**Little Big Man
One Upon A Time In The West
The Oxbow Incident
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
**
If 10: Silverado
True Grit
The Gray Fox
3:10 To Yuma (2007, I haven’t seen the original)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
Others I remember liking a lot, but it’s been way too long since I’ve seen them, decades in some cases, to rank them. I might very well kick myself if I happened to see one or more of them at some upcoming point and realize that that they should have been very high up:
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Tombstone
Jeremiah Johnson
The Shootist
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Ballad of Little Jo
Mackenna’s Gold
Dances With Wolves
The Frisco Kid
Blazing Saddles
Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (What? Shut up)
The Cowboys
The Searchers
Shane
High Noon
I know I saw all of Leone/Eastwood’s westerns but it’s also been decades and I don’t remember much about them.
I haven’t seen many of the Classic westerns already mentioned, like The Wild Bunch, The Long Riders, Lonesome Dove, most of John Ford’s.
I think The Wild Bunch was ahead of its time, or it was ahead of MY time. I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch, at a drive-in movie many years ago. Caught it later and was amazed.
I’m gonna put John Ford’s westerns on my Amazon wish list. They’re on TCM fairly often, but not often enough. Red River is my favorite.
I singled this one out to suggest you try hard to see the old version of 3:10 to Yuma (1957). It would be a good demonstration of how the attitudes have shifted in movies in general and Westerns in particular toward the “show don’t tell” philosophy that (for my money) Steve McQueen helped to establish with Bullitt as a good example.
That’s not the only difference, but it stands out.
I’ve not seen that many including I confess many of the “classics” yet but as not a great fan of Westerns generally I was impressed with** High Plains Drifter **which took the Western almost into the realms of the Supernatural in a very entertaining way.
I clearly agree, as my listlet suggests – it’s an odd kind of meta Western, for which Johnny Guitar or Man of the West or Rancho Notorious, or even The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance might be analogues.
I think some of the reason why films like the (first?) Peckinpah feature aren’t amateur-critically as well-liked has to do with critics like Bogdanovich, who, as movie-makers, aren’t as in love with layer(s) of irony applied to the spectacle (not a good match, PB, for the films listed above, since there’s Lang, Ford, Ray, and even Anthony Mann, but still). It could be that his criticism of the flick as slow and dull (IIRC) was apt, but that pace has some meaning to me, as much meaning as pace in an early Bresson, but with the added irony of the actors lives which, anyway, is a reliable feature of the Western (Wayne, Stewart, Scott, McCrea, Brennan, Hank Worden, Tim Holt, Ward Bond, Thomas Mitchell, and so on).
Also, for Hawksians and auteurists in spirit people probably got the idea that the Hawks tip on “Wild Bunch” (kill ten men in the time it takes 'im to kill 'un or however it goes) was a kind of a gospel. Which it kind of is, but even Hawks was still just a man.
I guess it’s bound to be a kind of particular kind of cult movie – Rio Lobo was probably the last I seen or maybe The Shootist which had that kind of relationship between star and product built right into it.
I notice there aren’t many votes for Long Riders, which surprises me. A strong and essentially true story; Brothers cast as brothers (2 Keaches, 2 Quaids, 2 Guests, 3 Carradines); Terrific score by Ry Cooder and David Lindley; and although I’ve never cared a bit for David Carradine, he is perfectly cast and steals the movie from the rest of the far better actors.
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