It feels like we’ve been silhouetted in a doorway with our hand hovering over the low-slung six-shooter on our hip for an age now, waiting for the opportunity to run through our favorite films in one of our very favorite genres — the Western. And so, with the news that this week sees the 25th anniversary of Clint Eastwood‘s “Unforgiven,” the last “true” Western (as opposed to the Coens‘ neo-take “No Country For Old Men“) to win Best Picture and still the best film of Eastwood’s directorial career, we thought, shucks, let’s pull the trigger.
There are few genres that feel as quintessentially part of American cinematic history as the Western. Not only does it imagine the actual mythological history of the nation, but as a cinematic form it’s practically as old as cinema itself: Edwin S Porter‘s 12-minute “The Great Train Robbery” is an early landmark in filmmaking, and is recognizably a Western even a century later. So the tropes and motifs of this genre have become part of the very skeleton of American cinema: very often you find that if you scrape away the sci-fi, action-movie or urban drama flesh from a seemingly completely removed film, you’ll find the bones of a Western beneath.
But here we’re not talking about hybrids, reworked Westerns, neo-Westerns or films that take their foundations from the genre but build different structures off the plans — for a curated selection of those more offbeat titles, check out our “Westerns Not Set in the Old West” or “Snow Westerns” lists. This time, taking our cue from “Unforgiven” we’re mainly looking at the classic Western, as in cowboys, Monument Valley, showdowns, tin stars, spurs and massive skies, under which leathery men carve out the ruggedly individualist paths that make up so much of America’s subconscious idea of itself. These are our 25 favorite Westerns of all time: see you in the comments at noon, with your posse in tow.
25. “Seven Men from Now” (1956)
Budd Boetticher‘s name is not as widely known as many of the other directors on this list, but his Westerns, in particular the seven films he made with star Randolph Scott are gradually being rediscovered and reclaimed as one of the most impressive corpuses of work in the genre. Like other subsequently rehabilitated directors such as Sam Fuller and Don Siegel, Boetticher essentially made B-movies, but his craft and sensibility were such that they transcend that categorization. And none more so than “Seven Men From Now,” his first Scott collaboration, made from a lean, swift-moving 78-minute screenplay, plotted almost as a mystery unfolding from Burt Kennedy who would go on to become a Western director himself (as well as writing Clint Eastwood‘s “White Hunter, Black Heart.”) Scott plays a man on a journey to pick off the men, including ultimate Western baddie Lee Marvin, responsible for his wife’s death during a violent robbery. But it’s the hesitant kinship that springs up between him and the wife of a westward-migrating salesman en route, and Scott’s evocation of his character’s sense of weighty personal guilt that gives this unusually handsome and thoughtful low-budget Western the kind of resonance that brings it close to greatness.
24. “The Magnificent Seven” (1960)
It’s less than a year since Antoine Fuqua’s fine-I-guess remake, but already it feels much less fresh and enduring than John Sturges’ original. I mean, original might be a bit of a stretch in this case, seeing as the film was itself a cowboy-themed remake of “The Seven Samurai,” and while it suffers in comparison to Kurosawa’s stone-cold classic, it’s still a rousing, thrilling adventure, if not the most substantial movie on this list. William Roberts’ screenplay sees a group of Mexican villagers menaced by bandit Calvera (Eli Wallach) turn to gunfighter Yul Brynner for help, who in turn recruits a group of mercenaries and fighters for what could well turn out to be a suicide mission (in case you need it for your next trivia contest — they are, of course, Steve McQueen, Brad Dexter, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn and Horst Buchholz. John Carpenter once described the movie as “the beginning of the end of the great American Western,” and while this list proves that not quite to be the case, there’s certainly an elegiac mood, a sort of proto-Peckinpah feel, that gives it substance, while the clean, characterful action remains rousing half a century on.
23. “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (1976)
“Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy.” Iconic, but also ironic words to issue from the thinly scornful lips of Clint Eastwood, who made a tidy living as an onscreen death-dealer for most of his career. ‘Josey Wales’ co-written by Philip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, is an early directorial triumph from Eastwood, into which he works a surprisingly potent pacifist message (the Vietnam War was ongoing at the time) while skimping on none of the violent thrills. His Wales is a take on his classic Man With No Name archetype, though obviously he has a name, and along with it a grudging moral compass that sees him accumulate a good-naturedly rag-tag band of followers — including an older Cherokee (Chief Dan George), a young Navajo woman, a gun-toting granny, and a hippie-ish love interest. This de facto family comes to replace the wife and child whose murder he’s out to avenge but not before Wales has run their killers to ground — all of which is complicated by tangled lines of Civil War-era loyalty and betrayal. It’s a gently revisionist take that softens the edges of the classic Western, without losing any of its punch, all elevated by the pithily quotable dialogue.
22. “Ride The High Country” (1962)
If, as Carpenter said, “The Magnificent Seven” started the sort of lament for the Western, then Sam Peckinpah was the man who helped to put the final bullets in it, and his first great one, “Ride The High Country,” helped to nail the kind of mournful approach to the genre that would become his trademark. Veteran genre stars Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott play Steve Judd and Gil Westrum, a pair of former lawmen in early 20th century California, reunited to guard a shipment of gold, only for it to be complicated both by Gil’s plans to rob the cargo, and by their rescue of a young woman from her drunken, murderous fiancé and his brothers. It’s a quiet, almost gentle film in some respects (certainly more so than some of Peckinpah’s later Western classics), one that, while it has strong work across the board (Mariette Hartley is terrific as the complex woman who forces the men to action), lives and dies on that central relationship between Scott and McCrea, one that, you suspect, “Unforgiven” wouldn’t have existed without.
21. “The Naked Spur” (1953)
Though he did fine work in other genres (noir with “Side Street,” historical epic with “El Cid”), Anthony Mann is undoubtedly best associated with the Western, a genre that few mastered to the extent that he did, as you might imagine from him having three movies on this list. The first is this taut, stripped-down picture that unites him for the third time (and their first Western: they’d go on to make four more together) with regular collaborator James Stewart, who plays a bounty hunter during the Civil War tasked with finding a murderer (Robert Ryan), and the woman (Janet Leigh) who forms the third point of a triangle between them. It’s almost minimalist in its intimacy (just five characters in the whole movie), but big in its themes of greed, guilt and salvation. Mann makes the landscape just as crucial a part a movie as the characters, and those characters are brought to life by some terrific performances, including Ryan’s lovably charismatic villain, and Stewart subverting his goody-two-shoes image five years before “Vertigo.”
Great list, lots of memories. I’d also cast a last place vote for Jack Elam in Support Your Local Gunfighter/Sheriff.
1. Once Upon A Time In The West
2. The Wild Bunch
3. Unforgiven
4. Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid
5. The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Silverado
Newman pushes Ross in the bicycle to Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_5l6rIUu4A
Nice catch….
THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE’s greatness is undercut by the fact that the leads are about two decades too old for their characters.
Tourneur’s CANYON PASSAGE isn’t even in your honorable mentions when it might be the best film in the whole genre? WICHITA? Delmer Daves’ THE HANGING TREE (a much better film than 3:10 TO YUMA)?
Definitely Silverado, most definitely the 3:10 To Yuma remake for Ben Foster’s performance alone & I was pleasantly surprised by the recent Magnificent Seven remake.
Lonesome Dove is the greatest of all time. Yes, I know it’s a miniseries
Yes, it was a miniseries and one that stands out. It portrayed just how hard life really was at that time. The Gunsmoke series with James Arness and the gang were also very good, well written, accounts of survival back in the days when life was far more difficult than the contemporary world can only imagine.
The latest mini series in the western genre which will become a classic, is Netflix’s original production of “Godless”. Original story, and compelling characters.
100% agree with Silverado. Also wondering why no mention of Young Guns. Thouroughly enjoyable ensemble film. Deserves at least an honorable mention IMO.
Couple thoughts on my mind about this list:
– Really surprised Good Bad Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West are ranked where they are. I’d consider both top 60 films ever made, wonderful stuff.
– Glad to see El Topo here. Batshit awesome insanity.
– Very happy to see The Searchers NOT get the #1 position. Such an overrated film, mixing beautiful cinematography with a slapdash story and inane characters (why is so much screentime devoted to Wayne’s partner getting into a stupid love triangle and interuppting a wedding with a goofy slapstick fist fight?) And having the main villain die off camera and…nevermind, I could go for hours about how The Searchers is barely a good movie, let alone a great one, let alone one of the greatest ever. At least it wasn’t your #1.
– BRAVO for including Jesse James so high. Easily my favourite western, absolutely beautiful film. Saw it in a completely empty theatre in 2007, and was just awstruck. Really hope it eventually finds the audience it deserves and continues being mentioned so highly on lists like this.
The Long Riders, directed by Walter Hill.
SEARCHERS’ reputation is somewhat strange. If you look at the SIGHT AND SOUND list of great films, it really sticks out among the other films.
Many of them were clearly made to be great works of art, masterpieces… like 2001, PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, 8 1/2, CITIZEN KANE. Some have purity as personal projects, like PERSONA, TOKYO STORY, AU HASARD BALTHASAR, RULES OF THE GAME. Some were groundbreaking films, true revolutions in style and expression: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA.
Some are clearly Hollywood, but they have consistency of vision. The obsession of Hitchcock’s hypnotic VERTIGO or the exuberance of SINGING IN THE RAIN.
In contrast, THE SEARCHERS has none of those qualities. It was meant as action entertainment than for masterpiece status. A lot of care went into it, but Ford was not trying to make art. Besides, despite his own way of doing things, Ford never tried to be a personal artist. He was a professional and craftsman, entertainer and storyteller. Also, THE SEARCHERS was not stylistically innovative. Had it not existed, the progression of film language would have been the same. And unlike obsessive VERTIGO and cheerful SINGING IN THE RAIN that have consistency of tone and purpose, THE SEARCHERS is all over the map, from tragedy to comedy to realism to escapism. It’s so different from SEVEN SAMURAI where Kurosawa creates a setting with key characters and sticks with the mood. Even though Seven Samurai has tragic and funny moments, they all unfold in a world of humanist-action-realism. In contrast, THE SEARCHERS is sometimes far more serious than most Hollywood Westerns but sometimes sillier, and sometimes, it’s happy to be just another Western with all the familiar conventions, even cliches, but then lurches into dark areas that come closer to the vision of Nicholas Ray.
It’s not a Masterpiece like most masterpieces. Much of it is half-serious, some of it’s just downright silly, and even some of the serious stuff is more of the same of a very familiar genre. Most characters are stock figures we’ve seen many times in Ford movies and other Westerns. Some are downright caricatures.
Yet, the sum of its parts add up to greatness. Not grand Greatness but a simpler kind of greatness. Its lack of purity, its running all over the map in meaning-tone-purpose-depth-style, always keeps it moving. It’s like an amusement ride with lots of turns and curves. And that lack of commitment to aesthetic and/or ethical purity somewhat makes it more lifelike even though it’s very Hollywood and very genre.
Greeks had tragedies and comedies. But life is usually a mix of two modes and everything in between.
And people are hardly consistent. They don’t exclusively inhabit a tragic universe or a comic universe but find themselves on a bumpy ride, up and down, left and right. (THE SEARCHERS often goes offside.) Also, most people are stereotypes and pretty predictable. They are walking-talking cliches and go through the usual routines. They have habits of mind than minds. And yet, despite the familiarity of things and people around us, we are surprised by events and by emotions that come out of nowhere. THE SEARCHERS is very much like that. It is a most familiar movie with some big surprises.
And Wayne’s character and the movie convey that topsy turvy and cantankerous spirit. And this spirit is close to the organismic way of life. Humans are animals, and animals too live in a funny-horror world. Animals like to play and have fun, but they experience intense moments of fear. And all die horribly and ‘tragically’ of old age, disease, weakness, hunger, or being hunted by other animals or by man. Animal documentaries capture both sides of life. Animals goofing around, having fun, doing thrilling/exciting things but also struggling in blood and mud, suffering setbacks, exhibiting rage and terror, and dying horribly of hunger, disease, or violence.
And THE SEARCHERS, more than most movies, capture the wild contradictions of humanity and America. In this light, its silliness and seriousness are part of a vision of life.
Though scholars tend to talk of it in serious, tragic, and dark terms — the dark character of Ethan, a ‘racist’, goes from rescue mission to revenge mission and may even kill the girl — , so much of the movie is funny. Scoresese discusses it in the most serious manner, but in MEAN STREETS, he shows a bunch of guys reacting to it with gales of laughter.
Old Mose is hilarious. The scene where Marty takes a bath interrupted by Vera Miles is a riot. The guitar-player guy who goes ‘huh huh huh’ is a ridiculous character. It gets even more ridiculous because he talks funny but sings beautifully. When the goofball starts to strum his guitar and sing a tune, we can see how he might eventually win Laurie’s heart.
There were other Westerns in the 50s that were just as dark, serious, and thoughtful as THE SEARCHERS. Ford was not alone in revising the meaning of the Western, and others went even deeper in digging through the myth. And yet, SEARCHERS is more memorable because it’s not just serious, sober, deep, or dark. It’s because it’s so funny and childlike at times. It has the furies but also the muses and graces. The violence goes from harrowing to slapstick. Marty, the reasonable foil to Ethan throughout the movie, turns into an ear-biting savage in his fight with the guitar player for the girl… and she likes it, she likes it. It’s like a movie made by someone whose IQ and maturity vacillates wildly from 70 to 130. Some of the jokes are close to THREE STOOGES but some moments have the cathartic power of great tragedies. It is crass but has elements of class, especially in the opening scene and closing scene that are handled masterfully.
And there are moments that are funny and disturbing at the same time. The one that comes to mind is when Ethan uses Marty as bait near the campfire. It is funny as hell but it was a matter of life and death. And three people did get killed in the failed assassination. But Ethan treats it like just a game and expects Marty to just take it like a man. And even as Ford registers Marty’s rage, he also laughs along with the Duke. Ford captures what it means to be a man in a tough world. But he also shows the crude side of this cult of manhood. There is something brutal and beastly about Ethan, but we can’t help but admire him as a survivor and warrior in a tough world. And even though we would like to see a better world without war and brutality, we would also miss out on men like Ethan whose true worth is manifest only in a world of struggle and violence. It’s like the men in BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES are glad to be back home, but as civilians, they have no risk and heroism in their lives. Even as Marty sticks close to Ethan to save Debbie, he also likes to follow Ethan as mentor who can handle himself in that part of the world. And Ethan isn’t a dark soul all the time. Sometimes, he’s like a kid. And despite his trepidation about Marty’s mixed blood, he seems oblivious to Marty’s relation with Vera Miles’ character and is willing to bequeath his property to him.
PC would have us believe in simple dichotomies. Unless a white person is prog, he is a ‘nazi’ or ‘racist’. THE SEARCHERS shows how people are much bigger than any label.
No mention of “Hombre” starring Richard Boone and Paul Newman? “Mister you gotta lot of hard bark on you comin down here.”
Some not on the list that I really like too :
No Name On The Bullet
The Stalking Moon
Red Hill
3:10 To Yuma (1957)
Day Of The Outlaw
etc.