50 WESTERNS
So here's how it went down.
Right now I'm listening to Calexico's 'The Black Light'. Short of Ennio Morricone, this is the best music I've heard that evokes the big red deep blue West. Wait...
Right now I'm listening to Ennio Morricone.
This idea was launched in December of 2004 when I saw John Ford's The Searchers, which remains one of the greatest 200-3000 movies ever made. I had recently signed up for membership at Film Forum, who had sent me a glossy mailing that the Mother-of-all Western retrospectives was coming in March. I went to the theater for 12 movies that month, and my mouth went dry.
How'd I make my list? After seeing what I could at Film Forum, I consulted the imdb Top 50 Westerns and this pretty handy article. I also saw a handful that came on Turner Classic Movies that seemed to rate pretty well.
I originally went to these movies because they feature our country at its prettiest as backdrop, some great acting, some delicious quotes...but I vividly remember walking home from Film Forum with shotgun pregnancies of whiskey women and cigarette kids. Brain killers and smoke, these killer movies. 80,000 cigarettes and cigars, and the 250-odd bottles o' whiskey--this is chainsmoking, vice-forging cinema.
Summer's not a good time to see movies, though, and before I knew it I had almost half the list to go and November 1st was upon me. I pulled it out with 8 in November and 15 of the damn things in December, including 5 between christmas and new years. I took 'Pursued' starring Robert Mitchum to Baltimore and forced my family to watch it on Christmas night.
THE ACTORS:
9 of my 50 Westerns went to John Wayne. The guy is an awful legend, but no one looms larger over 'larger than life' than John Wayne. It's pretty difficult watching the guy deliver monologues or kiss the girl, but for the spiritual hatred and beauty that possessed the lion's share of my viewing, John Wayne is your guy. His image is softened up in the DVD commentary to Repo Man, where director Alex Cox insists that this exchange from the movie--
Miller: John Wayne was a fag.
All: The hell he was.
Miller: He was, too, you boys. I installed two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood, and he come to the door in a dress.
--is 100% true in real life.
I did a little counting, and three other guys made it into 7 of the movies I chose: Jimmy Stewart, Walter Brennan and Clint Eastwood. Jimmy Stewart rules the Western--he made 5 with Anthony Mann (i saw 4) that are taut, dark and entertaining. In general, I was more impressed by the the Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart movies than most anything I saw. Walter Brennan is a famous mushmouth character actor--he steals every scene he's in, if you can understand what the hell he's saying. Great characters too. In Red River, he loses his teeth playing poker, than later cracks a whip on a guy for stealing sugar.
I was most ambivalent about Clint Eastwood. As The Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy, he rules the school and makes cigars tasty and essential survival tools, like they're chocolate oxygen tubes he needs to be able to breathe in the windswept sand. In his own movies, though, he self-parodies (High Plains Drifter, which I still liked) or he proselytizes about the war with jaw-breaking metaphors that a 7-year old would groan at (The Outlaw Josey Wales, in this case, but see any '70s movie I guess.) I also didn't think much of Unforgiven, but I saw it on a plane with a cold and no sleep.
My top 5 actors who had no business being in a Western:
(5) Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He creeps me out in general. Although you could scarcely call this buddy pic a Western, I insist that you do. Really.
(4) Hugh Beaumont in Night Passage. He was a scarier bad guy in "Leave it to Beaver".
(3) Yul Brynner - The Magnificent Seven. Not much of a cowpuncher growing up in Vladivostok, from what I understand.
(2) Robert Preston - Junior Bonner. sandwiched between 'The Music Man' and 'Victor/Victoria' in his flamboyant career, I was a little unconvinced.
(1) Jack Lemmon - Cowboy. Just plain wrong. In my mind, Jack Lemmon has become 100% synonymous with the annoying Shelley in Glengarry Glen Ross. I want him out of my movie.
DIRECTORS:
Many artsy-fartsy European directors have pointed to the Westerns made in the '40s and '50s as influences, and it has a lot to do with the guys making them. John Ford is the Papa Homer of the Western, and in addition to last year's Searchers, I saw 6 more of his this year. Closely on his heels is the aforementioned Anthony Mann (5), the first of which (Winchester '73) is credited for revitalizing the genre in the mid to late '50s. (I have no sources). And with great effect too - from that point on, it was no longer cowboys vs. Injuns or sheriffs against outlaws, it was bad guys against bad guys against themselves. In Anthony Mann's style, the West is highlighted not as a land of opportunity or a place to seek revenge, but as a place to escape mistakes, secrets, and painful memories.
I ate up the four famous Sergio Leones I saw--Spaghetti oh, those were delicious. Howard Hawks, who has directed some of the funniest comedies ever made and the original Scarface, made my list 4 times too. Also saw a three Clints, three Peckinpahs, three from John Sturges, and in the final week, because they're gracefully all under 80 minutes long, a trio of brazen Budd Boetticher movies starring the kickass Randolph Scott. These are highly recommended.
*************
So what did I take from all this? I had a blast -- so many movies made by great directors where the plots and storylines are all predetermined and limited to a few classic storylines. I loved the mythologizing and hero-making foisted upon me; it made for riotously entertaining viewing, and in some cases high unintentional comedy (especially 'Shane').
At the same time, those limitations and conventions force the good directors to tell stories that expose the underbelly of our unshaven, unshowered species. What's left is an inherent ugliness which is all too recognizable in the world I live in.
Vonnegut once told a guy (or maybe it was me in a book) that he could say whatever he wanted without as long as he put it in a sci-fi story--the genre would guarantee it wouldn't get taken seriously. That's more or less what happened with the cowboys--by throwing them in spurs and holsters and putting them on horses, you can make hateful but true things come out of their mouth without upsetting anyone.
**************
So there are deleterious effects of doing 50 of anything in a year. First of all, I believed the bullshit I just wrote in that last paragraph. I'm destined to walk around in all of 2006 with a faraway, unreachable sense of purpose. I'm 10 days in and have just given myself anxiety attacks. I haven't had a good night of sleep since Custer was killed.
I drank a shitload of Early Times bourbon this year. Aside from the Film Forum marathon in March, I watched most of these at home, and a Western is, at its essence, a drinking game. Early Times is sweet and cheap, and I'm still recovering; I'm showering with chamomile oil and planting rosehips in my windowbox this year.
Finally, I'm convinced that Lee van Cleef is trying to kill me.
******************************
So here are my 10 favorites from this year. (Three I've seen in previous years--The Searchers, The Wild Bunch and McCabe and Mrs. Miller--would figure prominently in this list.)
10 (tie)-Forty Guns, Samuel Fuller/The Far Country, Anthony Mann/Ride Lonesome, Budd Boetticher. I saw these during the sprint to the finish, after Christmas and before New Years. I scarcely remember what happened, but these are grisly and efficient Noir/Westerns . At this point I just wanted to be finished, so the fact that they all exceeded expectations has to mean something.
9 - Bad Day at Black Rock, John Sturges. This was a quiet, noirish Twilight-Zone entry starring Spencer Tracy. The first one I saw this year, and kept with me all year. At Thanksgiving, someone suggested this wasn't a Western, leading to a bloodbath of a fight. I feel safe with my 50, but watched the first two seasons of "Deadwood" this year to compensate. (I highly recommend Deadwood, btw.)
8 - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Sergio Leone. Nothing to be said here - I feel like I'm the last guy who saw this one.
7- The Great Silence, Sergio Corbucci. Unlike anything I've ever seen. The whole thing takes place in piles of snow. Klaus Kinski is awesomely unsettling as the bad guy. And best - 'The Great Silence' is a *guy*. A deaf/mute killer, to be specific.
6- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Ford. Jimmy Stewart+John Wayne. A near gunfight over meat. Yes! a classic.
5 - The Naked Spur, Anthony Mann. Along with 'The Ox-Bow Incident', this was the darkest and ugliest one I saw. For those who think of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' when they think of Jimmy Stewart, you're in for a brutal surprise.
4 - My Darling Clementine, John Ford. The perfect rendering of the famous Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday/Clantons showdown, starring Henry Fonda.
3 - Stagecoach, John Ford. This probably gets extra points for being the first one I saw in the theater, but this is historically considered the movie that re-launched the Western in the '40s/early '50s. Deeply felt and beautifully shot.
2 - Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone. Note to Hollywood: Put someone like Charles Bronson in a movie and name him 'Harmonica', and you have my box office. Beyond that this movie is rich and heartless, and features an exceptionally heartless Henry Fonda as evil. About the death of the West, this is the one I should've seen last.
1 - Ride the High Country, Sam Peckinpah. Did I use the word 'resonate' yet? No? okay. Wait...I did just now? Shit. Somehow stood head-and-shoulders over everything else. Everything I enjoyed in one of the other 49, this one somehow had more of that everything. All I can say is, I also should have seen this one last, because when I walked out of the theater, I knew it would be #1.
Here's the rest of the list by director:
Howard Hawks - Rio Bravo, Red River, El Dorado, Sergeant York
John Ford - Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande (The 'Cavalry Trilogy')
Anthony Mann - Winchester '73, Man from Laramie, Man of the West
Clint Eastwood - High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven
Sergio Leone - A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More
Sam Peckinpah - Junior Bonner, The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Budd Boetticher - The Tall T, Comanche Station
John Sturges - The Magnificent Seven, Gunfight at the OK Corral
Delmer Daves - 3:10 to Yuma, Cowboy
Fred Zinneman - High Noon
George Stevens - Shane
Raoul Walsh - Pursued
William Wyler - The Westerner
William Wellman - The Ox-bow Incident
Henry King - The Gunfighter
King Vidor - Duel in the Sun
Fritz Lang - Rancho Notorious
Ted Post - Hang 'em High
George Marshall - Destry Rides Again (features an awesome catfight w/ Marlene Dietrich)James Neilson - Night Passage
John Farrow - Hondo
Arthur Penn - Little Big Man
George Roy Hill - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Mel Brooks - Blazing Saddles
So......what did everyone else do last year?
Right now I'm listening to Calexico's 'The Black Light'. Short of Ennio Morricone, this is the best music I've heard that evokes the big red deep blue West. Wait...
Right now I'm listening to Ennio Morricone.
This idea was launched in December of 2004 when I saw John Ford's The Searchers, which remains one of the greatest 200-3000 movies ever made. I had recently signed up for membership at Film Forum, who had sent me a glossy mailing that the Mother-of-all Western retrospectives was coming in March. I went to the theater for 12 movies that month, and my mouth went dry.
How'd I make my list? After seeing what I could at Film Forum, I consulted the imdb Top 50 Westerns and this pretty handy article. I also saw a handful that came on Turner Classic Movies that seemed to rate pretty well.
I originally went to these movies because they feature our country at its prettiest as backdrop, some great acting, some delicious quotes...but I vividly remember walking home from Film Forum with shotgun pregnancies of whiskey women and cigarette kids. Brain killers and smoke, these killer movies. 80,000 cigarettes and cigars, and the 250-odd bottles o' whiskey--this is chainsmoking, vice-forging cinema.
Summer's not a good time to see movies, though, and before I knew it I had almost half the list to go and November 1st was upon me. I pulled it out with 8 in November and 15 of the damn things in December, including 5 between christmas and new years. I took 'Pursued' starring Robert Mitchum to Baltimore and forced my family to watch it on Christmas night.
THE ACTORS:
9 of my 50 Westerns went to John Wayne. The guy is an awful legend, but no one looms larger over 'larger than life' than John Wayne. It's pretty difficult watching the guy deliver monologues or kiss the girl, but for the spiritual hatred and beauty that possessed the lion's share of my viewing, John Wayne is your guy. His image is softened up in the DVD commentary to Repo Man, where director Alex Cox insists that this exchange from the movie--
Miller: John Wayne was a fag.
All: The hell he was.
Miller: He was, too, you boys. I installed two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood, and he come to the door in a dress.
--is 100% true in real life.
I did a little counting, and three other guys made it into 7 of the movies I chose: Jimmy Stewart, Walter Brennan and Clint Eastwood. Jimmy Stewart rules the Western--he made 5 with Anthony Mann (i saw 4) that are taut, dark and entertaining. In general, I was more impressed by the the Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart movies than most anything I saw. Walter Brennan is a famous mushmouth character actor--he steals every scene he's in, if you can understand what the hell he's saying. Great characters too. In Red River, he loses his teeth playing poker, than later cracks a whip on a guy for stealing sugar.
I was most ambivalent about Clint Eastwood. As The Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy, he rules the school and makes cigars tasty and essential survival tools, like they're chocolate oxygen tubes he needs to be able to breathe in the windswept sand. In his own movies, though, he self-parodies (High Plains Drifter, which I still liked) or he proselytizes about the war with jaw-breaking metaphors that a 7-year old would groan at (The Outlaw Josey Wales, in this case, but see any '70s movie I guess.) I also didn't think much of Unforgiven, but I saw it on a plane with a cold and no sleep.
My top 5 actors who had no business being in a Western:
(5) Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He creeps me out in general. Although you could scarcely call this buddy pic a Western, I insist that you do. Really.
(4) Hugh Beaumont in Night Passage. He was a scarier bad guy in "Leave it to Beaver".
(3) Yul Brynner - The Magnificent Seven. Not much of a cowpuncher growing up in Vladivostok, from what I understand.
(2) Robert Preston - Junior Bonner. sandwiched between 'The Music Man' and 'Victor/Victoria' in his flamboyant career, I was a little unconvinced.
(1) Jack Lemmon - Cowboy. Just plain wrong. In my mind, Jack Lemmon has become 100% synonymous with the annoying Shelley in Glengarry Glen Ross. I want him out of my movie.
DIRECTORS:
Many artsy-fartsy European directors have pointed to the Westerns made in the '40s and '50s as influences, and it has a lot to do with the guys making them. John Ford is the Papa Homer of the Western, and in addition to last year's Searchers, I saw 6 more of his this year. Closely on his heels is the aforementioned Anthony Mann (5), the first of which (Winchester '73) is credited for revitalizing the genre in the mid to late '50s. (I have no sources). And with great effect too - from that point on, it was no longer cowboys vs. Injuns or sheriffs against outlaws, it was bad guys against bad guys against themselves. In Anthony Mann's style, the West is highlighted not as a land of opportunity or a place to seek revenge, but as a place to escape mistakes, secrets, and painful memories.
I ate up the four famous Sergio Leones I saw--Spaghetti oh, those were delicious. Howard Hawks, who has directed some of the funniest comedies ever made and the original Scarface, made my list 4 times too. Also saw a three Clints, three Peckinpahs, three from John Sturges, and in the final week, because they're gracefully all under 80 minutes long, a trio of brazen Budd Boetticher movies starring the kickass Randolph Scott. These are highly recommended.
*************
So what did I take from all this? I had a blast -- so many movies made by great directors where the plots and storylines are all predetermined and limited to a few classic storylines. I loved the mythologizing and hero-making foisted upon me; it made for riotously entertaining viewing, and in some cases high unintentional comedy (especially 'Shane').
At the same time, those limitations and conventions force the good directors to tell stories that expose the underbelly of our unshaven, unshowered species. What's left is an inherent ugliness which is all too recognizable in the world I live in.
Vonnegut once told a guy (or maybe it was me in a book) that he could say whatever he wanted without as long as he put it in a sci-fi story--the genre would guarantee it wouldn't get taken seriously. That's more or less what happened with the cowboys--by throwing them in spurs and holsters and putting them on horses, you can make hateful but true things come out of their mouth without upsetting anyone.
**************
So there are deleterious effects of doing 50 of anything in a year. First of all, I believed the bullshit I just wrote in that last paragraph. I'm destined to walk around in all of 2006 with a faraway, unreachable sense of purpose. I'm 10 days in and have just given myself anxiety attacks. I haven't had a good night of sleep since Custer was killed.
I drank a shitload of Early Times bourbon this year. Aside from the Film Forum marathon in March, I watched most of these at home, and a Western is, at its essence, a drinking game. Early Times is sweet and cheap, and I'm still recovering; I'm showering with chamomile oil and planting rosehips in my windowbox this year.
Finally, I'm convinced that Lee van Cleef is trying to kill me.
******************************
So here are my 10 favorites from this year. (Three I've seen in previous years--The Searchers, The Wild Bunch and McCabe and Mrs. Miller--would figure prominently in this list.)
10 (tie)-Forty Guns, Samuel Fuller/The Far Country, Anthony Mann/Ride Lonesome, Budd Boetticher. I saw these during the sprint to the finish, after Christmas and before New Years. I scarcely remember what happened, but these are grisly and efficient Noir/Westerns . At this point I just wanted to be finished, so the fact that they all exceeded expectations has to mean something.
9 - Bad Day at Black Rock, John Sturges. This was a quiet, noirish Twilight-Zone entry starring Spencer Tracy. The first one I saw this year, and kept with me all year. At Thanksgiving, someone suggested this wasn't a Western, leading to a bloodbath of a fight. I feel safe with my 50, but watched the first two seasons of "Deadwood" this year to compensate. (I highly recommend Deadwood, btw.)
8 - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Sergio Leone. Nothing to be said here - I feel like I'm the last guy who saw this one.
7- The Great Silence, Sergio Corbucci. Unlike anything I've ever seen. The whole thing takes place in piles of snow. Klaus Kinski is awesomely unsettling as the bad guy. And best - 'The Great Silence' is a *guy*. A deaf/mute killer, to be specific.
6- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Ford. Jimmy Stewart+John Wayne. A near gunfight over meat. Yes! a classic.
5 - The Naked Spur, Anthony Mann. Along with 'The Ox-Bow Incident', this was the darkest and ugliest one I saw. For those who think of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' when they think of Jimmy Stewart, you're in for a brutal surprise.
4 - My Darling Clementine, John Ford. The perfect rendering of the famous Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday/Clantons showdown, starring Henry Fonda.
3 - Stagecoach, John Ford. This probably gets extra points for being the first one I saw in the theater, but this is historically considered the movie that re-launched the Western in the '40s/early '50s. Deeply felt and beautifully shot.
2 - Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone. Note to Hollywood: Put someone like Charles Bronson in a movie and name him 'Harmonica', and you have my box office. Beyond that this movie is rich and heartless, and features an exceptionally heartless Henry Fonda as evil. About the death of the West, this is the one I should've seen last.
1 - Ride the High Country, Sam Peckinpah. Did I use the word 'resonate' yet? No? okay. Wait...I did just now? Shit. Somehow stood head-and-shoulders over everything else. Everything I enjoyed in one of the other 49, this one somehow had more of that everything. All I can say is, I also should have seen this one last, because when I walked out of the theater, I knew it would be #1.
Here's the rest of the list by director:
Howard Hawks - Rio Bravo, Red River, El Dorado, Sergeant York
John Ford - Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande (The 'Cavalry Trilogy')
Anthony Mann - Winchester '73, Man from Laramie, Man of the West
Clint Eastwood - High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven
Sergio Leone - A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More
Sam Peckinpah - Junior Bonner, The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Budd Boetticher - The Tall T, Comanche Station
John Sturges - The Magnificent Seven, Gunfight at the OK Corral
Delmer Daves - 3:10 to Yuma, Cowboy
Fred Zinneman - High Noon
George Stevens - Shane
Raoul Walsh - Pursued
William Wyler - The Westerner
William Wellman - The Ox-bow Incident
Henry King - The Gunfighter
King Vidor - Duel in the Sun
Fritz Lang - Rancho Notorious
Ted Post - Hang 'em High
George Marshall - Destry Rides Again (features an awesome catfight w/ Marlene Dietrich)James Neilson - Night Passage
John Farrow - Hondo
Arthur Penn - Little Big Man
George Roy Hill - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Mel Brooks - Blazing Saddles
So......what did everyone else do last year?
posted by stinkrock at 1:33 AM
7 Comments:
Fantastic wrapup of your year in the Great Wild West of Our Past.
I wasn't weened on westerns but I enjoyed 'em a bit growing up. The older brothers were more into horror flicks (your old Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee Hammer films), so I got my dose of those growing up.
But I also clearly remember True Grit figuring heavily into my boyhood years, and the Morricone-tracked films later on.
I think the wackiest/coolest Western I ever saw was Johnny Guitar. If you ever buy or rent this Nicholas Ray film, invite me over. I'll bring the Early Times.
I almost saw that one.
i'll invite you over at some point to watch it.
Very nice. I am mighty impressed.
I've seen about 5 of the movies on your list, and unfortunately "Shane" was one of the them. Forced to watch this in 9th grade History, I utterly failed to understand how it related to whatever we were supposed to be studying at the time. But that little bastard's voice is burned into my brain for all eternity.
Congratulations on making it to 50. I knew you could do it.
So what's in store for '06?
Seeing Shane in the theater was a blast - people laughed uproariously everytime the kid said 'Shane'!
Shane did have a pretty good fight scene though.
The kid was also in Night Passage (not very good). Fortunately he didn't have many lines.
No crazy goals yet for 2006.
I'll probably give it another shot so I can see it in a better viewing environment than an airplane. Clint movies tend to be a little heavy-handed for my tastes, particularly the last two (Million $$ Baby and Mystic River). But I'm a big fan of Gene Hackman.
Probably not going to for awhile though. I have images of Clint Eastwood burned on my retinas.
Cool guestbook, interesting information... Keep it UP
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