I’m putting together a retrospective film festival and trying to pick 8-10 films to show. The genre I’ve picked is Western, which has many sub-genres associated with it. I could go by what AFI, Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb thinks, but I would rather ask real people.
So my question is simple: What is your favorite Western movie, and why do you like it?
You can go back in time as far as you want, and it doesn’t have to have done great box office at the time it was released. So assuming you like Westerns, what’s your favorite?
I’ll start. My favorite Western is 3:10 to Yuma (1957) starring Glenn Ford.
I admit I’m a little biased as I know Glenn Ford’s son Peter, and he has told me some stories about the making of that film. Nevertheless, I still think it holds up as a classic Western.
I liked the new “True Grit” very much. The old one wasn’t bad by any means, but the new one might be my favorite Western.
My all time favorite scene is the three-way shootout at the end of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” starting from the moment Tuco enters the cemetery. The music alone is just astonishing. My wife thinks the shootout itself is boring, but if you pay attention you can see the cogs turning as each character tries to decide who to shoot first… Except for Blondie, because he knows something Tuco doesn’t.
The end of “High Plains Drifter” is very good (when he literally paints the town red). Eastwood’s character isn’t just taking revenge on the bad guys, he’s taking revenge on the whole town. The story never explicitly confirms that he has come back from the dead, but it has this eerie kind of quality that implies the Drifter is supernatural.
I know I’m probably going to get flak for saying this, but I think my favorite John Wayne movie is “The Shootist.” It is very different from conventional westerns and in some ways it is for John Wayne what “Unforgiven” was for Clint Eastwood.
Those are just some of my favorites. But keep watching this space, because Stephen King’s Gunslinger is finally getting a movie.
Lots of good suggestions already. I also think The Shootist is an excellent movie. Probably my favorite John Wayne movie, with the possible exception of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
My favorite Leone western is probably For a Few Dollars More, because I love the overwrought shootout with the watch chimes swelling into that great music.
But my absolute favorite Western, and one of my favorite movies of any kind, is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. First, Newman and Redford are the coolest. And I love how the movie has LeFors not quite in sight for the whole movie, just keeping Butch and Sundance running from a glimpse of a white straw hat. Beautiful to look at, great acting, and a great mix of comedy and pathos. Two outlaws thinking they can wisecrack and improvise their way out of every jam, trying not to admit that the ground is shifting under them.
I’ll go for a different Elmore Leonard story that became a movie, Hombre. It stars Paul Newman as one of the coolest characters in movie history and Richard Boone as one of the creepiest. A terrific ensemble cast deliver piles of quotable dialogue in a simple but compelling story. Years ahead of time in its attitudes it always strikes me as strangely overlooked.
Once Upon a Time in the West, not just because it was a great film, but because the opening sequence is one of the most memorable in cinematic history, with perhaps the best use of sound to establish setting/atmosphere I’ve ever heard.
You have excellent taste. The music when Tuco enters the cemetery is The Ecstasy of Gold. There’s a great live performance of it on youtube. Ennio Morricone was scheduled to conduct a concert in New York City a couple years ago (and I assume that piece would have been included); I had a very close, very expensive ticket, but he had to cancel for health reasons. Too bad, it would have been awesome.
As for the shootout, watch also how it’s photographed. It starts with wide shots; the characters spreading out, and we know who they are and where. Then it’s two-shots, looking over one character’s shoulder at another. Then it’s torsos and guns; each character has a different style of holster so you can tell them apart even when you can’t see their faces. Finally it’s just eyes and hands. And when the shot rings out the camera goes back to the wide shot again. Brilliant. And that sheepish look on Tuco’s face when he gets his gun ready; Eli Wallach fucking owns that movie.
Let me also offer one that’s not terribly well known these days, Silverado. It’s kind of a loving throwback from 1985, Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, and Danny Glover set out to clean up their town. Excellent work by Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt, and Jeff Goldblum in supporting roles, and a great cameo by John Cleese as a sheriff. If there’s a weakness, it’s that the first half (the getting the gang together part) is better than the second. Also a problem with Butch Cassidy
A more obscure comedy Western would call for Rustler’s Rhapsody. What happens when a singing cowboy is suddenly transported from the 30s to the 80s, and how does he deal with the new western?
Based on a recommendation in the recent thread on “perfect” movies, I watched Hombre. (I’m a fan of Elmore Leonard, so when I saw the credit in the opening, my interest went up.) Very good film. If there was any dialog that was “dumbed down” for the film version, it didn’t stick out. It felt like a filmed version of a smart, exciting book (yep).
Usually I’m hypersensitive to films portraying social injustice – hated Crash and didn’t care for TKAMockingbird – but Hombre didn’t set off an allergic reaction.
All that said, my favorite western is Once Upon a Time In the West.
The Searchers. Not only a good Western, but one of the greatest movies of any genre.
Westward the Women. After the Civil War when the deaths of thousands of men leave many young women without husbands, wagonmaster Robert Taylor guides one hundred potential brides from the East to California. The film gives a stark view of the hardships of cross-continental travel by wagon train as the women experience losses and triumphs in this memorable and affecting movie.
My gut reaction is The Searchers, with Once Upon a Time in the West trailing right behind.
My favorite that no one has mentioned yet is Red River. Very challenging film about the nature of good, evil, and authority. The ending should be unsatisfying, and is unsatisfying on paper. On film, though, it works.
The western comedy that has never gotten its critical due is The Cheyenne Social Club. I think it’s a question of timing. After *Vertigo *and Once Upon a Time in the West, no one was lining up to see Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne star in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge screwball piece. In its own way, though, it’s as much a deconstruction of the Old West as Unforgiven, especially for its time.