Top 10 Westerns of All Time

[Just Gus]

10, just 10! That's what makes it an interesting exercise. You need to choose.....by placing Red River on the list, maybe you drop The Searchers (I don't think so) off the list. This assignments is only for the hardcore Western fan. If you can't cut it, take an easier assignment first like the Top 10 John Wayne westerns or the Top 10 Jimmy Stewart westerns or the Top 10 Hector Elizondo westerns (if you're a real wimp)!

[Just Gus]

I loved Lonely are the Brave....what a great story!

And its a great idea to get some justice for a classic western using Amazon and TCM...there are quite a few films that we as western fans no are not available and should be.

So here's my vote for Lonely are the Brave!

[beeswax]

Lonely Are the Brave is at Netflix starting Tuesday.

[Just Gus]

The only one I really question is Vera Cruz....but I understand the Sara Montiel factor is at work!

[steve harrison]

In no particular order:

Once Upon a Time in the West
Unforgiven
The Proposition
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Assassination of Jesse James
Outland (purists will just have to cut me some slack on this one)
The Beguiled
Jeremiah Johnson
3:10 to Yuma (2007)

[Sevorin]

You seem concerned with "genre juggling".

I have no problem with your including Outland as a western. But why not choose the infinitely superior High Noon that inspired it?

Jeremiah Johnson gets better every time I see it. I know it has horses and Injuns and was filmed in the Rockies. But I don't see it as a "western". Perhaps it should be considered part of the Sydney Pollack genre.

It's also a stretch to call The Beguiled a western. It belongs more to the Fox-in-the-Henhouse genre with movies like The King and Four Queens.

As to your preference for the re-make of 3:10 to Yuma -- yes, it is a western. Not a very good one. But definitely a western.

[steve harrison]

Hissy fit much?

The thing with Outland is that even though it is set in space and the future, the first time I saw it - as a teen - I felt like I was watching a western. I didn't know squat about High Noon but I could taste the West in that film. I have seen High Noon recently and don't believe it to be infinitely superior.

You are just trying to bait me with Jeremiah Johnson, so I'll let that go, but you might actually have a point about The Beguiled - I'll have to watch it again and re-evaluate. I liked both versions of 3:10 to Yuma, but have a preference for the remake. Sue me.

Surprised you didn't attack The Proposition in your "someone doesn't think The Wild Bunch is perfect" religiomania. After all, it too was made after vcrs and dvds were invented and is set in Australia.

For the record, I think The Wild Bunch is a good movie, it just isn't in my top ten, and not - IMO - as good at being a western as it is at being a Sam Pekinpah thrill ride. It isn't even Pekinpah's favorite of his own westerns. He was sweet on Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid until it was mangled by MGM in 1973. The 1988 "directors cut" of this particular film has been hailed as one of the greatest modern westerns.

[Sevorin]

You are just trying to bait me with Jeremiah Johnson

If I was trying to "bait" you I did a pretty good job. But I spoke truly. I've always found it difficult to consider anything a western unless it featured "six-shooters" and what we usually call "cowboy" hats -- no earlier than the Civil War and generally after it. There are exceptions, of course. But Jeremiah Johnson is closer to the "pioneer" genre, which would also include The Big Sky -- (though Kirk Douglas does wear a cowboy hat in it) -- and virtually anything where the principal characters wear coon-skin caps or use flintlock weaponry.

I didn't attack The Proposition because I haven't seen it and don't know yet what my opinion of it will be, though I have the DVD and am looking forward to it. It's not venued in Texas, of course, but if I can overlook Outland being an extra-terrestrial western, I can easily tolerate a story that plays out in the southern hemisphere.

For the record, I think The Wild Bunch is a good movie, it just isn't in my top ten, and not - IMO - as good at being a western as it is at being a Sam Pekinpah thrill ride.

Forgive me. I thought you'd called it a "mediocre western" and suggested that it was overrated. My mistake.

I'm strong enough emotionally to withstand those who don't consider The Wild Bunch a great film. Indeed, on its release I was constantly fussing with people who regarded it not only as a "bad western" but also as a moral disgrace. I realize that its action sequences now seem tame, but they riled up a generation of politically correct assholes who believe that screen violence degrades our entire civilization. That was the world before VCRs and DVDs.

Sam Peckinpah was one of my favorites long before The Wild Bunch. I'd already seen his TV work on the old Desilu Playhouse, along with his short-lived series, The Westerner, starring Brian Keith, which ran for, I think, only 13 episodes before disappearing into the weeds. He had likewise done Ride the High Country -- do you doubt that that is a western? -- and Major Dundee. Though all these movies and TV shows had action, they had nowhere near the sort of violence exhibited in The Wild Bunch. Yet that film gave Peckinpah the reputation for violence-mongering, contradicted by most of his other work, which he has to this day -- witness your reference to a Sam Peckinpah "thrill ride".

As to your preferring Outland to High Noon, what's to be said? There's no accounting for taste. Stagecoach is on my list, and I don't particularly like it. But it's a great western, includes many of the genre's basic elements, and is itself a progenitor of an entire sub-category of the western genre. So may own sense of "artistic political correctness" obliged me to bypass my "favorites" and choose instead to identify ten "great" representatives of the genre. The same might be said for including Shane and High Noon on the list. This last point is obvious even to you: Isn't Outland just High Noon in sci-fi drag?

[steve harrison]

The Wild Bunch may have given Pekinpah his "thrill ride" reputation but Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, Getaway, Killer Elite and heck - even Convoy and Osterman Weekend - certainly weren't quilting party dramas. While I haven't seen Straw Dogs, from what I've heard and read about it, I think the thrill ride rep will remain intact. Indeed I did say the Wild Bunch is a mediocre western - which is my opinion. I still think it is a good movie, glad I watched it and will watch it again - and still think it is overrated because people like you cannot accept that someone else doesn't include it in the top ten of every possible list. And that's ok - I have friends who insist that the Exorcist belongs in every top ten list, yet I disagree with them just as much.

I believe a sense of "artistic political correctness" to be little more than intellectual masturbation - I base my lists on what I like, feel and believe, not on some higher power. If your intellect requires you to include something that you don't like in a top ten list, then it is really hard for me to take you seriously. Every movie on any of lists is a movie I have seen and loved. My opinions about them are honest, not tempered by what I feel others will think - hence this entire conversation.

Doesn't this all mean you are talking out of both sides of your mouth? I mean, you said on another thread that you didn't consider Leone's movies to be "... real members of the western genre" - If you can easily toss out 4 of the best and most memorable westerns in the modern era, I can call The Wild Bunch overrated.

High Noon reminds me of The Day The Earth Stood Still - hailed by the masses as one of the greatest films of its genre, but once you watch either of them you feel like your time would have been better spent watching The Home Shopping Network. Although to be fair, High Noon isn't nearly as boring and pointless as The Day The Earth Stood Still.

[Sevorin]

Doesn't this all mean you are talking out of both sides of your mouth? I mean, you said on another thread that you didn't consider Leone's movies to be "... real members of the western genre" - If you can easily toss out 4 of the best and most memorable westerns in the modern era, I can call The Wild Bunch overrated.

You can call The Wild Bunch whatever you want. You don't need to cite my opinion of Sergio Leone to justify your own.

The Wild Bunch is praised and loved by many western fans, probably the majority of the knowledgeable fans. Why else would you argue that it's over-rated? Of course, you're entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine. That's what this site is about.

You went further: You didn't merely characterize The Wild Bunch as "overrated". You termed it a "mediocre western". Yet elsewhere you called it a "good film". Now, if I were unwilling to apply thought to what you were trying to express, I might retort simply that you were talking "out of both sides of your mouth".

It was evidently your intention to voice your opinion through paradox -- a "good film", but "a mediocre western". What that means to me is that you value certain elements in the western genre, elements that you consider implicit to that genre, and that -- however "good" a film it may otherwise be -- The Wild Bunch so improperly or ineptly made use of those particular elements that it wound up being "mediocre" as a western.

That's a perfectly reasonable point of view. In fact, other than your application of it to The Wild Bunch, I share it with you. So I am relying on that very point of view when I tell you, directly and honestly and not out of both sides of my mouth, that what you call "4 of the best and most memorable westerns in the modern era" are simply inferior reproductions of themes and plots that were better expressed, better acted, and better filmed in their original American idioms.

I don't deny Leone is a skillful director. But his "take" on the westerns that inspired him appears to my eyes to consist largely of stretching out plots till they become either irrelevant or incomprehensible, expanding the vistas to such preposterous dimensions that an actor must walk a half-a-mile before he crosses the street from one cowtown boardwalk to another, or the pregnant pauses -- My God, the pauses! -- that interrupt and slow down the action in the name of suspense. A gunfight does not become more exciting simply by focusing at elaborate and disproportionate length on the squinting eyes of its participants.

I realize that Leone has his own style and that he differs from, say, Howard Hawks in that he "prolongs the moment", whereas Hawks dishes up violence in brief, explosive spurts. Leone transforms the size and rhythm of the western into something foreign to the genre. There is something of the Italian impresario in his westerns, a bloated, overblown, almost comic quality that makes them look less like horse opera than like opera buffa.

Here's a paradox for you: If you're willing to study the matter, I think you'll find that, of all western directors that have inspired Leone, the one that he most resembles in visual terms is Sam Peckinpah. And Peckinpah himself was berated as having destroyed the western genre.

By the way, there are two Peckinpahs -- pre-The Wild Bunch and post-The Wild Bunch. The "thrill ride" Peckinpah was decidedly of the post-The Wild Bunch period. The gentle late comedies, like The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner were overwhelmed by progressively more scattered, more spastically violent pictures -- (like the ones you mentioned) -- that Peckinpah ground out during his alcoholic decline, when he was obliged to cash in on his reputation as the Master of Violence and Cruelty. But for real western fans, Convoy and The Iron Cross and The Killer Elite and the like are not the reason for respecting his work.

As to my ten-best list: I simply followed the strictures that Mr. Boyle set up at the outset of this thread. He wanted the true western fan to cite the "ten best", not his favorites. Any filmgoer worth his salt must acknowledge that a certain degree of political correctness is being called for. The ten on my list are not my favorites -- (though a number of them are) -- and I was quite explicit in admitting it. I chose those films that I truly believed were classic representatives of the genre and belonged on a list of the best.

Each film I chose is in some way originative. Each either created a particular sub-category of the western genre or expressed it definitively. And each has also withstood the test of time with a solid reputation for excellence intact. Those were the criteria I relied upon for making my choices of the "ten best". What were your criteria?

If you want my ten favorites, all you gotta do is ask.

[steve harrison]

"Each film I chose is in some way originative."

The strictures that Mr. Boyle set up at the outset of this thread were that you could only pick ten Westerns for your list. Some people listed far more than ten obviously, but TEN is what Boyle called for. Whether they are your favorite or just a lame exercise elitist snobbery is inconsequential - the exercise is that you pick only ten. It's at the top of every page. Choosing films solely because they are originative is like saying the Model T will always be in your top ten list of best automobiles. On a top ten list of visual media offerings will you always include those cave paintings they found in France?

Each film I choose is a favorite for one reason or another. Once Upon a Time in the West, for example, is a favorite because of a) The Little Red Riding Hood type story - it is a western themed fairy tale and b) The acting was incredible. Well before the movie was over the actors had disappeared and I was left only with the characters and their motivations. There are few movies where the actor's performances are that good - Leap of Faith with Steve Martin for example.

Unforgiven is a favorite for many reasons - acting, sets, cinematography - all of these things come together to make an almost perfect Western. I also enjoyed the nod towards Will Penny in this flick - does the character of Will Munny (Money =Penny, right?) represent the "what if..." of Will Penny staying with Catherine Allen? Is the opening scene a nod towards She Wore a Yellow Ribbon? Does Munny size up his opponents in exactly the same way The Outlaw Josey Wales did (and the way Hackman's character said a good gunfighter should)? There also seemed to be a whole lot of Winchester '73 rifles floating around. Oh yeah, I like it when a movie subtly exposes its roots and acknowledgesits ancestry. This movie is saying "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all those that have come before." Humility is a great thing in a great movie.

I've also noticed that many of my favorite westerns come down to one man facing overwhelming odds. "A man has got to do what a man has got to do" kind of motif. Liberty Valance, Jesse James and The Beguiled are the only ones that don't seem fit this mold - though 4 motivated women did turn out to be overwhelming odds for McBurney. These, I think tend to deal more with shame and karma - chickens coming home to roost, as it were.

As For Wild Bunch and Leone - I didn't totally discount Wild Bunch as a western like you do with Leone films. I just don't think it is that great of a western. It is a great example of a Sam Pekinpah film, the kind of film he became (in)famous for creating. You admit that Leone films are visually similar to Pekinpah, yet don't count them as "real" westerns nor admit that they probably inspired Pekinpah in his creation of The Wild Bunch. Not only are the Leone movies originative but they are heart and soul westerns, possibly giving the genre the infusion it needed to survive the '60s and '70s. The Wild Bunch may very well be a Leone western without the hero or "the pauses" in violence and action - or what some may call "a story line". You blasted the remake of 3:10 to Yuma for being a shoot-em-up, but what is The Wild Bunch? Nothing more than a hero-less shoot-em-up. The Wild Bunch are merely a criminal gang that decides to betray their country when the law gets too close. No honor, no redemption. Just a group of criminals trying to avoid what they got coming to them.

[steve harrison]

Thank you - I appreciate our comments. And must admit I have enjoyed the debate. Glad somebody got something fortifying out of our fussing, growling, and howling.

[Sevorin]

Thank you much. It's gratifying that Mr. Harrison and I can rev the engine for another fan.