Login
Login

Western film#"Golden Age"

{{short description|Film genre}}

{{Redirect|Western movies|the song|Western Movies}}{{distinguish|European cinema|American cinema}}

{{Westerns sidebar |Media}}

The Western is a film genre defined by the American Film Institute as films which are "set in the American West that [embody] the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier." Generally set in the American frontier between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890,{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VMN9xAEACAAJ |title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-976435-8 |editor-last=Rubin |editor-first=Joan Shelley |volume=2 |language=en |editor-last2=Casper |editor-first2=Scott E.}}{{Rp|page=557}} the genre also includes many examples of stories set in locations outside the frontier – including Northern Mexico, the Northwestern United States, Alaska, and Western Canada – as well as stories that take place before 1849 and after 1890. Western films comprise part of the larger Western genre, which encompasses literature, music, television, and plastic arts.

Western films derive from the Wild West shows that began in the 1870s.{{Cite book |last=Simmon |first=Scott |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EN64jzq4Q3AC |title=The Invention of the Western Film: A Cultural History of the Genre's First Half Century |date=2003-06-30 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-55581-4 |pages= |language=en}}{{Rp|page=48}} Originally referred to as "Wild West dramas", the shortened term "Western" came to describe the genre.{{Cite book |last=McMahan |first=Alison |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oA47uwEACAAJ |title=Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema |publisher=Continuum |isbn=978-1-5013-4023-9 |pages=122 |language=en}} Although other Western films were made earlier, The Great Train Robbery (1903) is often considered to mark the beginning of the genre.{{Cite book |last=Verhoeff |first=Nanna |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XKDAsYDXxz8C |title=The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning |date=2006-01-01 |publisher=Amsterdam University Press |isbn=978-90-5356-831-6 |pages=123 |language=en}} Westerns were a major genre during the silent era (1894–1929) and continued to grow in popularity during the sound era (post–1929).

The genre reached its pinnacle between 1945 and 1965 when it comprised roughly a quarter of studio output.{{Cite book |last=Aron |first=Stephen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bSbSBAAAQBAJ |title=The American West: A Very Short Introduction |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-985893-4 |pages=110 |language=en}} The advent of color and widescreen during this era opened up new possibilities for directors to portray the vastness of the American landscape.{{Rp|page=105}} This era also produced the genre's most iconic figures, including John Wayne and Randolph Scott, who developed personae that they maintained across most of their films.{{Cite book |last=Munn |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lVJL6w1T3ocC |title=John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth |date=2005-03-01 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-1-101-21026-0 |pages=50 |language=en}} Director John Ford is often considered one of the genre's greatest filmmakers.{{Cite book |last=Matheson |first=Sue |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bMZ4CwAAQBAJ |title=The Westerns and War Films of John Ford |date=2016-02-18 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4422-6106-8 |pages=20 |language=en}}

With the proliferation of television in the 1960s, television Westerns began to supersede film Westerns in popularity.{{Cite book |last=MacDonald |first=J. Fred |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E9VkAAAAMAAJ |title=Who Shot the Sheriff?: The Rise and Fall of the Television Western |date=1987 |publisher=Praeger |isbn=978-0-275-92326-6 |pages=xi |language=en}} By the end of the decade, studios had mostly ceased to make Westerns. Despite their dwindling popularity during this decade, the 1960s gave rise to the revisionist Western, several examples of which became vital entries in the canon.{{Cite book |last=Lusted |first=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yF7vHCI3G-QC |title=The Western |date=2003 |publisher=Pearson/Longman |isbn=978-0-582-43736-4 |pages=78 |language=en}}

Since the 1960s, new Western films have only appeared sporadically. Despite their decreased prominence, Western films remain an integral part of American culture and national mythology.{{Cite book |last=Parks |first=Rita |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wwO1AAAAIAAJ |title=The Western Hero in Film and Television: Mass Media Mythology |date=1982 |publisher=UMI Research Press |isbn=978-0-8357-1287-3 |pages=57 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Day |first=Kirsten |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BaMxEAAAQBAJ |title=Cowboy Classics: The Roots of the American Western in the Epic Tradition |date=2016-05-31 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-1-4744-0247-7 |pages=14 |language=en}}

Characteristics

File:Gary Cooper 2.jpg in Vera Cruz from 1954.]]

The American Film Institute defines Western films as those "set in the American West that [embody] the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier".{{cite web |title=America's 10 Greatest Films in 10 Classic Genres |url=http://www.afi.com/10top10/ |access-date=2010-06-06 |publisher=American Film Institute}} The term "Western", used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine.{{Cite book |last=McMahan |first=Alison |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WaUMBAAAQBAJ |title=Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema |date=2014-08-22 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-5013-0268-8 |pages=133 |language=en}}

Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western fiction, and were firmly in place before film became a popular art form.{{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Henry Nash |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XzsUAAAAYAAJ |title=Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth |date=1978 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-93955-4 |language=en}}{{Page needed|date=June 2024}} Film critic Philip French has said that the Western is "a commercial formula with rules as fixed and immutable as the Kabuki Theater."{{Cite book |last=French |first=Philip |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dI-GAAAAIAAJ |title=Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre and Westerns Revisited |date=1973 |publisher=Carcanet |isbn=978-1-85754-747-4 |language=en |author-link=Philip French}}{{Rp|page=12}}

Western films commonly feature protagonists such as sheriffs, cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, who are often depicted as seminomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and buckskins, use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival and as a means to settle disputes using "frontier justice". Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds.{{Cite book |last=Indick |first=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NE0-EAAAQBAJ |title=The Psychology of the Western: How the American Psyche Plays Out on Screen |date=2014-11-21 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-9211-4 |pages=8, 12 |language=en |quote=[T]he principal archetype of the genre, the Western hero, is analyzed within the context of his various personas: the chivalrous cowboy, the honorable marshal, the lone crusader, and the rebel outlaw... He is more comfortable living in the open fronteir than in the cities, and most importantly, he does not conform to the laws and customs of civilized society. He answers only to his own code of honor and enforces his own personal brand of justice... [W]riters established the cowboy hero as the legendary icon of the West. They dressed him in chaps and a ten-gallon hat, straddled him atop a horse, armed him with a revolver, and set him loose on the Western plains.}}

History

= Origins =

Film Westerns derive from the Wild West shows that began in the 1870s.{{Rp|page=48}} These shows, which included stage plays and outdoor exhibitions, culminated in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, a touring performance that ran from 1883 to 1913. Wild West shows, which were intended for urban audiences, established many of the elements that came to define Western films, such as the blending of fact and fiction and the romanticization of the frontier.{{Cite book |last=Sarf |first=Wayne Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r22_IwAACAAJ |title=God Bless You, Buffalo Bill: A Layman's Guide to History and the Western Film |date=1983 |publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press |isbn=978-0-8453-4732-4 |pages=237 |language=en}} These early films were originally referred to as "Wild West dramas", the term "Western" came to describe the genre. The use of this shortened term appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine.

The first films that belong to the Western genre are a series of short single reel silents made in 1894 by Edison Studios at their Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey. These featured veterans of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show exhibiting skills acquired by living in the Old West – they included Annie Oakley (shooting) and members of the Sioux (dancing).{{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/00694139/ |title=Sioux ghost dance |publisher=Library of Congress |year=1894 |access-date=9 September 2021}}

= Silent era =

Western films were enormously popular in the silent-film era (1894–1927). The earliest known Western narrative film is the British short Kidnapping by Indians, made by Mitchell and Kenyon in Blackburn, England, in 1899.{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-50211023 |title=World's first Western movie 'filmed in Blackburn' |newspaper=BBC News |access-date=1 November 2019|date=2019-10-31 }}{{cite web|url=https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-kidnapping-by-indians-1899-1899-online |title=Kidnapping by Indians |work=BFI |access-date=1 November 2019}} The Great Train Robbery (1903, based on the earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary), Edwin S. Porter's film starring Broncho Billy Anderson, is often erroneously cited as the first Western, though George N. Fenin and William K. Everson point out that the "Edison company had played with Western material for several years prior to The Great Train Robbery". Nonetheless, they concur that Porter's film "set the pattern—of crime, pursuit, and retribution—for the Western film as a genre".{{cite book |last1=Fenin |first1=George N. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GE8htQEACAAJ |title=The Western: From Silents to Cinerama |last2=Everson |first2=William K. |publisher=Bonanza Books |year=1962 |isbn=978-1-163-70021-1 |location=New York City |page=47}} The film's popularity opened the door for Anderson to become the screen's first Western star; he made several hundred Western film shorts. So popular was the genre that he soon faced competition from Tom Mix and William S. Hart.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/21/archives/bronco-billy-anderson-is-dead-at-88j.html |title=Bronco Billy Anderson Is Dead at 88 |date=21 January 1971 |work=The New York Times |access-date=15 October 2019}}

= 1930s =

With the advent of sound in 1927–28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns,[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/magazine/11schatz.html, New York Times Magazine] (November 10, 2007). leaving the genre to smaller studios and producers. These smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in the 1930s. By the late 1930s, the Western film was widely regarded as a "pulp" genre in Hollywood, but its popularity was dramatically revived in 1939 by major studio productions such as Dodge City starring Errol Flynn, Jesse James with Tyrone Power, Union Pacific with Joel McCrea, Destry Rides Again featuring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, and especially John Ford's landmark Western adventure Stagecoach starring John Wayne, which became one of the biggest hits of the year. Released through United Artists, Stagecoach made John Wayne a mainstream screen star in the wake of a decade of headlining B Westerns. Wayne had been introduced to the screen 10 years earlier as the leading man in director Raoul Walsh's spectacular widescreen The Big Trail, which failed at the box office in spite of being shot on location across the American West, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and the giant redwoods, due in part to exhibitors' inability to switch over to widescreen during the Great Depression.

="Golden Age"=

After the renewed commercial successes of the Western in the late 1930s, their popularity continued to rise until the 1950s, when the number of Western films produced outnumbered all other genres combined.{{Cite book |last=Indick |first=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ylSQBQAAQBAJ&dq=western+most+popular+film+genre+more+combined&pg=PA2 |title=The Psychology of the Western: How the American Psyche Plays Out on Screen |date=2008-09-10 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-3460-2 |pages=2 |language=en}}

The period from 1940 to 1960 has been called the "Golden Age of the Western".{{Cite web |last=Gittell |first=Noah |date=2014-06-17 |title=Superheroes Replaced Cowboys at the Movies. But It's Time to Go Back to Cowboys. |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/the-return-of-the-western/372871/ |access-date=2022-07-21 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}} It is epitomized by the work of several prominent directors including:

=Revivals=

There have been several instances of resurgence for the Western genre. According to Netflix, the popularity of the genre is due to its malleability: "As America has evolved, so too have Westerns."{{cite web |date=December 27, 2021 |title=Why Are Westerns Still Popular? |url=https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/why-are-westerns-still-popular |access-date=March 15, 2023 |website=Netflix Tudum}}

During the 1960s and 1970s, Spaghetti Westerns from Italy became popular worldwide; this was due to the success of Sergio Leone's storytelling method.{{cite web | last=Butler | first=Nancy | title=Inventing America: Spaghetti Westerns and Sergio Leone | website=Italy Segreta | date=January 27, 2023 | url=https://italysegreta.com/spaghetti-westerns-and-sergio-leone/ | access-date=March 15, 2023}}{{cite web | last=Gray | first=Tim | title=Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns Made a Fistful of Dollars and Clint Eastwood a Star | website=Variety | date=January 4, 2019 | url=https://variety.com/2019/vintage/features/sergio-leone-clint-eastwood-1203097936/ | access-date=March 15, 2023}}

Although experiencing waning popularity during the 1980s, the success of films such as Dances with Wolves (1990) and Unforgiven (1992) brought the genre back into the mainstream. Back to the Future Part III (1990) was "a full-blown Western" set in 1885; although the least commercially successful of the trilogy and according to some a departure from the 1985 original (a sci-fi) and the 1989 sequel (an action adventure), Part III has been regarded by others as a fitting end to the series.{{Cite book |last1=Gilmore |first1=Brad |date=2021 |title=Back From the Future: A Celebration of the Greatest Time Travel Story Ever Told |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5JJWEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT36 |location=Coral Gables |publisher=Mango Publishing Group |pages=36–37 |isbn=9781642507249 |access-date=October 30, 2023}}

At the turn of the 21st century, Westerns have once again seen an ongoing revival in popularity.{{cite journal | last1=Busby | first1=Mark | last2=Buscombe | first2=Edward | last3=Pearson | first3=Roberta E. | title=Back in the Saddle Again: New Essays on the Western | journal=The Western Historical Quarterly | publisher=Oxford University Press (OUP) | volume=30 | issue=4 | year=1999 | issn=0043-3810 | doi=10.2307/971437 | page=520| jstor=971437 }}{{cite journal | last=Kollin | first=Susan | title=Theorizing the Western | journal=Western American Literature | publisher=Project Muse | volume=34 | issue=2 | year=1999 | issn=1948-7142 | doi=10.1353/wal.1999.0081 | pages=238–250| s2cid=166137254 }} Largely influenced by the recapturing of Americana mythology, appreciation for the vaquero folklore within Mexican culture and the US Southwest, interest in the Western lifestyle's music and clothing, along with popular videos games series such as Red Dead.{{cite journal | last=Leyda | first=Julia | title=Black-Audience Westerns and the Politics of Cultural Identification in the 1930s | journal=Cinema Journal | publisher=[University of Texas Press, Society for Cinema & Media Studies] | volume=42 | issue=1 | year=2002 | issn=0009-7101 | jstor=1225542 | pages=46–70 | doi=10.1353/cj.2002.0022 | s2cid=143962868 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225542 | access-date=March 15, 2023}}{{cite web |date=December 15, 2022 |title=Why Everyone Suddenly Loves Westerns Again |url=https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a41830004/modern-westerns-masculinity-men-popularity/ |access-date=March 15, 2023 |website=Men's Health}}{{cite web | last=Penny | first=Daniel | title=Cowboy Boots in the City? Why Western Style Is Trending | website=WSJ | date=June 23, 2021 | url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/cowboy-boots-in-the-city-why-western-style-is-trending-11624463862 | access-date=March 15, 2023}}{{cite magazine | title=Western Fashion 2023: Western Boots, Dresses, and Shirts to Shop | magazine=Harper's BAZAAR | date=August 12, 2022 | url=https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/a40871600/western-fashion-guide/ | access-date=March 15, 2023}}

Themes and settings

Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies Western films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy, claiming that all feature length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres. The other ten super-genres are action, crime, fantasy, horror, romance, science fiction, slice of life, sports, thriller, and war.{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Eric |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AB00DwAAQBAJ |title=The Screenwriters Taxonomy: A Collaborative Approach to Creative Storytelling |date=2017-09-05 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-351-61066-7 |pages=21 |language=en}}

Western films often depict conflicts with Native Americans. While early Eurocentric Westerns frequently portray the Native Americans as dishonorable villains,{{Cite book |last=Indick |first=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NE0-EAAAQBAJ |title=The Psychology of the Western: How the American Psyche Plays Out on Screen |date=2014-11-21 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-9211-4 |pages=17 |language=en |quote=The Western hero himself epitomizes the animus archetype. He is a character that is completely and utterly masculine... In turn, the Native American is often portrayed as the shadow archetype, the representative of savage, wild emotions, and the dark adversary for the hero in their oedipal rivalry over the maternal landscape.}} the later and more culturally neutral Westerns gave Native Americans a more sympathetic treatment.{{Cite book |last=Larson |first=Stephanie Greco |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jIx1LIZPgDgC |title=Media & Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and Entertainment |date=2006 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8476-9453-2 |page=51 |language=en}} Other recurring themes of Westerns include treks (e.g. The Big Trail){{Cite book |last=Hanfling |first=Barrie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Opg-CgAAQBAJ |title=Westerns and the Trail of Tradition: A Year-by-Year History, 1929-1962 |date=2016-04-21 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-1-4766-0836-5 |pages=14 |language=en}} or perilous journeys (e.g. Stagecoach){{Cite book |last=Grant |first=Barry Keith |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fqrJWnPSxK0C |title=John Ford's Stagecoach |date=2003 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-79743-6 |pages=9 |language=en}} or groups of bandits terrorizing small towns such as in The Magnificent Seven.{{Cite book |last=Ferrell |first=William K. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v6zOEAAAQBAJ |title=Literature and Film as Modern Mythology |date=2000-02-28 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-0-313-00286-1 |pages=59–60 |language=en}}

The Western goes beyond simply a cinematic genre, and extends into defining the myth of the West in American culture.{{Rp|pages=21-22}}

Early Westerns were mostly filmed in the studio, as in other early Hollywood films, but when location shooting became more common from the 1930s, producers of Westerns used desolate corners of Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, or Wyoming. These settings gave filmmakers the ability to depict vast plains, looming mountains, and epic canyons.{{Cite book |last=Indick |first=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NE0-EAAAQBAJ |title=The Psychology of the Western: How the American Psyche Plays Out on Screen |date=2014-11-21 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-9211-4 |pages=16–17 |language=en |quote=[T]he role of the landscape is typically accentuated, making the scenery in the Western as equally import a character as the hero or villain... a good Western must import a strong sense of the frontier landscape... to depict the glory and majesty of the frontier landscape.}} Productions were also filmed on location at movie ranches.{{Cite web |date=2014-03-10 |title=Paramount Ranch: Old Movie Town & Westworld Filming Location in Agoura Hills |url=https://californiathroughmylens.com/paramount-ranch-old-movie-town/ |access-date=2022-07-12 |website=California Through My Lens |language=en-US}}

Often, the vast landscape becomes more than a vivid backdrop; it becomes a character in the film. After the early 1950s, various widescreen formats such as Cinemascope (1953) and VistaVision used the expanded width of the screen to display spectacular western landscapes.{{Cite book |last1=Bandy |first1=Mary Lea |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VaLmJwamoxgC |title=Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western |last2=Stoehr |first2=Kevin L. |date=October 2012 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-25866-2 |pages=88 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Lenihan |first=John H. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E3TaxS2uWxQC |title=Showdown, Confronting Modern America in the Western Film |date=1980 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=978-0-252-01254-9 |pages=72 |language=en}} John Ford's use of Monument Valley as an expressive landscape in his films from Stagecoach to Cheyenne Autumn (1965), "present us with a mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West, embodied most memorably in Monument Valley, with its buttes and mesas that tower above the men on horseback, whether they be settlers, soldiers, or Native Americans".{{cite book |last=Cowie |first=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_wNlAAAAMAAJ |title=John Ford and the American West |publisher=Harry Abrams Inc. |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8109-4976-8 |location=New York |pages=12}}

See also

References

{{Reflist}}

{{Film genres}}

Category:Western (genre)

Category:Film genres