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Broncho Billy Anderson, from "The Great Train Robbery"
The Western movie is one of the classic American
film genres. Westerns are art works – films, literature, television shows and paintings – devoted to telling
romanticized tales of the American West.
While the Western has been popular throughout the history of movies, as the United States progresses farther away from the
period depicted it has begun to diminish in importance. The recent (August 2003) Kevin Costner western, Open Range, is seen by some as a revival of the genre.
What a Western is
The fundamental plots of Westerns are simple. Life is reduced to its elements: there are no computers, no cellphones, no cars, no electricity. No twenty-first century technology, no "modern life." Technology is usually limited to
that found in rural areas in the mid-19th century. You have:
- The clothes on your back.
- Your gun, and
- Your horse.
And that's usually it. The horse may be optional. The high technology of the era – such as the telegraph, printing press, and railroad – do sometimes appear, occasionally as a development just arriving, and
symbolizing that the idealized frontier lifestyle is transitory, soon to give way to the march of civilization.
The art of the Western takes these simple elements and uses them to tell simple morality stories, setting them against the spectacular scenery of the American West. With the best Western
directors, the scenery essentially became an unpaid star of the movie.
- See also: Frederic Remington, Indian Wars, Continental
Expansion of the U.S., Manifest Destiny, The West
Origins of the "Western idea"
The idea of the "Wild West" traces at least to Buffalo Bill's Wild West
shows which began in 1883. In literature, Owen Wister's The Virginian (published in
1902) was an American start; but the German writer Karl May was writing Wild West stories as early as
1876, and he traced ideas at least to the American writer James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote Last of the Mohicans in 1826.
Thus the "western idea" has a long history. They were a distinct literary genre before the rise of motion pictures; other
important writers were Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour.
Popular culture and Westerns
American popular culture loves cultures of honor, as opposed to cultures of law. The Western portrays a society
in which persons have no social order larger than their immediate peers, family, or perhaps themselves alone. Here, one must
cultivate a reputation by acts of violence; or they can be generous, because generosity creates a dependency relationship in the
social hierarchy.
These themes unite the Western, the gangster movie, and the revenge movie in a single vision. In the Western, these themes are forefronted, to the extent
that the arrival of law and "civilization" is often portrayed as
regrettable, if inevitable.
The Western goes to Hollywood
But a genre in which description and dialogue are lean, and the landscape spectacular, is well suited to a visual medium.
Western movies, usually filmed in desolate corners of Arizona, Utah, Wyoming or Colorado, made the landscape not just a vivid backdrop but a character in the movie.
The Western genre itself has sub-genres, such as the epic Western, the
shoot 'em up,
singing cowboy
Westerns, and a few comedy
Westerns. The Western re-invented itself in the revisionist Western.
Cowboys play a prominent role in Western movies, and often fights with American Indians are depicted; though "revisionist" Westerns give the natives
sympathetic treatment. Other recurring themes of westerns include western treks, and groups
of bandits terrorizing small towns such as in The Magnificent Seven.
The Great Train Robbery, the first narrative film produced in the United States, was a Western
In film, the western traces its roots back to The Great Train Robbery, a silent
film directed by Edwin S.
Porter and released in 1903. In the United States, the western has had
an extremely rich history that spans many genres (comedy, drama, tragedy, parody,
musical, etc.). The golden age of the western film is epitomised by the work of two
directors: John Ford (who often used John Wayne for lead roles) and Howard Hawks.
Beginning in the 1960s, many people questioned many traditional themes of westerns;
aside from the portrayal of the Native American as a "savage",
audiences began to question the simple hero versus villain dualism, and the use of violence to test one's character or to prove
oneself right. Examples of "revisionist westerns" include Little Big
Man, Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven. Some "modern" Westerns give women more powerful roles, such as
Open Range.
Spaghetti Westerns
During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a
considerable revival coming from Italy with the "Spaghetti Westerns" or "Italo-Westerns". Many of these films were fairly low-budget affairs, shot in
locations principally chosen for the cheapness of shooting film, and are characterised by high-action and violence. But the best
of the genre, notably films directed by Sergio Leone, have some parodic
dimension (the strange opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West being a reversal of Fred Zinnemann's High Noon opening scene). Clint Eastwood became famous starring in these, although they were also to
provide a showcase for other such considerable talents as Lee van Cleef,
James Coburn, Klaus
Kinski and Henry Fonda.
Other influences to and by Westerns; "revisionist Westerns"
Westerns have drawn on other arts forms as old as the Norse Saga, as other
art forms have drawn on the Western.
To add to the international influences on westerns, many westerns after 1960 were heavily influenced by the Japanese samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. For instance The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and both Last Man Standing & A Fistful of Dollars were remakes of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which itself was inspired by Red Harvest, an
American detective novel by Dashiell Hammett.
An offshoot of the western genre is the "post-apocalyptic" western, in which a future society, struggling to rebuild after a
major catastrophe, is portrayed in a manner very similar to the 19th
century frontier. Examples include The Postman and the
"Mad Max" series, and the computer game Fallout.
In fact, many elements of space travel series and films borrow extensively from the conventions of the western genre. Peter
Hyams' Outland transferred the plot of High Noon to interstellar space. Gene
Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series, once described his
vision for the show as "Wagon Train to the stars". More recently, the space opera series Firefly used an explicitly western theme for its portrayal of frontier worlds.
Elements of western movies can be found also in some movies belonging essentially to other genres. For example, "Kelly's Heroes" is a war movie, but
action and characters are western-like.
In addition, the superhero fantasy
genre has been described as having been derived from the cowboy hero, only powered up to omnipotence in a primarily urban
setting.
The western genre has been parodied on a number of occasions, famous examples being Support Your
Local Sheriff, Cat Ballou, and Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles.
Television Westerns
The Saturday Afternoon Movie was a pre-TV
phenomenon in the US which often featured western series. "Singing cowboys" were common (Gene Autry,
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans,
Rex Allen, each with a co-starring
horse). Other B-movie series were Lash Larue and the Durango Kid. Herbert Jeffreys, as Bob Blake with his horse Stardust, appeared in
a number of movies made for African American audiences in the days
of segregated movie theaters. [1]
. Bill Pickett, an African American rodeo performer, also appeared in
early western films for the same audience [2] .
When the popularity of television exploded in the late 1940s and 1950s, westerns quickly became a staple of small-screen entertainment. A great many B-movie Westerns were aired
on TV as time fillers, while a number of long-running TV Westerns became
classics in their own right. Notable TV Westerns include Gunsmoke,
The Lone Ranger, The Rifleman, Have Gun, Will Travel, Bonanza (a.k.a. Ponderosa), The Big
Valley, Maverick,
and many others.
The 1970s saw a revision of the western, with the incorporation of many new elements.
McCloud, which premiered in 1970, was essentially a fusion of the sheriff-oriented western with the modern big-city crime drama.
Hec Ramsey was a western
who-dunnit mystery series. Little House on the Prairie was set on the frontier in the time period of the
western, but was essentially a family drama. Kung
Fu was in the tradition of the itinerant gunfighter westerns, but the main character was a Chinese monk who fought only
with his formidable martial art skill. The Life
and Times of Grizzly Adams was a family adventure show about a gentle mountain man with an uncanny connection to
wildlife wrongly accused a crime who helps others who visit his wilderness refuge.
Quote
- "As far as I'm concerned, Americans don't have any original art except Western movies
and jazz."
- — Clint Eastwood, classic actor in Westerns
See also
External links
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