Copy of Subgenres of Western Movies

Elements of Revisionist Western

Revisionist Western:

Questioning and rewriting the Western

Over 600 European Westerns between 1960-1980

Weird Western

• darker, more cynical tone
• favoring realism over romanticism
• Anti-heroes
• stronger roles for women
• more-sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans & Mexicans
• critical views of big business, the American government, masculine figures (incl. military, greater historical authenticity

• combines elements of the Western with another literary genre
• usually horror, occult, or fantasy
• among these: Western comics such as „Weird West Tales“, a comic series of the publishing house DC Comics (1971-1980)

• Revisionist Western, Modern Western or Anti-Western
• mid 1960s and 1970s
• can be seen as a response to Classic Westerns

• reinvented, redefined, ridiculed, and questioned the themes & elements of traditional classics!

Science-Fiction Western

Examples

typical Spaghetti Western team:

Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff, cast of Italian, Spanish, German and American actors

-> sometimes a fading or rising Hollywood star like Clint Eastwood in three of Sergio Leone‘s films

• incorporating elements of Sci-Fi into a Western film
• future technology is used to transport the characters on to the Wild West
• lighter tone & less violence than traditional Western movies

Spaghetti Western

The Singing Cowboy Western

• films of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers
• Hollywood‘s creation of a new Western genre in 1934
• a singing cowboy is in the center of attention

• new European, larger-than-life visual style
• harsher, more violent and rough depiction of frontier life
• revenge-seeking bandits & bounty hunters
• haunting
• jarring music from Ennio Morricone
• choreographed gunfights
• wide-screen closeups

Ennio Morricone

Roy Rogers

Red River (1948)

Spaghetti Western

• Directed by Howard Hawks
• Based on Chase's original story which was first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post as "Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail“
• Fictional account of the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail
• Plot: The film is about a growing feud over the management of the drive between the Texas rancher who initiated it (John Wayne) and his adopted adult son (Montgomery Clift)
• Red River was filmed in 1946 but not released until September 30, 1948
• In June 2008, AFI listed Red River as the fifth-best film in the western genre

• also known as Italian Western
• developed in the 1960s and 1970s
• term used by critics

• tended to be low-budget
• often shot on location in a desert
• protagonist with less noble motivations

<-> classic Cowboy hero

Sergio Leone

And then we also have…

• the "spaghetti" Western
• the "revisionist" Western
• the "weird“ Western
• the "science-fiction" or "space" Western
• the "singing cowboy" Western
• …

High Noon (1952)

the "post-apocalyptic" Western (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, 1981-2, The Postman, 1997)

the “meat pie” Western

(Kangaroo Kid, 1950,

Australia, 2008)

• -Plot:
• Hadleyville marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is about to retire from office & go on his honeymoon with his bride, Amy (Grace Kelly)
• Then he gets informed that the Miller gang, whose leader Will had arrested, is due on the 12:00 train
• Amy urges Will to leave town but this isn't his style
• When he asks for deputies to fend off the Millers, nobody will stand by him
• Meanwhile, the clocks tick off the minutes to High Noon -- the film is shot in “real time”
• Utterly alone, Kane walks into the center of town, steeling himself for his showdown with the murderous Millers --> Bad VS. Good
• 4 Academy Awards & Best Song for the hit "Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling“ sung by Tex Ritter

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

the "contemporary" Western (Hud, 1963)

the "comedy" Western (Cat Ballou, 1965, 

Blazing Saddles, 1974)

• Directed by Sergio Leone
• Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef
• Plot:
• During the American Civil War, three men set off to find $200,000 in buried gold coins
• Zuco (The Bad) & Blondie (The Good) have known each other for some time, having used the reward on Zuco's head as a way of earning money
• A dying man tells them of a treasure in gold coins
• Zuco knows the name of the cemetery; Blondie the name of the grave where the gold is buried
• Third man: Angel Eyes (The Ugly)
• The three ultimately meet in a showdown that takes place in the middle of a major battle between Confederate and Union forces

Dances with the wolves (1990)

• The epic Western (The Big Country, 1958)

• the "noir" Western (Pursued, 1947)

• Cast: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene
• Plot : Having been sent to a remote outpost in the wilderness of the Dakota territory during the American Civil War, Lieutenant John Dunbar encounters the local Sioux tribe
• He’s known as "Dances with Wolves" & quickly makes friends with the tribe
• He discovers a white woman who was raised by the Indians & gradually earns the respect of these native people
• When the army advances on the plains, John must make a decision considering the lives of the natives he now calls his people

Subgenres of Western Movies

WESTERN

Famous Actors/Actresses

Western Movies

• born as Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, in 1907
• When he was a boy
• family moved West to California
• Academic & athletic success at Glendale High

--> football scholarship at USC

WESTERN: Heroes

• Local lawmen or enforcement officers
• Ranchers
• Army officers
• Cowboys
• Territorial marshals
• Skilled, fast-draw gunfighter

-> Western hero faces danger on his own

John Wayne as a tackle

• Body surfing accident cut short his promising athletic career
• studio work to help pay his tuition

WESTERN:

Plot

Monument Valley

WESTERN:

Plot

his film career spanned five decades!

Appearance in more than 175 films

Hollywood‘s biggest & most durable

box-office star

John Ford

• Gun fights
• Violence and human massacre
• Train robberies
• Bank robberies
• Holdups
• Showdowns
• Barroom brawls
• Breathtaking settings and open landscapes

WESTERN:

Themes

genres:

• war movies
• romantic comedies
• police dramas
• histories
• WESTERN!

The simple goal of maintaining law and order

It is rooted in archetypal conflict:

- and farmer vs. industrialist

- good vs. bad

- virtue vs. evil

- white hat vs. black hat

- man vs. man

- new arrivals vs. Native Americans

- settlers vs. Indians

- humanity vs. nature

- civilization vs. wilderness or lawlessness

- social law and order vs. anarchy

- the individualist vs. the community

- the cultivated East vs. West

• 1964: diagnosis of lung cancer
• 15 years later --> succumbing to the disease at the age of 72
• supreme awards for his public work at the service of the USA

WESTERN:

Iconic elements

• The hanging tree
• Stetsons and spurs
• Saddles, lassos and colts
• Bandannas and buckskins
• Stagecoaches
• Cattle and cattle drives
• Saloon girls
• Favored horse -> horse opera

Gary Cooper

WESTERN:

Settings

• * May 7, 1901, in Helena, Montana
• † May 13, 1961
• from silent film era to the early 1960s
• played strong, manly, distinctly American roles
• After College --> headed to Los Angeles to work as an illustrator
• worked as a film extra
• appearance in „The Winning of Barbara Worth“

• Isolated forts
• Ranch houses
• The isolated homestead
• The saloon
• The jail
• The small-town main street
• Native American sites or villages

WESTERN:

Definition

starred opposite Clara Bow in „Children of Divorce“ (1927)

1952: as Will Kane in the movie

„High Noon“

he won the Academy Award for Best Actor!

• Westerns are set in a geographically western setting
• -> “western”

• The conquest of the wilderness

• The subordination of nature

Amanda Blake & Joanne Dru

WESTERN:

Definition

Joanne Dru

Amanda Blake

• The major defining genre of American film industry
• A nostalgic eulogy
• One of the oldest, most enduring and flexible genres
• The popularity of westerns has waxed and waned
• 1930s to the 1960s: most prosperous era

Joanne Dru

Amanda Blake

starred in more than 27 major  movies including "Red River" alongside John Wayne.

best known for the role of the red-haired saloon-keeper „Miss Kittty Russell“ on the television Western „Gunsmoke“ (1955-1974)