Western Movies

Padraig said:

Most all Westerns are "historical" dramas, Johanek; you're confusing genre with period, and "flawed" and "racist" are invariably inherent characteristics of the Western genre, including many of those neo-Westerns that "try/tried" to deconstruct it (including films by Leone, Peckinpak, Penn, Altman, Roy Hill, Mann). Griffith established the narrative framework, and Birth of a Nation is a Western [much as Star Wars is, despite its SF trappings].

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Its interesting how theyre still so widely loved though. Even in more liberal circles. Considering that the subject matter ranges from righteous propganda supporting ethnic cleansing and genocide, to tawrdy escapades of frontier criminality in a stolen land... If it came from another culture it would be ridiculed... imagine a film about rugged Japanese 'frontiersmen' clearing the land in China, or the recent slew of Russian anti-muslim/frontier action films for example...

I guess its success is a testament to good storytelling and romantic nostagiaism.

droid said:

Its interesting how theyre still so widely loved though. Even in more liberal circles. Considering that the subject matter ranges from righteous propganda supporting ethnic cleansing and genocide, to tawrdy escapades of frontier criminality in a stolen land... If it came from another culture it would be ridiculed... imagine a film about rugged Japanese 'frontiersmen' clearing the land in China, or the recent slew of Russian anti-muslim/frontier action films for example...

I guess its success is a testament to good storytelling and romantic nostagiaism.

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all land has been stolen by somebody. we only originate from one place on earth and wherever we've gone since theres usually been some bloodshed associated with it. where do you draw the line?

bassnation said:

all land has been stolen by somebody. we only originate from one place on earth and wherever we've gone since theres usually been some bloodshed associated with it. where do you draw the line?

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At the almost complete extermination of a continents worth of people with their own unique and distinct cultures?

I think the appropriate question is when do you draw the line... If you apply that kind of thinking to certain events of the 20th century, you end up in a very dark place...

"I guess its success is a testament to good storytelling and romantic nostalgiaism."

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And people who look cool and shoot things.

IdleRich said:

And people who look cool and shoot things.

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Definitely... Its actually frightening just how much fun shooting guns is! If I lived in the States Im sure Id have a selection of firearms.. (even though i know how very wrong that is...)

luka said:

'
er... you really haven't watched many westerns have you? a good western is the best cinema has to offer. i can't think of a single western i've ever seen thats one dimensional like that, morally they're often pretty complex.

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Ive watched my fair share. Of course, the best of them (as Padraig pointed out) are 'neo-westerns' that fuck with the genre expectations: Anti-heroes, conflicted moral points, condemnation as much as glorification of voilence etc... but there is still a huge body of work from the 20s -60s (by far the majority of Westerns) that concentrates on the 'master narrative' of the Western: The idea of the frontier, and the paired opposites of, for example the wilderness vs. civilization, the individual vs. community, savagery vs. humanity, with europeans inevitabely taking the role of the 'civilised' against Indian 'savages'.

In a similar way, there are plenty of nuanced American films about Vietnam, but in the context of objective historical fact, films that concentrate on the suffering of a small number of American soldiers, and portray the GIs as the main 'victims' of the war, (though relevant from an American perspective) seem almost obscene in the face of the untold suffering and deaths of millions of Vietnamese civilians in possibly the most brutal campaign of industrialised warfare of the 20th century.

BTW - Its worth checking out John Fords 'Cheyennes Autumn'... probably the most pro-native mainstram Western ever made...

droid said:

In a similar way, there are plenty of nuanced American films about Vietnam, but in the context of objective historical fact, films that concentrate on the suffering of a small number of American soldiers, and portray the GIs as the main 'victims' of the war, (though relevant from an American perspective) seem almost obscene in the face of the untold suffering and deaths of millions of Vietnamese civilians in possibly the most brutal campaign of industrialised warfare of the 20th century.

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this is very much OTM

funnily enough i have a similar relation to westerns as others apparently have to silent soviet propaganda films or czech sci fi , ie i find it kind of hard to concentrate. everything's so slow...the slightest movement so bloody important...until all the tension gets dispersed in some random slaying. having said that it can be nice occasionally to watch something, er, meditative...this'd be why wenders was so keen on em i guess

Padraig said:

Griffith established the narrative framework, and Birth of a Nation is a Western [much as Star Wars is, despite its SF trappings].

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Can you explain how it's a Western please? I simply don't follow you.

For me, western-as-genre must be set in a particular place (the west - real or mythical) and include men who ride horses. I can see the western-as-storyline elsewhere such as Star Wars.

Also I think westerns aren't so much historical dramas but an exploration of a mythic past.

... how it's a Western please?

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D. W. Griffith dabbled in silent westerns at Biograph Studios, producing such films as:

Last Drop of Water (1911), with the western's first characteristic scenes of a wagon train siege and a cavalry rescue

the innovatively-filmed Fighting Blood (1911) about conflict between white settlers and Sioux Indians in the Dakota territory of 1899

The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1914), a two-reel pre-cursor to his most (in)famous landmark film, Birth of a Nation (1915).

western-as-genre must be set in a particular place (the west - real or mythical)

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Ironically, the first "real movie" or commercial narrative film that gave birth to the Western genre, Edwin S. Porter's pioneering western The Great Train Robbery (1903), was a one-reel, 10-minute long film, that was shot on the East Coast (New Jersey and Delaware) rather than the Western setting of Wyoming.

Western-as-genre must ... include men who ride horses

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Hilarious

... but not women who drive cars, oh no! God forbid!



Dissensus-as-genre MUST be set in consensual dissension. Must Must Must!!

droid said:

Ive watched my fair share. Of course, the best of them (as Padraig pointed out) are 'neo-westerns' that fuck with the genre expectations: Anti-heroes, conflicted moral points, condemnation as much as glorification of voilence etc... but there is still a huge body of work from the 20s -60s (by far the majority of Westerns) that concentrates on the 'master narrative' of the Western: The idea of the frontier, and the paired opposites of, for example the wilderness vs. civilization, the individual vs. community, savagery vs. humanity, with europeans inevitabely taking the role of the 'civilised' against Indian 'savages'.

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hmmmm... there is a degree of truth to this but i think even the uber canonical westerns of ford, mann etc are more complex and nuanced than that sort of simple black and white morality...

things like man who shot liberty valance ending on a totally downbeat beat note... tom dies uncelebrated, unremembered, 'print the myth', a not entirely favourable examination of the western myth

the searchers .. ethan wrestling with his emotions/racism re: Debbie, does the right thing but still ends up shut out and forgotten at the end

even mega pop romp western magnificent 7 ends with the line "we always lose", referring to the hired gun characters.

i like westerns inthe way which luka describes, beautiful films creating a mythic space in which to explore moral tales etc.

mister matthew said:

hmmmm... there is a degree of truth to this but i think even the uber canonical westerns of ford, mann etc are more complex and nuanced than that sort of simple black and white morality...

things like man who shot liberty valance ending on a totally downbeat beat note... tom dies uncelebrated, unremembered, 'print the myth', a not entirely favourable examination of the western myth

the searchers .. ethan wrestling with his emotions/racism re: Debbie, does the right thing but still ends up shut out and forgotten at the end

even mega pop romp western magnificent 7 ends with the line "we always lose", referring to the hired gun characters.

i like westerns inthe way which luka describes, beautiful films creating a mythic space in which to explore moral tales etc.

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Thats not quite the point though is it? I agree that there are a huge range of variatons on the Western themes, and Ford is probably the one 'classic' Western director who attempted to document and challenge the racism of the genre, but take your example of the Magnificent 7... A band of American heroes riding in to a Mexican village to save them from a gang of Mexican bandits?? Considering the film is is set after the Mexican/American war (In which the US invaded and annexed about 50% of Mexico), the whole premise is historically ridiculous... Imagine a fim about Soviet gunslingers protecting a Polish town from Polish 'bandits' during the cold war, or Israeli heroes protecting a helpless Palestinian village from Palestinian 'terrorists', and dying valiently in the attempt... Im sure such films could be filled with moral nuances and laudable subtleties , but the fact is, anyone from outside those respective Political cultures would reject their premise as propaganda, no matter how well told the story is.

Westerns are mythic politically as well as symbolically. As a genre they generally project a false historical reality where the suffering and betrayal of millions of Indians is almost universally ignored, or where white setlers came to 'a land without a people', and through their own bravery and fortitude, clear the unworthy savages (Mexcians/Native Americans) and form a new (and the greatest in the world I might add) civilisation. in that sense (with notable exceptions), they are almost all politically conservative, in that they reinforce the official foundation myth of the state, and by omitting the real facts, wipe away the 'original sin' of Genocide from American history - a genocide which Hitler took as inspiration when he planned the clearing of the East of 'primitive and subhuman Slavs' to create Lebensraum for racially superior teutonic settlers btw.


Doesnt mean you cant enjoy them for what they are I might add...

BTW - My favourite western is probably 'High Plains Drifter'... I love the moral (and physical) sense of desolation as the town descends into a hell of its own making... plus it provides inspiration for this kind of thing...

Magnificent 7 is fucking wicked.

2stepfan said:

Magnificent 7 is fucking wicked.

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Prefer 7 Samurai meself...

droid said:

Prefer 7 Samurai meself...

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is that what magnificent 7 was based on? got any more info on that?

Mister Matthew:

even mega pop romp western magnificent 7 ends with the line "we always lose", referring to the hired gun characters.

i like westerns in the way which luka describes, beautiful films creating a mythic space in which to explore moral tales etc.

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Yes, but its a rather brutal mistranslation [in Sturges' star-driven adaptation above] of the original dialogue from Kurosawa's epic, viz
"We've survived yet again ... we've lost yet again. With their land, the farmers are the victors - not us."

Droid:

Westerns are mythic politically as well as symbolically. As a genre they generally project a false historical reality where the suffering and betrayal of millions of Indians is almost universally ignored, or where white setlers came to 'a land without a people', and through their own bravery and fortitude, clear the unworthy savages (Mexcians/Native Americans) and form a new (and the greatest in the world I might add) civilisation. in that sense (with notable exceptions), they are almost all politically conservative, in that they reinforce the official foundation myth of the state, and by omitting the real facts, wipe away the 'original sin' of Genocide from American history - a genocide which Hitler took as inspiration when he planned the clearing of the East of 'primitive and subhuman Slavs' to create Lebensraum for racially superior teutonic settlers btw.

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"White man's burden, Lloyd, white man's burden." [From Kubrick's The Shining].

Yes, there is a sense in which the Western genre directly continued the legacy of the harsh American puritan imagination: the basic premise of the outsider's approach [which Ford took to its conclusion] to both nature and "primitive" society is a drive towards transparency, a desire to lift the veil and penetrate the strangeness and "recalcitrance" of "the Other". This willingness to risk the hazards of the wilderness (all the more to conquer it) received perhaps its most examplary and influencial expression in the puritan tradition of American romanticism, establishing the basis of the great push westwards which led to the opening up of the frontier [the echoes of which continue today in America's brutally irridentist nationalism, with China as the Final Frontier (of the neo-cons)].

What we have at the core of the American Western [you can even pick up further echoes of it in the films of Terrence Malick - The Thin Red Line, The New World] is the prospect of a rugged unchartered wilderness, devoid of any symbolic associations with history or legend, undefiled, as it were, by the encrustations of language and society (except for them inconvenient "damn Injuns" of course). In these circumstances, silence and solitude become central to the pioneering, romantic quest (ironically, isn't this now the reconstituted, revisionist myth about the contemporary Native American, proudly meditating in the vast wilderness, now doing it for Americans and others?). Thus one observer in a meditative mood could describe the area around Fort Laramie as a "sublime waste, a wilderness of mountains and pine-forests, over which the spirit of loneliness and silence seemed brooding." Or in the words of writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow, confronting the Valley of the Yosemite: "Not a living creature, man or beast, breaks the visible silence of this inmost paradise." Of course, this version of romanticism is akin to a form of obscurantist religious ecstasy which cleanses the self of all social and material accoutrements (Ralph Waldo Emerson: "I am a transparent eyeball"), one which then turned on the Other, the Native American, as the obstacle to the fulfillment of this fantasy ...

But anyway, I think Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man is (where the "burden" becomes instead White Man's Metal, with Neil Young providing the sonic accessories, Iggy Pop the trans-comic relief) perhaps the finest recent American revisionist Western.