toward manifest destiny, indian relations, the definition of heroism, etc.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Mattflix
(Post 11630902)
Replace the Indians in Stagecoach with "generic gang of thugs" and you have a perfect movie. The performances, direction, storyline, and otherwise interesting morality are all dead on with this movie.
It is difficult to watch though. You really do have to mentally swap out the Indians because it's hard to root against them. And many lesser Westerns out there also had Indians as the savage villains. But how far do you take it? Do you never watch any movie made prior to 1965 because there are no black actors in prominent roles? No movies prior to 1995ish because no positive gay portrayals? Just because societal attitudes shift and change over time should not mean we burn up the newly offensive things from the past. Birth of a Nation is a disgustingly racist film by just about any standard...it is also one of the most important American films ever made. People should be able to reconcile those two things without freaking out. Yes, Native Americans as generic "bad guys" is not cool nor is Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but that's life. Attitudes shift over time. It is not longer acceptable to call things "gay" as it was maybe 20 years ago or so. That doesn't mean we need to throw out any movie that plays homosexuality for a laugh (feel free to throw out this year's Oscars though). |
Re: What killed the Western?
It didn't help that they were cheap to make and Hollywood went crazy for a time making them. There would literally be hundreds released each year in the 1950s, most of them utter trash or completely forgettable.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
I dread to think how future generations will view our treatment of Zombie-Americans in cinema. :(
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Groucho
(Post 11631031)
I dread to think how future generations will view our treatment of Zombie-Americans in cinema. :(
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by BambooLounge
(Post 11630982)
Personally, I just don't get the mindset of people who cannot place things in context. It is frustrating because it is what makes companies like Disney whitewash certain things out of the their classic animated films and not release other material (cough Song of the South cough).
Just because societal attitudes shift and change over time should not mean we burn up the newly offensive things from the past. Birth of a Nation is a disgustingly racist film by just about any standard...it is also one of the most important American films ever made. People should be able to reconcile those two things without freaking out. Yes, Native Americans as generic "bad guys" is not cool nor is Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but that's life. Attitudes shift over time. It is not longer acceptable to call things "gay" as it was maybe 20 years ago or so. That doesn't mean we need to throw out any movie that plays homosexuality for a laugh (feel free to throw out this year's Oscars though). Here's another example that I saw recently: Hitchcock's Young and Innocent. It's not a Western, but this mystery's finale is an extended sequence where the villain hides himself by sneaking into a musical band....in blackface. And when they catch him, the heroine says "wipe the black off his face, is that him??" But we know understand what a terrible thing blackface and racism in general is, so when I saw the movie I was in hysterics laughing because I couldn't beleive what I was watching. The movie isn't racist per se; it treats the blackface band as a particularly clever place for somebody to hide in plain site. It wasn't making a statement about race, it was just taking advantage of the surroundings. "You've got to understand what it was like back then." I beleive that if the values have changed, the ability to view the movie changes. But it can still be possible to respect the movie. |
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by PhantomStranger
(Post 11631027)
It didn't help that they were cheap to make and Hollywood went crazy for a time making them. There would literally be hundreds released each year in the 1950s, most of them utter trash or completely forgettable.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
Funny, I've never watched STAGECOACH thinking "go whities, kill redskins, etc." It's just conflict as a backdrop for cinema, period. If you start thinking of the broader cultural ramifications, you'll never be any fun at smart parties.
I mean, it's not like some guy in a Bugs Bunny cartoon with a Cleveland Indians logo head, slithering like a snake over a rock or something. |
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Mattflix
(Post 11631153)
Here's another example that I saw recently: Hitchcock's Young and Innocent. It's not a Western, but this mystery's finale is an extended sequence where the villain hides himself by sneaking into a musical band....in blackface. And when they catch him, the heroine says "wipe the black off his face, is that him??" But we know understand what a terrible thing blackface and racism in general is, so when I saw the movie I was in hysterics laughing because I couldn't beleive what I was watching. The movie isn't racist per se; it treats the blackface band as a particularly clever place for somebody to hide in plain site. It wasn't making a statement about race, it was just taking advantage of the surroundings. "You've got to understand what it was like back then." I beleive that if the values have changed, the ability to view the movie changes. But it can still be possible to respect the movie.
When Fred Astair did a blackface dance number in tribute to Bojangles Robinson in Swing Time it was because he LOVED Bojangles Robinson and felt he owed his career to him. Furthermore, Young and Innocent is a British film that takes place in Britain and same dynamic is applicable. Due to the social structure of the day the largely white British population was only able to hear this kind of music when it was filtered through the minstrel show format. It was a cultural baby step that needed to occur before true integration could occur. Lastly, "Wipe the black off his face" is not a racist statement. She's asking for the makeup to be removed so she can ID the killer. |
Re: What killed the Western?
Originally Posted by Ash Ketchum
(Post 11630718)
You should see the whole thing. Mexican actor Miguel Inclan gives a great performance as Cochise in a very important scene.
|
Re: What killed the Western?
As to what, "Killed," Westerns, I've got two letters for you.
TV. In the late 50's the Western was the #1 genre on TV. There were dozens of Westerns on every season, spread out over the three networks, with a few original syndicated shows mixed in. Many of them, like Rawhide, The Restless Gun, Gunsmoke, etc, were very, very good - almost as good as theatrical Westerns. Westerns remained popular on TV into the mid 60's, although the peak for the genre on TV was from 1957 to 1960. With all that programming being sold as syndicated reruns in the late 1960's the theatrical Western was seen as redundant and unnecessary. Westerns survived into the mid 70's, but in far fewer numbers than previous decades. With Pale Rider and Silverado the Western made a mini comeback in the mid 80's, and Unforgiven changed the landscape forever. We've seen several Westerns since, many of them very, very good, but the genre will never again be what it was in the late 40's through the early 60's. I love Westerns. One of my favorites is Warlock (1959), a great movie featuring Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, and Anthony Quinn. Check it out if you haven't already seen it. It was a foreshadowing of the kind of Westerns that would show up in the mid 60's, and evolve in the 80's and 90's. It's still firmly rooted in 1959, but there are aspects of the story that was definitely ahead of it's time. |
| All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:07 AM. |
Copyright © 2026 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Use of this site indicates your consent to the Terms of Use.