I’ve mentioned before on this blog how being forced to quarantine for several months last year served as a great excuse to watch a bunch of old movies that I probably never would have watched otherwise. In particular, I forced myself to delve into the wonderful (awful) world of Westerns. Do I regret it? No, but I wish that this genre had more enticing film offerings than the ones that it has served up since the 1930s. At this point, I’m sure you’ve figured out that…
I do not like Westerns. Let me explain why. To do so, I will share my thoughts on four different Western films spanning decades that are considered classics of the genre to flesh out the various problems I have with this mode of storytelling. So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED!! Stagecoach (1939) With a few critically and commercially successful films under his belt such as 1931’s Arrowsmith and 1935’s The Informer, acclaimed director John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man) was looking to return to the Western genre after a thirteen-year hiatus that started with his 1926 silent epic 3 Bad Men. His desire came to fruition when he managed to buy the film rights to Ernest Haycox’s 1937 short story “The Stage to Lordsburg” shortly after its publication. Initially, Ford struggled to get any substantive funding for the movie due to many studios’ hesitation about big-budget Westerns from years earlier often being box office failures. Furthermore, Ford’s insistence on then-aspiring leading man John Wayne (The Longest Day, True Grit) to play a main role in the film made studios wary. At that point, Wayne’s credits included unsuccessful Westerns and B-movies and therefore lacked the appeal of a box office star that he gained later in his career. Eventually, Ford brokered a compromise with independent film producer Walter Wanger who put up $250,000, enough for Ford to begin pre-production. Upon release in March of 1939, Stagecoach became an immediate darling of the critics at the time and ended up raking in over one million dollars, pulling off a profit of just under $300,000. Not only did both critics and people in the film industry adore the film, but the film provided the springboard that launched John Wayne’s career into what we know it today. So, does Stagecoach hold up as one of the greatest Westerns of all time? For some people, maybe. But not for me. To begin with some praise, I agree with many critics that the biggest strength of the film is the intriguing interplay among the main characters. I have no doubt that this influenced both future character-drive Westerns and later John Ford flicks. Also, the film does not overstay its welcome. At just over an hour-and-a-half, Stagecoach makes the most of its screen time with surprisingly kinetic action and some amusing character moments as we follow these disparate people traverse the dangerous Wild West. All that being said, however, Stagecoach lacks the punch of later films in the genre and is way too much stuck in its own time to successfully outlast it, let alone transcend it. While some of the cinematography is impressive for the time period, it remains overshadowed in comparison to future John Ford films of this nature. Furthermore, much of the dialogue comes off today as corny (and not in a charming way) despite the screenwriter Dudley Nichols’s seeming intention to do the opposite. Overall, the story relies too much on melodrama and plot conveniences to ever be truly engaging. Of course, the biggest mark against Stagecoach is its dehumanizing, fantastical portrayal of Native Americans. To be clear, this critique can be lobbed at pretty much any Western made in the 20th century (with a few notable exceptions). But, at least some other Westerns at least attempt to reflect on the victimization of indigenous peoples and highlight the morally despicable actions by the United States government against them. But not John Ford; virtually all of his Westerns (even the good ones) are guilty of putting absolutely no effort towards acknowledging America’s painful, racist history in favor of giving the audience a faceless villain to root against. All in all, Stagecoach is not the worst film I’ve ever seen. But it might just be my least favorite Western movie. And we have another John Ford movie to criticize. 😊 The Searchers (1956) In many ways, John Ford’s career became synonymous with the Western. He made several more during his career, many of them starring John Wayne (Rio Grande, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) but some not (My Darling Clementine). But, most cinephiles would agree that Ford’s most critically lauded and famous Western film is 1956’s The Searchers, based on the 1954 Alan Le May novel of the same name. At the time of its release, The Searchers was largely praised as one of the best Westerns of the decade thus far as well as one of the best of both Ford’s and Wayne’s careers. And for many cinephiles, the film’s reputation has only glistened with age. Organizations such as the American Film Institute and publications such as “Sight and Sound” of the United Kingdom and “Cahiers du Cinéma” of France have consistently ranked it as one of the greatest Westerns and one of the greatest American films ever made. In many ways, The Searchers acknowledges a number of my critiques of Stagecoach and addresses them in both substantive and satisfying ways. While the latter handled shooting the West well for its time, the former offers up some of the best landscape cinematography I have ever seen in a Western. If anything, this film is worth having on in the background to soak in the work of cinematographer Winton C. Hoch. Also, the interplay between the main cast is better than in Stagecoach. Notably, the complex relationship between Wayne’s racist veteran Ethan Edwards and the mixed-race adopted brother of Ethan’s niece Debbie, Martin Pawley, played by Jeffrey Hunter. Through Wayne, Ford gives us a complex cowboy whose blatant hatred of Native Americans never fails to shine through. However, unlike the main characters in Stagecoach who are portrayed as victims of violence perpetuated by Native Americans without cause, Ford acknowledges the realistic motivations of the Comanche villains in the film, namely Scar (Henry Brandon), while also grounding Ethan’s bloodthirst in prejudiced beliefs that even some of the white characters in the film deem excessive. I wish I could say that The Searchers remains a great movie today. While it certainly embodies some of the best aspects of the Western genre, from beautiful cinematography to morally complex character arcs, it retains a significant drawback for me as someone hesitant to even watch movies like this. Simply put, I found that the film had so much potential to stand the test of time, yet fall just short of that. In other words, if Stagecoach utterly failed to escape its own time then The Searchers teased that it was capable of doing so but ultimately could not. The whole time I was watching the film, I kept asking myself why a modern remake wherein the director of this hypothetical new take on Ford’s masterpiece tackle the central story but hone in on what makes the film’s premise interesting: the life of Debbie as a young girl kidnapped by the Comanche who ends up accepting their way of life. In addition to updating the film’s sensibilities and approach to racism in the American West, this potential lies at the heart of my lack of love for it. The Searchers may very well be a good film. If only it were a great film. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) There are perhaps only two other directors as synonymous with the Western as John Ford: the acclaimed Italian director Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and iconic actor/director Clint Eastwood (The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven). In my humble opinion, each of them has good and bad attempts at the genre under their belts (personally, I found Eastwood’s spoof of his own career acting in Westerns in the 1980 flick Bronco Billy to be thoroughly enjoyable). Unfortunately, I am highlighting the lesser of their filmography in this blog. So, I want to start by tackling Leone’s 1968 epic Once Upon a Time in the West. After coming off of his 1966 film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Sergio Leone planned to retire from directing Westerns in the hopes of moving forward with an adaptation of Herschel Goldberg’s autobiography “The Hoods” (what would become the 1984 gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America). However, the Hollywood studios were only interested in offering Leone jobs directing Westerns. Initially hesitant, Leone eventually accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures by agreeing to a five-million-dollar budget and access to Henry Fonda (Leone’s favorite actor). In designing the film treatment with fellow Italian filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci Dario Argento, Leone aimed to make a Western completely different from his previous entries in the genre. Whereas the “Dollars Trilogy” was defined by tongue-in-cheek, playful references to other Westerns and highly-choreographed gunplay, Leone wanted Once Upon a Time in the West to be more grounded in its action, deliberately paced, and thematically rich. Furthermore, he and his collaborators designed the screenplay to involve less dialogue, instead relying on drawn-out sequences bolstering the building of tension preceding violence rather than emphasizing the violence itself. Receiving somewhat mixed reviews upon initial release, Once Upon a Time in the West has cemented a legacy among filmmakers and film critics alike. Not only has it inspired the careers of famed directors like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, but the film has consistently made it onto the greatest films lists of publications such as “Time” and “Empire.” Needless to say, Leone’s film remains a staple of the Western genre. So, why do I not like it all that much? Of all of Leone’s films, I found this one to be the most self-indulgent and unnecessary. Sure, its deliberate pace and reliance on tense atmosphere makes it unique among Leone’s work. A movie like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly may come off as less serious, but at least it’s entertaining. This film, on the other hand, revels in its stretched-out runtime and lack of intriguing characters to the point of sheer boredom within the first 45 minutes. In my opinion, part of the reason that a Western like The Searchers works in spite of itself is that the visuals and action complement the characters’ physical and emotional journeys. Unfortunately, Leone seemed to forget to do that here. No disrespect to one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but taking a nap would have been more productive than watching Once Upon a Time in the West. High Plains Drifter (1973) For the final film today, I zone in on my least favorite Western from actor-director Clint Eastwood. Initially gaining fame as the “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” in the 1960s, Eastwood went on to direct several Westerns throughout his career. While peaking with 1992’s revisionist Western Unforgiven, Eastwood released multiple famous Westerns in the 1970s and 1980s that are a mixed bag for me. Coming fresh off of his directorial debut with 1971’s Play Misty for Me (one of my favorite of his early directed features), Eastwood came across a short but humorous treatment for a Western that he set right to work funding and producing. Thanks to his star power, Eastwood managed to secure a budget in excess of five million dollars for his new film despite being a rather unexperienced director (more so than Leone, whose Once Upon a Time in the West had come out only five years earlier on relatively the same budget). Eastwood also scouted and chose locations himself, much to the protest of Universal Pictures who preferred the film to be an in-house job. After pulling off a six-week shoot, Eastwood’s first directed Western film High Plains Drifter premiered in the late summer of 1973 and grossed nearly triple its budget at the box office. The film was also critically well-received, and remains for many cinephiles one of Eastwood’s best Westerns. Once again, I am not in the mainstream on this one. To be clear, of the four Westerns I have written about today High Plains Drifter is by no means the worst. But, for me it cannot escape the shadow of Eastwood’s Westerns that came after. Before addressing those, however, I want to briefly explain my biggest problem with the film: it is all over the place. Similar to John Wayne’s protagonist in The Searchers, Eastwood plays an unlikeable anti-hero simply known as “The Stranger” (in my humble opinion, clearly Eastwood poking fun at his “Man with No Name” persona from Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy”). Certainly, Eastwood pulls off this archetype in how he performs his character’s dry, sarcastic sense of humor and in his utter contempt for the human race. However, this character’s ability to bring the audience over to his side is dragged down by the film’s shocking ineptitude when it comes to establishing a consistent tone. For example, within the span of fifteen minutes we go from seeing Eastwood’s “Stranger” violently rape a woman for simply insulting him to the sheriff of the town he’s found himself in offering him a job as the town’s protector the next morning. I was baffled that Eastwood’s character spent the remainder of the film becoming (for the most part) the role model for self-defense that these townspeople look up to. Even after “The Stranger” takes advantage of their hospitality throughout much of the runtime, they still revere his ability to teach them the most basic defensive tactics. Perhaps my 21st-century sensibilities kept me from suspending my disbelief, but I simply could not get on board with this. But how does this central issue with the film compare with other Westerns directed by Eastwood? Well, poorly, to say the least. For example, his 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales does a better job at serving up a morally questionable but ultimately sympathetic anti-hero who the audience can root for without ever supporting his actions. His 1980 film Bronco Billy does a far better job at using the genre for humorous effect since the eponymous character in that movie is the ideal parody of the prototypical male hero in Westerns. Furthermore, the 1985 film Pale Rider offers a suitably melodramatic allegory about violence and redemption without resorting to senseless, inexplicable violence while also injecting some great moments of levity throughout its runtime. Finally, regarding Eastwood’s final Western film in 1992’s Unforgiven, he expertly crafts a dark story about moral complexity, legacy, and family that both respects the genre it resides in while also modernizing its tropes to adequate effect. Need I say more? 😊 All in all, I find many of the classic Western films of the 20th century, from the works of directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks to Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, to have too many problems for me to truly appreciate the genre as a whole. I find some of them to be far too much stuck in the past like Stagecoach, or struggling too much to escape the conventions of the time without every truly succeeding as with The Searchers. With other Westerns, like Once Upon a Time in the West and High Plains Drifter, they either lack the self-awareness to know when enough is enough or the self-restraint to understand the importance of pulling off emotional context and subtext successfully. Maybe I’m just too harsh on the Western. Maybe there are some Westerns (even old ones) that I really enjoy. Maybe there are some that I actually love? You’ll have to come back in the next few weeks to find out… 😉 What is it about Westerns that you hate or love, or both? What Western films do you think would win me over to the genre? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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