Just saw this for the first time a few months ago. I grew up on westerns with cavalry, and Fort Apache was the first one where it looked like the troops were doing real maneuvers and formations.
Most movies, we hear “Mount up!” and then see the cavalry in no particular order, a straggly line of men, riding two or three abreast or as a single rider. Same thing when they had to get ready for action. There was no order to it.
Maybe Ford paid attention to this in Fort Apache to emphasize Fonda’s character, the by-the-book martinet.
(Or maybe they always did it right and I just noticed, but I was impressed.)
I love “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. 'Tis a great movie. “Blazing Saddles” also has a place in my DVD collection. “Shane” is a classic. “Unforgiven” is also a fav.
It can be argued that “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a western. It depends how broad you want your definition to get. Westerns are about freedom. Western heroes are those who have that freedom. Many films fit under that umbrella.
If you choose to see Shane, notice the director’s luck in having a certain shot framed through the antlers of a deer (?) near the beginning of the film.
I don’t think I’ve read a single complimentary post about Kevin Costner, anywhere on this board.
I liked the movie, even though it was overly romanticized when everyone else making westerns in the early 90’s was opting for realism.
NPR last week had a segment on film criticism, and the guest quoted Paul Rudnick (writing as Libby Gelman-Waxner) on Dances With Wolves. It was hysterical.
Libby said if she had been kidnapped by the Sioux, she expected her captivity would be much like Mary McDonnell’s, in the movie.
She’d wear a stunning suede dress trimmed with shells, her hair would be in a fashionable shag instead of braids, and she’d marry the first white movie star she saw. Not unlike Libby herself, who in high school was voted Best Accessories and Most Likely to Marry Within Her Faith.
I agree, it’s one of my favorites. But it’s an unusual movie; it’s largely plotless. Dave Kehr called it something like the only avant garde movie about the value of tradition. It might not be the thing for a “newbie” to Westerns.
Also a masterpiece, and along with* Yellow Ribbon* and Rio Grande, part of Ford’s “Cavalry Trilogy,” considered by many (me included) to be a pinnacle of world cinema.
Some of my favorites have already been mentioned, including:
Dead Man
Quick and the Dead
Cat Ballou
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
A couple that haven’t yet made an appearance:
Jeremiah Johnson: Sidney Pollack directs Robert Redford in a visually stunning piece of work. Great performance from Redford as a fur trapper struggling with nature and learning to live with native Americans.
Little Big Man: Dustin Hoffman plays the only white man to survive Custer’s Last Stand, in a great satirical movie that offers a strong critique of American expansion and Indian policy.
And then there’s Lone Star: Not really a Western in the true sense of the word, but set in the west and probably one of my favourite movies (of any genre) of the last decade. Slow-paced story that pulls you in, beautifully directed by John Sayles, and with great performances from the cast, led by Chris Cooper.
