Ten Great Westerns To Scratch That Frontier Itch

With the release of The English on the BBC and 1923 on Paramount+, the Western is back on our screens. But did it ever really go away? Here’s ten essential Westerns for you to catch up on what you’ve missed.

From the early 1900s to homages in The Mandalorian, the Western has survived and adapted in many forms. Its trademarks are immediately recognisable: the mounted figure silhouetted against the eternal prairies, the stylised shootouts that explode after drawn-out silences, the stirring music, and the clash of law and lawlessness, industry and nature, life and death. If you’ve found yourself sleeping on the undisputed former champions of the box office, here are ten great Westerns to get you in the stirrups.  

The Classical Western

Shane 

Released in 1953, Shane is the Golden Era’s quintessential Western. Alan Ladd stars as the title character who drifts into a valley settlement to work with the farmers. At first a stranger with a gun, he soon joins the townsfolk in repelling the capitalist cattle baron who is after their land. Gloriously shot, the final showdown against Jack Palance’s ‘Man in Black’ is one for the ages, with a wizened dog slinking out of the saloon before the bullets sing. The relationship between Shane and young lad Joey also served as an influence on James Mangold’s Logan – “there’s no living with a killing.”

Rio Bravo 

Have you ever been so offended by a film that you went and made your own in retaliation? Well, John Wayne and Howards Hawks have. Appalled by High Noon’s perceived anti-patriotism and left-wing values, the actor and director made Rio Bravo to solidify American individualism and that rugged fighting spirit. The themes are muddled, but Rio Bravo is tightly made into a claustrophobic thriller; a Western cabin-fever picture that brought Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan some of their most loved roles. It even inspired such eighties staples as Aliens and the films of John Carpenter. 

The Revisionist Western

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

No genre has been more academically and thematically revised than the Western (mainly because Hollywood did not perpetuate as many myths as truth in other genres). John Ford is a legend among Western fans, yet he is guilty of empowering the white man’s Manifest Destiny and erasing the Native American Indian perspective with his earlier films. Seeking amends in the 1960s, Ford made Cheyenne Autumn and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The latter is especially good in how it deconstructs the West with the simple line “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Shot on sound stages and in black and white, Ford strips the natural beauty away in favour of focusing on the characters. It was a bold move, but it remains the immortal Revisionist Western. 

The Outlaw Josey Wales

Clint Eastwood is 92 years old and still got on a horse for his most recent film, Cry Macho. An enduring titan of the genre, Eastwood has acted and directed some of the very best in the business. His 1976 classic The Outlaw Josey Wales is an all-round wonderful film, balancing a vivid array of characters with a wiser perspective that allegorically encompassed the Vietnam War. Eastwood explodes into action with an almighty kill-count here, but the heart of the film can be felt through the performance of Chief Dan George as Lone Watie. The screenplay is an accomplishment in blending humour, excitement, horror and melancholy. And Eastwood gets one of his longest speeches with the great Will Sampson as Ten Bears.

The Spaghetti Western

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 

The Italians proved to be just as skilled (if not slightly more so, if your first name is Sergio) as the Americans when it came to making Westerns. Seizing advantage of the decline of the genre in the early 1960s, Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars’ trilogy made a star of Clint Eastwood and reinvented the cinematic lingo for the frontier. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the essential text; a dizzyingly entertaining epic that boasts one of the ultimate film scores and the most monumentally brilliant standoff in film history. Eli Wallach is despicably likeable as Tuco, from his chicken-clutching introductory freezeframe to his squirmish final moments. But the Italian grit is on display here with the profound irony, nihilism, violence being as jarring for the genre as all of the dirty, unshaven faces.

The Great Silence

Sergio Corbucci made his own mark with the Spaghetti Western, first with Django and then with The Great Silence. Corbucci preferred left-wing metaphors in his Westerns and this 1968 film examines the injustices caused by the state and the victimisation of the needy. The film is also a bruising parable for the assassinations of Malcolm X and Che Guevara, containing an ending so bleak it will haunt you forever. Filmed in swirling, snowy landscapes with an Ennio Morricone score, Corbucci’s film is a hostile take-down of the classical American Western. 

The Anti-Western

McCabe & Mrs Miller

Never one to make a conformist film, director Robert Altman proclaimed this 1971 an “anti-Western,” whilst Roger Ebert proclaimed it as “perfect.” John McCabe is an aspiring businessman who heads west to the town of Presbyterian Church to set up a saloon. Mrs Miller is the cockney prostitute who comes to run the saloon with her pragmatic style. If the principal characters sound completely different to Western archetypes, then get a load of Vilmos Zsigmond’s flashy cinematography, which paints the authentic production design into a photographic quality, and Leonard Cohen’s eerily beautiful songs soundtracking the moody picture. The snowy setting emanates cold chills from the television, and the final shootout, which features dishonourable kills and a tonne of cowardice, is so different from anything else in Hollywood it could only have been made by Altman. 

The Fading West

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 

Many great Westerns were set in the 20th century to reflect on the dying days of the Old West. The Wild Bunch in particular lamented the arrival of the automobile and the Temperance Movement. But 1969 also produced another of the same ilk: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s star-power reached new heights with this anachronistic buddy film that sees the two crooks rob banks right down to Bolivia, where fate catches up with them. Known for the witty dialogue (“The fall will probably kill ya!”) and the final freeze frame shot, it is also worth observing Conrad Hall’s sepia-toned cinematography which gives the sense the audience is flicking through a museum exhibition on the Old West. 1969 was truly the end of an era for the genre. 

The 21st Century Western

3:10 to Yuma 

The 21st century has many notable Westerns, with several being high-profile remakes. James Mangold mastered this tricky assignment in 2007 with 3:10 to Yuma, a lean, powerful film that brought Christian Bale and Russell Crowe into the saddle. Bale’s Dan Evans is an honourable but downtrodden farmer looking to earn some money and respect from his wayward son by escorting Crowe’s sleek but menacing outlaw to the train to prison. With a brilliant Ben Foster, Peter Fonda and Logan Lerman in tow, Mangold’s craftsmanship is impeccable. The action is exciting, the score is truly astonishing and the subversion of the original 1957 film’s ending is a real gasp moment. An easy gateway to the genre. 

No Country for Old Men 

The Western’s iconography has evolved with the prominence of the ‘neo-Western,’ with films like Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River all belonging to this sub-genre (Taylor Sheridan is the connective tissue here). But the Coen brothers bagged Best Picture and Director gongs for their 2007 thriller No Country for Old Men, a film that set Javier Bardem up for numerous villain roles and an instant trip to the barbers. After Josh Brolin’s Moss stumbles upon $2 million in cash, a cat and mouse pursuit begins. Hot on his heels is Bardem’s psychopathic killer wielding a captive bolt pistol and Tommy Lee Jones as an ageing Sheriff. Lensed by Roger Deakin’s shadowy trademarks and visualising author Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name with a macabre darkness, the Coens brought the Western into the modern era with a bang. 

Words by Jacob Hando

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