Best of the West

Take a quick gallop through this column and you can't go wrong at the video store next time you're hankerin' for a Western.

by Tom Barr | Published August 8, 1994

Thanks to the success of Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven, the western has saddled up and is riding again, bringing studios a fist full of dollars, or, at the very least, a few dollars more. Today's moviemakers have a rich legacy to emulate and draw inspiration from. Before it was gunned down in the 1970s the Western had been the backbone of Hollywood film production virtually since the industry was born.

The genre's glory days were between 1939 and 1970 when under the guidance of imaginative directors and writers, westerns became a versatile field for interpreting a variety of themes.

John Ford's The Searchers has grown in stature since its 1956 release, and is generally considered one of the greatest films ever made. The search for two girls captured by Indians rises to epic proportions as it spans several years and a variety of settings. One of John Wayne's best, performances, an outstanding supporting cast, and the magnificent color of Utah's Monument Valley still make it a rewarding experience. Sometimes cited as the inspiration for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, it has been reworked several time's. Ford made a similar, but much more cynical and less successful film in 1961 with James Stewart and Richard Widmark titled Two Rode Together. A new video version of The Searchers includes outtakes and background information on set construction and film locations.

Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in High Noon.

Sam Peekinpah's The Wild Bunch is either loved or loathed with equal passion. An exploration of morality, varying degrees of evil, honor and relationships, it is also a technical marvel and a masterpiece of editing. The action sequences have often been copied, but never equaled. Its' cast, headed by William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, and Edmond O'Brien was the perfect teaming of outlaw gang and pursuers. Like the gang, whose time had passed, the film represented the last great picture for many of its stars. A 143 minute video version is the most complete available. Avoid TV showings and shorter versions which usually reduce the shootouts to incompre-hensible skeletons.

Although widely acclaimed but never commercially successful, Peckinpah's Ride The High Country offered a revisionist look at the western hero thirty years before Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. Some consider this story of two aging lawmen transporting a gold shipment as Peckinpah's finest film. The great script, complemented by beautiful mountain scenery, made an outstanding picture for closing out the careers of Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea.

High Noon earned an academy award for Gary Cooper and made Grace Kelly a star. Producer Stanley Kramer, director Fred Zinnemann, and writer Carl Foreman told the story of a sheriff standing one against an outlaw gang by timing the story to the film's 84 minute running time and cutting to ticking clocks to quicken the pace and heighten the suspense. Much has been made of the fact that Cooper was suffering from an ulcer during shooting, and that the anxiety he evokes may have been real.

Rio Bravo is an enjoyable variation on High Noon with John Wayne and cronies Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan standing firm in the face of a possible invasion from an outlaw gang. It has become a cult favorite, and inspired several other films. Director Howard Hawks reworked it with superior casts but vastly inferior results in El Dorado and Rio Lobo.

Hawks's Red River, made in 1948, marked a turning point in John Wayne's career from playing romantic leads to father figures. Legend has it that the inspiration came from Mutiny on the Bounty, that Wayne's trail boss is really Captain Bligh, and his son, Montgomery Clift, is a substitute Fletcher Christianson. If so, the one who was inspired seems to have been writer Borden Chase, rather than Hawks. The film is pretty much a literal translation of Chase's novel, Guns on The Chisholm Trail. Black and white phtography underscored Wayne's unsympathetic character and the mood of uncertainty which hangs over the film. A recent video release features a 133-minute director's cut, which added seven minutes to earlier versions.

George Stevens's Shane was a landmark Western, and still remains the best treatment of the cattlemen versus homesteaders plot. Sensitively acted by Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, and Jean Arthur, it is unique in that the story is told from the perspective of the child, played by Brandon de Wilde. Wyoming's Jackson Hole and Grand Tetons provide magnificent backdrops, and Stevens's slow dissolves of seemingly endless mountain ranges emphasize the vastness of the country.

Until the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove, Red River was often cited as the definitive traildrive movie. The original Lonesome Dove has been the only outstanding TV western, and has rightly been compared with the best Westerns. The six-hour mini-series is truly an epic as its story sweeps from Texas to Montana and back, and incorporates both the coming-of-age and end-of-an-era subplots. Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and Anjelica Huston top a cast of memorable performances.

The Oxbow Incident is one of the very few few films that have explored the consequences of vigilante justice and mob violence. Directed by William Wellman, it remains a powerful film with excellent performances by Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews.

Broken Arrow is often cited as the film which changed Hollywood's treatment of Indians. Based loosely on a true incident, director Delmer Daves offers a sympathetic portrayal of Cochise by Jeff Chandler. It also marked a transition for James Stewart, who had hitherto enjoyed major stardom in comedies as the common man. One of them was 1939's Destry Rides Again, in which he plays a shy, naive sheriff opposite Marlene Dietrich's tough saloon gal. The action-filled western satire is considered a classic and has been remade several times.

After Broken Arrow, Stewart made a number of Westerns in which his character was often a cynical, selfish loner. Most were directed by Anthony Mann and all featured strong stories, outstanding supporting actors, and beautiful location scenery. The Naked Spur with Robert Ryan, and The Man From Laramie and Bend of the River with Arthur Kennedy are among the best.

Hollywood has turned out countless films on western lawmen and outlaws. Walter Hill's The Long Riders is one of the best and most accurate depictions of the James/Younger gang. Although known primarily for the novelty of casting real brother teams, it is also notable for lyrical camera work heavily influenced by Peckinpah. James and Stacy Keach are the James brothers; David, Keith and Robert Carridine brothers play the Youngers. Randy and Dennis Quaid are the Millers, and Nicolas and Christopher Guest portray the Ford Brothers.

When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released, one wag remarked that it was essentially a lighthearted version for those who couldn't stomach the violence of The Wild Bunch. Paul Newman and Robert Redford made a likeable, but not-too-bright pair of outlaws. George Roy Hill directed with flair and the stylish photography keeps it fresh.

John Ford's My Darling Clementine is generally considered the best version of the Wyatt Earp legend and the gunfight at the OK Corral. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the participants, the incident, and an appreciation for Ford's best work is likely to wonder why. According to one biographer, Ford directed it to fulfill a final commitment to 20th Century Fox. Darrel Zanuck saddled him with a cast that he would not have chosen and a script which invented incidents and killed off characters who lived well beyond the gunfight. Ford reportedly threw out several pages of exposition, filmed the rest and edited his version, which Zanuck then cut and re-edited. While many regard Henry Fonda's portrayal as the definitive Wyatt Earp, it comes closer to myth than reality. Physically, Victor Mature is about as far removed from Doc Holliday as it is possible to get.

John Sturges's Gunfight At The OK Corral offers a streamlined version of the incidents that motivated the actual gunfight. It never pretends to be more than a straight-ahead action film, and is enhanced by the casting of Burt Lancaster as Earp and Kirk Douglas as Holliday. Sturges's Hour of The Gun, which dealt with the aftermath of the OK Corral incident, was less successful though more historically accurate. Jason Robards made a fine, cynical Doc Holliday, but James Garner was never believable as the vengeance-driven Earp.

Sturges also translated Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven. According to some accounts, there was tremendous rivalry between Yul Brynner and stars-to-be Steve McQueen, Charles bronson, and James Coburn. Unfortunately, it shows on the screen, where every character is a specialist with a piece of not-always-entertaining business. Elmer Bernstein's score is considered a classic. The film spawned three mediocre sequels which were essentially remakes.

Sergio Leone used Kurosawa's Yojimbo as the basis for A Fistful of Dollars. The film made Clint Eastwood a star and together with For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, influenced future Westerns by introducing amoral heroes and graphic violence while enhancing the myth of the invincible gunman.

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