What’s a Western?

by James Wallace Harris, Thursday, October 4, 2018

Newsweek recently posted “The Best Western Movies of All Time, According to Critics and Audiences.” None of my all-time favorite westerns made the list. Some of my most favorites did, but they were few and far between. The editors created the list from Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores, which shifted the results toward recent films. It also includes many films I don’t consider westerns. But most of all, it lists films that use the western setting to create a pornography of violence rather than explore the original theme of violence in westerns.

Ever since The Magnificent Seven and The Wild Bunch movie makers have been escalating the body counts in westerns until some modern films are sick distortions of the genre. The core theme of a western has always been killing is a solution to a moral problem. So, violence per se isn’t the issue. What I object to is using the western setting to create a Circus Maximus of deaths for those viewers who crave feasts of bloodshed.

What’s a western? No two people will agree, but I’m going to give you my definition. Westerns are my favorite movie genre. I greatly admire films that epitomizes the genre. Maybe I’m too hung up on form, but if you set out to write a sonnet, following the rules inspires the creativity.

For me, a western must be set in the America West during the 19^th century, usually after the Mountain Man/Trapper era, which I consider its own genre, and before civilization, Christianity, industry, urbanization, and commercialization altered the natural west. The films The Big Trail and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid work as bookends to the era I’m talking about.

Westerns are about the settling of the land west of the Mississippi in the 1800’s. Generally, westerns are morality plays before Christianity and courts tamed the country. Conflicts in westerns are settled with guns rather than laws. Westerns usually deal with life before women, churches, and governments destroyed the freedom of the wilderness.

I prefer westerns that have some historical accuracy, but generally westerns are mythic, legendary, and fabled. Each decade retells the myths with the insights of their times, often rewriting the facts. One of my favorite books about westerns is West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (1993) by Jane Tompkins. Tompkins is a feminist who looks at book and movie westerns with great insights. Not everyone will agree with her but she analyzes westerns at a deeper level than most fans.

Here is Newsweek’s list, but in reverse of their order. Bold means I’ve seen it. [Why it’s not a western in my opinion.] *=westerns I might put in my Top 50.

1. The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) [set in the 1920s]
2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
3. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) *
4. No Country for Old Men (2007) [modern setting]
5. High Noon (1952) *
6. The Rider (2017) [modern setting]
7. Unforgiven (1992) *
8. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) *
9. Hell or High Water (2016) [modern setting]
10. Johnny Guitar (1954)
11. Django Unchained (2012)
12. True Grit (2010) *
13. Sweet Country (2017)
14. Brokeback Mountain (2005) [modern setting]
15. For A Few Dollars More (1965)
16. Hombre (1967)
17. Lone Star (1996) [modern setting]
18. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) *
19. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
20. 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
21. Blazing Saddles (1974) [comedy – a parody of westerns]
22. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) [modern setting]
23. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
24. The Revenant (2015)  [mountain main era]
25. Rango (2011) [cartoon, parody, modern setting]
26. Dance with Wolves (1990) *
27. Westworld (1973) [science fiction, modern setting]
28. The Proposition (2005) [set in Australia]
29. Slow West (2015)
30. Bone Tomahawk (2015)
31. The Beguiled (1971)
32. Major Dundee (1965)
33. The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2010) [parody]
34. Hud (1963) [modern setting]
35. Shanghai Noon (2000) [comedy, parody]
36. Open Range (2003) *
37. The Hateful Eight (2015)
38. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
39. The Beguiled (2017)
40. The Homesman (2014)
41. Dead Man (1996)
42. The Mask of Zorro (1998) [swashbuckler]
43. Hostiles (2017)
44. Appaloosa (2008) *
45. The Horse Whisperer (1998) [modern setting]
46. The Salvation (2014)
47. Blackthorn (2011) [1908 Bolivia]
48. Back to the Future Part III (1990) [science fiction, comedy, parody]
49. In the Valley of Violence (2016)
50. Tombstone (1993) *

There are some true comedy westerns, like Along Came Jones and Destry Rides Again but I feel comedies that parody westerns shouldn’t be considered part of the genre. One thing that bothers me about this list is the feeling that current moviegoers don’t actually love true westerns, especially the traditional classics. And it worries me that younger audiences have redefined the genre.

Great westerns are still made, such as Open Range and Appaloosa, so the genre isn’t dead. Unfortunately, even good stories like Godless overdo the violence. The west was violent, but it wasn’t over-the-top ridiculous like so many newer films.

For my list of favorite westerns, see “Collecting Great Westerns.”

JWH