In Depth:
My 20 Greatest Westerns

            (Note: I suppose this article, in its brevity, should instead be labeled “In Brief,” except for all the additional reading material that I’m providing. I make no apologies; the amount of depth that went into this article, which includes a summer course that I recently wrapped up, more than compensates. Carry on.)

            My initial title for this article was “The 20 Greatest Westerns.” But I realized about three minutes into compiling such a list that there are more than twenty great westerns, and as knowledgeable on this subject as I may be, I am not so arrogant as to suggest that I alone can come up with such a definitive list.  So I am instead content to give you my 20 greatest westerns—the films that I feel best shaped and informed the genre in my personal exploration of its vast prairies. This article is therefore just one of many such guidelines, all of which should be considered in the creating of your own list of favorites.

            This list is a gathering of thoughts and ideas that I have been exploring for about a year now, when I was first inspired by a quote I read by Clint Eastwood: “Jazz and the Western are the only truly unique American art forms.” Before I heard this, I had liked the western genre no more or less than any category that you find at Blockbuster. But inspired by Eastwood’s challenging assertion (sidenote: I might also include the flesh-eating zombie picture on that list…just a thought), I have since immersed myself in the genre, read countless pages on its roots, explored its cinematic developments, and emerged with an appreciation for the American West as one of the most cherished and important of mythologies.

            In brief, the most intriguing aspect of the mythology to me is the dichotomy between civilized and uncivilized worlds. The Wild West was a place that initially settled when Southerners, bitter by how the Civil War turned out, headed out into the untamed territories to stake out new lives for themselves. They were left alone for a while, before the Northeast slowly began its trickle into the regions with its railroad and free enterprise, forcing its way toward the Pacific in the name of progress. Thus class systems were created in the west, as settlers’ towns began to harbor people with clout who guessed correctly that there was more potential to these territories than what the lawless roamers provided. Out of this struggle between the settlers and the entrepreneurs, not to mention the ever evolving relationship with displaced Native Americans and immigrants, the stories and legends of the west were born. It’s a classic yarn of good vs. evil; who was good and who was evil, of course, depended on who told the story. Its archetypes—frontier justice, white hat/black hats, etc.—are old as all stories, retold here with lawless, displaced drifters searching for purpose, fortunes, and often revenge in a world in which the boundaries of the law invented themselves along the way.

            All this self-education came to a head with an undergraduate course that I had the privilege of teaching over this last summer (‘07). The official title of the course was The Western in Literature and Film, and it consumed the job description I generally fill with Film as Art (that and a western novel I decided to write during my free time…more on that when it is available as Oprah’s Book of the Month, which will be as soon as I find a genie in a bottle). Now that it’s over and my site is back in business, I thought it appropriate to include a list of the reading material from our class in addition to the films that I decided, as the instructor, were the twenty best western films that I have personally seen.

            Some obvious choices are on this list that just about everyone has either seen or heard of; I am also certain that a few of the oddballs and long shots present are not likely to appear on any similar lists anywhere. John Ford, Sergio Leone, and Sam Peckinpah all have about equal distribution, which is as it should be. Missing are favorites by Anthony Mann and Arthur Penn, two superb Western directors who would have appeared if I’d have had expanded the list to 30. Unforgivably to some, four undisputable giants—Stagecoach, High Noon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and El Topo—are also nowhere to be seen; their absences are yet four more reasons why this list does not even pretend to be definitive (I make no apologies for not including them—they’re undoubtedly classics; I just found twenty westerns that I enjoyed more). Instead of ranking, I’m placing these films in the order that they were made. And instead of my typical links to the Internet Movie Database, I’m linking each film to essays that do excellent jobs of explaining their greatness—including, I admit with all due humility, a few write-ups of my own.

            I encourage you to watch all these films, and to also read the books that I have listed from my course curriculum (for those who took the course: I added a couple that would have made it into our load if we’d had and extra week—they should be familiar to you; I recommended them just about every day of class). For beginners to this genre, both the cinema and the literature will provide insight into why the western has maintained and why it is easy to fall in love with its mythology. For those who are already enchanted, the few titled perhaps you do not know will only further prove your taste in folklore worthy.

            So…saddle up, Pilgrim (erm…sorry):

My 20 Greatest Westerns:

The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943)
Red River (Howard Hawks, 1943)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
Shane (George Stevens, 1953)
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1963)
The Trap (Sidney Hayers, 1966)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah, 1970)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
Duck, You Sucker (Sergio Leone, 1971)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
Four of the Apocalypse (Lucio Fulci, 1975)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)
Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2006)

Honorable mentions:
(Not great westerns, but very good ones that I have a deep affection for)

Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966)
The Shooting (Monte Hellman, 1967)
Keoma (Enzo G. Castellari, 1975)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
Dust (Milcho Manchevski, 2001)

Literature:

Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com