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The real question is... who voted for Soldier Blue?

Soon to be given a BD release no less (!)

Nothing wrote:The real question is... who voted for Soldier Blue?

I would have if I had voted, but only because it's where I first heard the voice of Buffy St-Marie. Seems as good a reason as any.

I like all Mann westerns except Cimarron, which has a few powerful scenes, but is all in all forgettable mainstream.
But I don't think that as an director he is in the same league as Ford, Hawks, Peckinpah and Leone.

Mann western ranking:

The Naked Spur
Man of the West

The Far Country
Winchester 73
Bend of the River
The Last Frontier
Devil's Doorway
The Furies

The Man from Laramie
The Tin Star

Cimarron

swo17 wrote:It's gone by now. I was just seeing if anyone might have kept a record of it. Though since I asked the question, I realized that if any new films had shown up from one additional list being considered, that film would now have no more than 100 points total (meaning it would show up in the bottom 40) and there aren't any in that range that I didn't already have in my Netflix queue (whether I added them yesterday or not). It's probably mostly just some rankings that moved around.

In any case, yesterday's list serves no purpose and we should all just pretend it never really happened. :-"

This means there was an older list done in the same way?

There will be another poll for the western in a few years here?

question to domino:

How many lists?

Lighthouse wrote:I don't think that as an director he is in the same league as Ford, Hawks, Peckinpah and Leone.

Of course, but he's less widely known/appreciated by the mainstream, and at his best offers a little bit of the edge of Peckinpah whilst still ultimately conforming to the reactionary myth of the American West proposed by Ford and Hawks, making him both trendier and easier to digest for a certain kind of bourgeois cinephile crowd at present (the same kind of folks who persist in arguing that Ride the High Country is Peckinpah's best film!)

"LET'S GO."

Out of that list, I think only Ford was better, and even he isn't as consistent as Mann (Mann never made a 3 Godfathers, for starters). And whether you like it or not, "the reactionary myth" is the terms by which the Western operates. Even the Anti-Western can't escape its shadow, and at its most extreme, runs so far in the other direction it creates a myth of its own (Leone's vision of a West where life had no value and death sometimes had a price).

I'd love to see a Western made as if it owes nothing the the Myth. I'm not sold on the film, but perhaps the most remarkable things about Meek's Cutoff is how close it gets to that goal.

Considering you voted for three Mann's, and perhaps the most "mythic" of them all (The Far Country), this just strikes me as Armondian contrarianism: everybody likes Mann, so now I must attack him.

Nice work, Domino.

Seen 95/101.

I regret not having been more involved in the discussions, my punishment is that many of my choices have finished in orphans and also rans lists.

Some of my loved orphans:

The Magnificent Seven
can't believe to find the pretty mediocre "Backlash" above "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and this one

The Naked Dawn
cult B-western by Ulmer

Pale Rider
Eastwood's first mature work and comparable to "Unforgiven"

Silverado
ok, this is a pastiche, but a very good pastiche

Tennessee's Partner
one of my all time favorites, very Hawksian (glad to find "Silver Lode", quintessential B-western)

These Thousand Hills
adult western with fantastic characters and actors

Westward the Women
I tossed a coin to choose between "Yellow Sky" and this one

Way of a Gaucho
the only one I am not sure it's exactly a western, no problem, "Canyon Passage" is fine with me too

Los hermanos del Hierro / Seyyit Han
a Mexican film and a Turkish film? Yes, two westerns, no doubt, also two tragedies and two masterpieces

Cold Bishop wrote:"the reactionary myth" is the terms by which the Western operates.

This would be true if A Fistful of Dollars had never been made and if we were living perpetually in the 1950s.

Cold Bishop wrote:Even the Anti-Western can't escape its shadow, and at its most extreme, runs so far in the other direction it creates a myth of its own (Leone's vision of a West where life had no value and death sometimes had a price).

The particular post-modernism of Leone aside, I argued much earlier in the thread that the 'revisionist' approach of Peckinpah et al., whilst 'unlocked' in a commercial sense by Leone's Yojimbo remake, can actually be traced back to Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (one contributor argued that it could be traced back even further, and there are glimpses in Canyon Passage too). It is simply a different - and more historically accurate - way of looking at American history, at a time in which the lives of Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese miners and immigrant settlers really did have no value and where death did indeed sometimes have a price. Anthony Mann openly criticised the revisionist approach ("We tell the story of simple men, not of professional assassins... In a good Western, the characters have a starting and a finishing line... the diagram of the emotions must be ascending"), and yet, in doing so, he only condemns his own dishonest wares, and the reactionary myth of the 'classical' western as a whole. Which is not to say that some of these films were not exceptionally well made and cannot be enjoyable - but that they were clearly superceded by the work of Peckinpah, Cimino and Altman. The irony being that, just as the revolutionary fervour of 60s and early 70s failed to transform our society, so the moral complexity, radical anger and realistically downbeat trajectories found in these unforgiving films is once again uncomfortable for a modern audience, who have since, in a mainstream sense, retreated into the fantasy worlds of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (and the 3:10 to Yuma remake!), it following that some bourgeois cine-fetishists would similarly retreat back into the reactionary fantasies of Mann, Ford and Hawks... Thankfully this is not the entire consensus, as the generally more progressive Time Out List demonstrates (a discrepancy that I think can be accounted for by the higher number of American contributors to this list - on which point I should concede that the British are equally reactionary when it comes to facing up to our own history on film, eg. the noxious The King's Speech).

16 lists

I don't care very much for the content of films, my prime interest is the way a film builds a narrative structure around a content. The way a film tells a story is interesting, not the story itself. And for this The Wild Bunch and Once upon a Time in the West are for me the masterpieces of the genre.

I don't think that all the old westerns are owing to a reactionary myth, or are based on one. That's a simplification and doesn't justice to a genre which always tried to push its boundaries. I think the first anti-western was already made in the 40s with The Ox-Bow Incident. But the genre always allowed to do things different, mainly because there were so many westerns, and there was always one who tried to do things different.

tarpilot wrote:I get more out of Stewart's post-slaughter head-hang in The Naked Spur than the whole of the four films I've seen from Leone

The fact is that a bouty hunter wouldn't hang his head like that - but you want the simplistic moralism, the hero, the 'simple man' that Mann is talking about, the good sherriff who gosh-darn by some coincidence just ended up in this job and he sure don't like it much - but hey, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, blah blah blah - all of which has nothing whatsoever to do with westward expansion and colonial enterprise in the early United States, the genocide of the Native Americans, etc. Indeed, if you really want to know what a bounty hunter was like, it's not Leone or Peckinpah you need to look to but the greatest western of all: Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which was based on real historical characters and extensive period records. No, the truth of the matter is that a bounty hunter wouldn't hang his head like that because he'd be too busy skinning the corpse and using the pieces to decorate his saddle... If anything, Leone and Peckinpah still soft-pedal the reality.

If it's the greatest western of all, why didn't you put it on your list? Were you bullied out of doing it or something? Is it just because it's a book, because that seems fairly arbitrary.

Nothing wrote:all of which has nothing whatsoever to do with westward expansion and colonial enterprise in the early United States, the genocide of the Native Americans, etc.

Glad to see you're starting to figure out that Westerns are not actually about history. They're settings in which to act out certain kinds of drama. More than most, Westerns, Leone's and Peckinpah's included, are a kind of fantasy movie. This is why mythmaking is so prevalent in the genre, why Leone can get away with making Harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West almost metaphysical, or Eastwood with making his character into an avenging angel in High Plains Drifter. Evidently you are uncomfortable enough with art that you need it to have some direct, explicit connection with politics and social issues--or at least your own politics and social issues--before you can appreciate it. This is particularly evident when you condemn Lord of the Rings as being a fantasy to which audiences can escape, a peculiar statement considering LOTR returns you to your own Anglo-Saxon heritage by reworking its essential myths: Beowulf and the Sigurd/Sigfried cycle of the Nibelungenlied, the Volsunga Saga, and the Poetic Edda. Oddly, the content of Lord of the Rings may be more essential to Western culture and consciousness than that of Heaven's Gate, even if it is a much lesser movie (and not a terribly good series of books, either).

Nothing wrote:Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which was based on real historical characters and extensive period records.

The historicity of that book has been questioned, not that it matters, because its direct relationship to history is not why the book is great. It could have no relationship to the time period and still be a masterpiece. It's great because of its apocalyptic grandeur, its vision of a violence that can consume an entire world. The key character here is The Judge, who, even if historical, becomes more and more non-human until he becomes an abstraction for war, death, and violence itself, dancing and playing his fiddle for eternity. Tho' the setting is realistic, McCarthy's language makes that setting into a heightened, fantastic, vividly unreal world. History as apocalyptic fantasy.

Mr Sausage wrote:

Nothing wrote:Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which was based on real historical characters and extensive period records.

The historicity of that book has been questioned, not that it matters, because its direct relationship to history is not why the book is great. It could have no relationship to the time period and still be a masterpiece. It's great because of its apocalyptic grandeur, its vision of a violence that can consume an entire world. The key character here is The Judge, who, even if historical, becomes more and more non-human until he becomes an abstraction for war, death, and violence itself, dancing and playing his fiddle for eternity. Tho' the setting is realistic, McCarthy's language makes that setting into a heightened, fantastic, vividly unreal world. History as apocalyptic fantasy.

Good to see fans of Blood Meridian here, and Sausage recaps the main themes nicely.

I don't think Blood Meridian fits any particular political viewpoint though. On the contrary, I think the themes, characters, settings, etc. point to a nihilistic point of view, where everything is inherently evil and violence prone. Indeed, even the western setting becomes a character in Blood Meridian so that the environment itself preys on and destroys the weak. White people, Mexicans, natives, hell, even animals, all share the same base qualities in Blood Meridian.

Tribe wrote:Good to see fans of Blood Meridian here, and Sausage recaps the main themes nicely.

I don't think Blood Meridian fits any particular political viewpoint though. On the contrary, I think the themes, characters, settings, etc. point to a nihilistic point of view, where everything is inherently evil and violence prone. Indeed, even the western setting becomes a character in Blood Meridian so that the environment itself preys on and destroys the weak. White people, Mexicans, natives, hell, even animals, all share the same base qualities in Blood Meridian.

I think that is itself a political viewpoint, if not one that aligns with any particular political party. There's a commonality between it and say, Herzog's work in the 70s- a depiction of brutality that is somehow also non-judgmental, and at times even admiring. Normally when you have something that depicts humanity at its nastiest, it's framed like an exposé- in Blood Meridian, to me, there was almost a sense of watching a nature show.

matrixschmatrix wrote:

Tribe wrote:Good to see fans of Blood Meridian here, and Sausage recaps the main themes nicely.

I don't think Blood Meridian fits any particular political viewpoint though. On the contrary, I think the themes, characters, settings, etc. point to a nihilistic point of view, where everything is inherently evil and violence prone. Indeed, even the western setting becomes a character in Blood Meridian so that the environment itself preys on and destroys the weak. White people, Mexicans, natives, hell, even animals, all share the same base qualities in Blood Meridian.

I think that is itself a political viewpoint, if not one that aligns with any particular political party. There's a commonality between it and say, Herzog's work in the 70s- a depiction of brutality that is somehow also non-judgmental, and at times even admiring. Normally when you have something that depicts humanity at its nastiest, it's framed like an exposé- in Blood Meridian, to me, there was almost a sense of watching a nature show.

I don't think Blood Meridian is non-judgemental. Because it is apocalyptic, judgement is inherent to it. It's just not the explicit judgement of the novelist. It's a judgement that's final, and that will occur once the world has consumed itself, as it seems on the verge of doing in Blood Meridian. It's not for nothing that McCarthy's prose is so bible-soaked. Tho' Blood Meridian does not make any explicit allusions to christian eschatology, the similarly apocalyptic and magnificent Outer Dark does. Its title alone is an allusion to Matthew 8:12: "the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," which seems a good a summary for all of McCarthy's pre-Border Trilogy novels.

Hmm, true, it's absolutely not a relativist book. It does closely resemble both the Old Testament and Revelation in any number of ways- the blood and thunder, the unexplained and unreal objects (the bush full of babies, for instance)- but it seems non-judgmental in the sense that it feels like a work of anthropology, exploring the way things are without being involved enough with the character's inner lives to worry about their morality. It makes sense as a depiction of hell, a world not so much without a god as with an evil god, a god of wrath and cruelty who has no interest in aiding or loving much of anything.

matrixschmatrix wrote:but it seems non-judgmental in the sense that it feels like a work of anthropology, exploring the way things are without being involved enough with the character's inner lives to worry about their morality.

Agreed, it definitely does not moralize. It implies a judgement will take place without providing a moral judgement itself. If anything, the atrocities in the novel seem beyond human moralizing, the kind of thing only heaven could be large enough to judge totally.

matrixschmatrix wrote:

Tribe wrote:Good to see fans of Blood Meridian here, and Sausage recaps the main themes nicely.

I don't think Blood Meridian fits any particular political viewpoint though. On the contrary, I think the themes, characters, settings, etc. point to a nihilistic point of view, where everything is inherently evil and violence prone. Indeed, even the western setting becomes a character in Blood Meridian so that the environment itself preys on and destroys the weak. White people, Mexicans, natives, hell, even animals, all share the same base qualities in Blood Meridian.

I think that is itself a political viewpoint, if not one that aligns with any particular political party. There's a commonality between it and say, Herzog's work in the 70s- a depiction of brutality that is somehow also non-judgmental, and at times even admiring. Normally when you have something that depicts humanity at its nastiest, it's framed like an exposé- in Blood Meridian, to me, there was almost a sense of watching a nature show.

It may be a political viewpoint only to the extent that everything may be political. But whoever or whatever narrates Blood Meridian (and that issue is way beyond this thread since there are varying POV's operating in BM) appears to present it neutrally as you indicate. Still, because of those POV issues, as Sausage notes, there is space for looking at BM from some biblical perspective.

Whatever it is, Blood Meridian is beautifully written.

Finch wrote:

Yojimbo wrote:btw, is that 'Hanzo The Razor' I see above me?

It's Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itto in LONE WOLF & CUB. Wakayama is the brother of Shintaro Katsu (HANZO, ZATOICHI). The similarities between the two are startling, especially when you see Wakayama with his head shaved in the MUTE SAMURAI TV series.

I've only got as far as the second in the LONE WOLF & CUB series, 'Babycart At The River Styx', which is a genre Masterpiece
(I laughed out loud at the scene where the Cub showed his mettle/metal)
And I've been told they keep getting better.

My favourite Zatoichi of the three I've seen is the second one, 'The Tale of Zatoichi Continues', directed by Kazuo Mori.
(I've also been told it isn't the best of the series which means I'm in for a treat)
The final swordfight scenes may have been influenced by Westerns such as 'Gunfight at the OK Corral'/'My Darling Clementine', but I wonder did Sergio Leone see it

Sausage, if one sees the western simply as an arbitrary ( :-") setting in which to act out a fantastical drama then one may have more use for a picture like The Naked Spur or Wagonmaster (although this doesn't appear to be the argument that tarpilot was using in reference to that framegrab...). But isn't this exceptionally convenient for those of white American heritage? A way simply to ignore the atrocities and injustices of the past - or, worse, to white-wash them, to replace reality with myth, just like the newspaperman in Liberty Valance?

Just because fiction is by definition fantastical/a work of imagination to some degree doesn't mean that such a work can't also engage meaningfully with the world. This to me is the difference between the classical western, which deals primarily in myth, and the revisionist western, which tries to marry that myth with a more accurate historical understanding (to give one small example, that gunfighters wouldn't hesitate to cheat in a duel, as seen in Pat Garrett & the Billy the Kid). Whilst the former can function as escapism as best, propaganda at worst, the latter, I believe, has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of both human culture and the human condition.

You then speak of the finale of Blood Meridian as fantasy, but would it not more aptly be described as allegory (or philosphy even)? Does The Judge speak for the violence, war and death present in our own world or in another?

I'm not white and just barely American and I see the setting as just a good place to get a certain vibe out of.

As mentioned, I consider my participation in this project to be largely a wash-out. I did little viewing, and even the Westerns I'm familiar with could have required second viewings. I think this especially comes through in my top 10. In many ways, I'm guilty of playing it safe, choosing popular and obvious choices. I originally had a few more daring picks, but I inevitably ended up lowering them, a few of which I'm sure I'll regret when I get through my kevyip. However, if I could choose 10 Westerns that encapsulate the genre these are ten choices that I find difficult to argue against.

I had a hard time deciding between my #1 and #2, but I ultimately settled with this order:

1. Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
Perhaps the the greatest feat of Anthony Mann's film is how it marks the perfect intersection between both sides of the Western: it fulfills the Classical Myth of the wilderness being tamed and civilized, but it has all the darkness and self-criticism of the coming wave of Revisionist Anti-Westerns. If it's the perfect encapsulation of the former, it's precisely because it opens itself up to all the disquieting ambiguity of the latter. Gary Cooper vanquishing of lawlessness is the stuff the entire genre is built on. Lee J. Cobb's monstrous patriarch even recalls the most "mythic" of the them all, Newman Clanton, and Ford's own classic of law and lawlessness, My Darling Clementine. Yet, the ambiguities that were already starting to crack the surface in Ford become full open wounds here. Cooper isn't simply fighting the lawlessness of the wilderness, but his own capacity for violence. Mann pushes the psychological tension and sparse landscapes to the extreme, until it touches up the the edge of expressionist drama: when Cooper comes across the old ranch, it's as if he stepped into his own inner-psyche.

But, as Cooper is a "man of the west", so it is the inner-consciousness of the entire Western myth. Mann understands the contradiction of the Western Myth, that the taming of the West came with a mark of blood as deep as that spilled by the outlaws and undesirables it conquered. When Cooper makes his first kill, Mann doesn't let us off easy. We aren't allowed to simply rejoice at the first signs of law and order reasserting itself. Mann sticks with the violence until we take in the full cost and ugliness of it all. Cooper strips every one of his victims of his gun, an act which fulfills a mythic function: the disarming of the wild west. Yet, he doesn't ignore it antithesis: every gun collected is a gun accrued, and serves to spill more blood. Perhaps the key moment comes in Cooper's final stand-off on the porch: Cooper lies on top of the porch, stomach down, on the left side of the frame; his rival lies underneath on the right side, facing up. Mann camera turns this standoff into a mirror image, Cooper coming face to face with his own double.

Nothing may trot his old Haydn/Beethoven comparison, accuse one of confusing influence for true quality, but Man of the West isn't simply a collection of half-baked ideas that are better explored elsewhere. It's an allegory that contains all the conflicts, tensions, and questions of justice, civilization and violence that all the later Revisionist Westerns would exacerbate... without necessarily resolving any better. Yes, it's Mythic, but how could it be otherwise? And by opening up the 50s Western fully to these unsettling features, it perhaps took the Classical Western to its logical conclusion, just as Stagecoach did for the pre-'39 Western. But unlike that film, this isn't a big movie. It's sparse, precise, not one movement wasted, not one gesture left empty. Not only is this as tough, gritty and ferocious a Western as they come: by opening itself up to the unresolvable contradictions of the myth, it's perhaps, surprisingly, the most pure.

2. Heaven’s Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)
Perhaps a few of the titles below are better Westerns. Yet, what is undeniable is that I'm passionate about Cimino's tarnished masterpiece in a way none of those films can invoke. I've spent so many times defending and fighting for this film that it's difficult to keep perspective on it. Yet, one things is for certain: it comes as close to a perfect film as anything I've ever seen. Yes, it's an Anti-Western: it turns the Johnson County War into an allegory for America's own hidden class warfare; instead of a mythic self-contained West, it traces the way the Western frontier was not a clean break from history, but the complete product of the East, of Harvard elites and European immigrants. The circle - Cimino's privileged symbol of society and community, inclusive for those within it, sealed-off to those that stand outside it - dominates the film. It's stands, formal and highly ritualized, in the Harvard opening, around the Liberty Tree, its deep ancient roots corresponding to those of the American Aristocracy. It pops up later in Heaven's Gate, joyful and frenzied, around a iron stove, a symbol of the new industrial melting-pot America. At the end, we stand back as these two circles try to devour and destroy themselves, a final battle, the parody of the "flower run" at Harvard turned bloody real, situated around another tree, small, young and growing: it's a fight for the future of the country.

But Cimino's film isn't just this sort of grand allegorizing, nor is it simply Western demystification. The entire films is touched with a deep sense of disillusionment, regret and yearning for the lost West. Jim Averill wants to believe in the Mythic West, he wants to make a clean break from Eastern society, to refashion himself as an autonomous man of the frontier; he sees in Johnson County an opportunity for a classless utopia free from the foibles of the past. Yet, Kris Kristofferson's aged visage constantly registers disappointment at the reality of the West. This is a film in which the "good gone days" are constantly invoked. We jump forward twenty years from Harvard, and find Averill waking up, as if a dreaming of a past he can't escape. When the film ends, we find him on a boat looking off into the sea in deep mediation, haunted by past events that can't be changed. John Hurt's Billy Irvine drunkenly stares through a stain-glass window, at two women in a garden, and there is no doubt that for a moment he's been transported back to his Harvard days. Chris Walken's Nate Champion drifts off to sleep in mid-conversation, and it's like he's gone to some personal place in his own lost past. It is only the immigrants who are constantly looking forward, with Isabelle Huppert shrewd businesswoman, with a dream of settling down, the most persisent. But it is ultimately the inescapable pull of the past - of Eastern surveyors and capitalists hoping to preserve the status quo; of a community slowly recreating the system of class that they hoped to escape - that engulfs Sweetwater.

Critics called the film formless, but it has a very precise, bilateral structure, building on the contrasting structure he used in The Deer Hunter. The aforementioned circles frame the film, and divide it into two sections. The first half establishes Sweetwater, already showing signs of infighting and threat of invasion, but still filled with incredible promise. The second half, revisiting the same locales, shows the way those tensions undo the town and community. The Eastern bookends, instead of being gratuitous, likewise places the film in its proper context. It begins in 1870, the year after the completion of the Transcontintal Railroad, which opened the West to a flood of Eastern settlers and industry, beginning the last chapter of the Wild West. By the time we return to the East for the epilogue, it is 1903: the west has ended, and we finish in Newport, the palatial boomtown, the symbol of the Gilded Age, which emerged practically overnight, and whose grandeur and wealth came largely from the closing of the West. The bulk of the story, taking place in the middle of this 30 year period, represents the final last gasps of the Western frontier.

Standing in the middle of this film is the dance at the Heaven's Gate town hall, the centerpiece of the film, one of the most joyous musical moments in all the cinema. Critics loved being snide about this scene, and the seemingly arbitrary choice to name the film after it. But it's not a wasteful scene or a meanignless choice of title: it's the key to understanding the film. For one brief moment, the dream of Sweetwater seems possible, attainable, real. The key shot in this scene is, likewise, pegged as a gaffe by many of the film's detractor. Jeff Bridges, drunken and nauseous, exits the hall. When he steps outside, the shot is suddenly drowned out in a brown-tint. Such an unnatural and intense visual, in a film that's otherwise concerned with capturing the natural beauty of the landscape, hits you square in the face. But it's no mistake: in exiting the hall and vomiting, Bridges exposes the delicacy of the moment, an illusion that can easily be broken. Drowned in sepia, the shot resembles a photograph that is threatening to fade away; and in the second half of the film, that is precisely what happens. Like the proverbial "camel in a needle's eye", the future of this promised land leads to a bloody, desperate scramble. Cimino isn't out to destroy or subvert the Western Myth, like Peckinpah or Leone. He desperately, like Averill, wants to believe in it. The film's real power comes in its heartbreaking vision of a mythic West that never was, but could have been. When we find Averill at the end off the shore of Rhode Island, the beautiful landscapes of Montana replaced by the amorphousness of the sea, a man without a country, we understand what was lost at Heaven's Gate.

As for the rest:
3. Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
I don't know what else that needs to be said, but like I mentioned, revisiting the film was like night and day. This films isn't just prototypical: yes, it takes the elements of the Western before it and transforms it into the moral landscape, an arena for rejuvenation and redemption, that would constitute the setting of the Western for decades to come. But if it's the full expression of the genre, the gold standard prototype for all the Westerns to come, it already begins subverting it... and like Mann's film, it's probably such an influential prototype precisely because of it's contradictions. If the theme of the the Western is the institution of civilization ("the reactionary myth"), Ford's film demonstrates a deep sense of non-conformity and unease with the "blessings of civilization". Yes, the film established John Wayne the star, but the iconic Wayne is seen as immovable and irascible: one easily ignores the thoughtfulness and vulnerability which Ford gives the character. And if the Apache raid still remains the controversial moment of the film, it ignores that climax of the scene doesn't come in killing the Indians, nor even the rescue by the Calvalry, but in its rejection of the "white" idea of the "fate worse than death" (pointing a way towards The Searchers). Wayne's final conflict, whether to kill or not to kill, already captures to the troubling questions of violence that the Western would become only more fixated on. And of course, it is a formally beautiful Western, Ford taking his Murnau-Griffith influence and creating a new visual language of his own. In many ways, every Westerns since Stagecoach has been nothing but a variation, elaboration and commentary of this film, not simply because it's an unfinished prototype that needed clarifying, but because it's a big enough achievement to already contain much of what was to come.

4. Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
Another film which I changed my mind on a recent reviewing (in 35mm!), and it perhaps not a coincidence: this is a big movie that really should be seen in a theater. It's a film about, among many other things, empire building. And just as Hawks takes the iconic Wayne laid out in Stagecoach, and takes him to his breaking point, so does he take iron-will and strength of the mythic Western hero until it starts to become monstrous and tyrannical. The Wayne/Clift conflict isn't simply one of Old vs. New Hollywood, old-school masculinity vs. a new sensitivity, but of a iron-handed dictatorship versus a democratic humanism. The ending is a sore spot for many, but then again, it is quintessentially Hawksian

Spoiler

One can barely imagine Hawks filming the original ending where Thomas Dunson dies. The Hawksian focus on camraderie, for better or worse, leads him to a blind belief in reconciliation. Perhaps, like Robin Wood says, this leads to an implicit acceptance of fascism - especially after the meaningless murder of Cherry Valence - but with its focus in reinstating the group unit, its valorization of the male professional, and discovering of common ground, it speaks to Hawks' sense of humanism. Most importantly, it's a moment of self-realization for Dunson: having lost his own love (perhaps the source of his tyrannical temper), he ultimately decides to prevent Matt from losing the same.

5. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
In the way it reconfigures the form and thematic content of the Western, this presages most of the later deviations in the formula, from the Spaghetti to Acid Western, and yes, the Camp Western. But Ray's own visual style is enough to make this a feat that has yet to be replicated (Fuller tried his best, but he ended up with something else). And its a triumph of style. The opening 30 minutes are nothing more than a chamber drama, taking place in one room. Yet, it is as intense and exciting as any half-hour stretch in a plot-heavy Western like Winchester '73 or Buchanan Rides Alone. Never has the churning of a roulette wheel sounded so foreboding. Ray may make an allegory of the outsiders against the community, but he's responsible with the material. His characters aren't rejecting civilization, but the conformity and repression of this town, already on the brink of extinction by the coming railroad. And in final estimates, the ruthless outlaws aren't much better. The film, rather, is hopeful for a new coming order of things, where a woman can comfortably fit into a position of power and have the strength to keep it; and where a vicious gunslinger no longer has to justify his masculinity with bloodshed, but can put away his pistol for a guitar and hot cup of coffee.

6. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
Much like Man of the West was the perfect meeting of the Classical and Revisionist Western, so is this the perfect marriage between the Pasta Western's savage flamboyance and the elegance of the Classic Hollywood oater. Instead of watering down Leone's vision, it allows his engagement with the iconography and mythos of the West to reach its full power.

7. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
8. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
The two greatest 70s Westerns (yeah, yeah, I know... '69). They've become the obvious choices for the period, but they deserve it. Do I need to say more?

9. Seven Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956)
Budd Boetticher wasn't afraid to make the same film over and over again. However, he perhaps made the mistake of perfecting the formula the first time around. It's as precise and exact a vision of the Western moral landscape that there's almost no need for me to waste words on it: I can't say anything better than the way Boetticher does.

10. Lonesome Dove (Simon Wincer, 1989)
I was almost tempted not to vote for this. 1) the TV discussion soured me on including even an eligible miniseries. 2) Unlike the auterist streak in the rest of this list, there's no real auteur here. Rather, the auteur is McMurty's story. And while I was uneasy voting for something that often feels like a simple transliteration of the novel, it's one hell of a story and one hell of a transliteration. Perhaps an auteur behind the director's chair would have simply gotten in the way. I'm a sucker for big statements on the genre when they're done right, and this does it better than nearly anyone. If the Western didn't die as a genre in the 70s, I could easily see Duvall and Jones have becoming Scott and Stewart-level icons. Too bad the rest of the novels couldn't have gotten the same quality treatment (And I still hope one day someone takes enough care with McCarthy's Border Trilogy).

Nothing wrote:You then speak of the finale of Blood Meridian as fantasy, but would it not more aptly be described as allegory (or philosphy even)? Does The Judge speak for the violence, war and death present in our own world or in another?

When is that not true of fantasy? Fantastical is not the same as meaningless- depending on your viewpoint, holy books (whether it be the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, whatever) are fantasy, but they are also obviously both philosophy and allegory- frequently, that's the whole point of bringing in something beyond what is possible or plausible in mundane reality.

I mean, the Road is indubitably a fantasy setting, isn't it? I would say that's certainly speaking to and about the nature of the world we've got now.