Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Sat, 15 Aug 1992 20:25:56 EDT
From:         BGRISSOM@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject:      Re: Westerns

Karen, I'm glad you asked for recommendations on Westerns.  The New York
Review of Books for March 5, 1992 has an omnibus review of several books on
the genre ("Killing Time" by Geoffrey O'Brien).  I just found it at the
bottom of the stack. (You've helped me attack a pile!).  I quote from one
section:

The compilation of films that follows is by no means intended as a list of
the "best," omitting as it does many widely familiar films (My Darling
Clementine, Red River, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ride the High
Country), and many outstanding films that remain mysteriously unavailable
on video:  Silver Lode, The Last Wagon, Forty Guns, Day of the Outlaw,
Ride Lonesome.  It aims more to be a partial taxonomy of the Western in
its heyday, a mix of masterpieces, oddities, turning points, and typical
examples.....

 1.  Man of the Forest (1933)
 2.  Blood on the Moon (1948)
 3.  Wagon Master (1950)
 4.  Distant Drums (1951)
 5.  The Naked Spur (1953)
 6.  Johnny Guitar (1954)
 7.  Vera Cruz (1954)
 8.  A Man Alone (1955)
 9.  The Searchers (1956)
10.  Jubal (1956)
11.  3:10 to Yuma (1957)
12.  The Tall T (1957)
13.  Warlock (1959)
14.  Django (1966)
15.  Ride in the Whirlwind (1972)
16.  The Wild Bunch (1969)...A long meditation on letting things slide
17.  Ulzana's Raid (1972)

END OF QUOTED MATERIAL
This issue of NYRB is worth looking out for the capsule comments for
each of the above movies (as well as the full essay itself).  For
example, on number 9:  "Ford's greatest Western is also his least
typical.... eliciting a characterization of rare obsessive force from
John Wayne as the Comanche-hating avenger on the trail of his abducted
niece (Natalie Wood)--a monomaniacal early American type...."

A classic that I saw recently for the first time and loved is The
Outlaw (1941), the famous Howard Hughes/Jane Russell collaboration
that had censorship problems.  Really a gritty retelling of the Billy
the Kid story; Walter Huston is great as an aging gunfighter.  Nice
surprise ending here, a subversion of the Kid/Pat Garrett legend.

So many Westerns I like for a single scene or line.  Let me mention
two and I'll shut up.

--Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, for the scene where Slim Pickens,
  gut-shot and dying, staggers over and sits down by a pond, as
  Dylan's "Knock, Knock, Knocking at Heaven's Door" swells on the
  soundtrack.

--Hombre.  Bad guy Richard Boone and his gang have Paul Newman and
  a band of stagecoach riders trapped in a house on top of a hill.
  Boone swaggers up the hill and outlines his terms.  Laconic Hombre
  (Newman), after he's done:  "Just have one question.  How you going
  to get back down that hill?"  Shoots him up pretty bad, too.

brad

      P.S. Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (#16) above was long my
      favorite.  I can hardly sit through it any more, maybe because
      I saw it so many times when I was young.  One scene:  Bounty
      hunter Strother Martin, gleefully surveying a scene of mass
      carnage and asking his boss, "Mr. Thornton, shall we load up?"
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