The Good the Bad and The Ugly.
I don’t care for westerns at all, but as far as your ‘traditional’ westerns go I’d plump for The Gunfighter also. For me the greatest will always be The Good The Bad and the Ugly. I reckon it killed off the traditional western for good.
I reckon it killed off the traditional western for good.
@Rumplesink- could you elaborate? I find that very interesting.
Only saw “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in the West”. They were great in every way (plots were a lil bit …). The way Sergio Leone visually compose his scenes blow me away every time .BTW I’m planing to watch “High Noon” which a lot of people say that it had big influence on them and on western in general.
Hope it will be something.
Yes, I watched High Noon last night and I enjoyed it very much. I should have picked up on the HUAC allegory. The film creates tension quite well. I thought it was much better than 3:10 to Yuma.
@Rossoneri Fan
It seems to me that generally speaking westerns followed a rather strict set of guidelines as to what was acceptable behaviour for the players to exhibit. Basically the traditional western featured a strong silent lead who, whatever his faults may have been, was basically a stand-up guy who was honourable and had traditional values. Certain conventions were also established over time regarding how gunfights were staged and shot with most westerns following these basic rules. The Good The Bad & The Ugly however featured a lead who was a lot more morally flexible – he’d shoot someone in the back for example, or he’d lie, steal, cheat and betray those around him if need be. Also Leone magnified every conventional stylistic technique to the fullest degree, using extreme close-ups and audacious camerawork, bold editing and striking music to achieve a heightened, operatic quality to what was going on. I found that watching this film (and the other two spaghetti westerns) made it very difficult for me to go back to the traditional westerns, which now seemed to me to be rather pedestrian in comparison. Looking back, it seems to me that broadly speaking westerns after The Good The Bad and The Ugly are not the same as before it. I would class The Good The Bad and The Ugly as a post-modern western, and as is normally the case when something radical comes along in a given genre – in this case the western, it changes the rules of that genre such that the old ‘traditional’ western dies.
Thanks!
There really never was a “traditional” Western unless you’re speaking really broadly, and the conventions of the genre we’re being pretty much ignored as needed going back to the early ‘50s with Anthony Mann’s The Furies and Sam Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James and The Baron of Arizona.
My Top Five…in no particular order
Once Upon a Time in the West
Little Big Man
The Wild Bunch
Doc
The Outlaw Josie Wales
I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned BLAZING SADDLES as the greatest Western. Talk about genre busting! (OK, I’m only kidding.)
Going back to the original discussion about THE SEARCHERS, Christopher Sharrett wrote an excellent article in CINEASTE debunking many of the film’s flaws. I’ll try to dig up a citation or link so that people can read it for themselves.
Also Brian Henderson’s long-ago essay on THE SEARCHERS suggests that it is a social allegory that is really about Black people, not Indians, and that Ethan’s decision at the end not to kill Debbie (Natalie Wood) represents a coming-to-terms between the races right after Brown v. Board of Education.
Finally, I had the honor of publishing a very significant article on the film in CINEMA JOURNAL in 1998. (I’ll post the beginning of that piece below, along with the citation. It’s available from JSTOR.com) The fascinating thing that came out was that one scene in the script had Ethan Edwards meeting General Custer (the only reference to Custer now is that the cavalry flags have a “7” on them, Custer’s regiment). Ford even shot the scene of Ethan meeting Custer but decided not to use it because Custer’s racism and cruelty made Ethan look good in comparison and he wanted to present Ethan as a “dark” character.
Darkening Ethan: John Ford’s “The Searchers” (1956) from Novel to Screenplay to Screen, by Arthur M. Eckstein
Cinema Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 3-24
Abstract: Some film scholars charge that director John Ford was complicit in the savage racism of “The Searchers’” central character, Ethan Edwards. This essay demonstrates that Ford viewed Ethan as a negative, psychologically damaged, and tragic figure. By comparing the changes made from the source novel to the shooting script to the final film, a constant darkening of Ethan’s personality is revealed—most of it directly attributable to director John Ford.
billy the kid vs dracula
jesse james meets frankenstein
THE SHINING
The Big Lebowski
the terror of tiny town is the best.
Here are my picks from a life-time of viewing:
The Searchers,The Iron Horse (1924), The Naked Spur, The Man From Laramie, Shane, Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon A Time In The West, The Ox-Bow Incident. Ride Lonesome, The Tall T, Two Rode Together, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Red River, Rio Bravo, Little Big Man, Man Of The West, Destry Rides Again, Johnny Guitar and Forty Guns (aka Woman with a Whip).
Most desperate novelties: The Terror of Tiny Town and the one where Sterling Hayden tames a town with a whaler’s harpoon.
Ride the High Country, The Tall T, Destry Rides Again, Wagon Master, Monte Walsh (William Fraker) Last Train from Gun Hill, Stars in my Crown…..
Shane is highly overrated imo… whatever did that little kid do to deserve an oscar nomination, terrible terrible acting..
Perhaps being a little harsh maybe, but having recently watched Dekalog, the kids acting in episode one is out of this world, absolutely brilliant!
“Once upon a time in the west”
“Once upon a time in the midlands”
“The assassination of Jesse James, by the coward Robert Howard”
To pick only one it would have to be Once Upon A Time In The West.
These are very good and not conventional.
One Eyed Jacks
My Darling Clementine
Day of the Outlaw
The Proposition
Lonely Are The Brave
The Ox-Bow Incident
Dead Man
Missouri Breaks
The Great Silence
Bad Company
The Shooting
The Hired Hand
the Searchers
Tall men with clark gable
Union Pacific I loved Robert preston’s role.
Ox Bow incident
Fort Apache
Josie Wales
the Wild Bunch
the unforgiven
High Noon
Lonely are the brave, a beautiful movie.
great list PJ
I would also add Jermiah Johnson and The Sheepman
Rio Bravo
I’ts weird, almost nobody talked about Rio Bravo…
Dead Man
El Topo
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
The Searchers
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Little Big Man
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
A man called Horse
M0rkeleb
Not the best, but The Gunfighter and Firecreek are two really good ones that don’t get discussed a lot.