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Western film
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, 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. Originally referred to as “Wild West dramas”, the shortened term “Western” came to describe the genre. Although other Western films were made earlier, The Great Train Robbery (1903) is often considered to mark the beginning of the genre. 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 made up roughly a quarter of studio output. The advent of color and widescreen during this era opened up new possibilities for directors to portray the vastness of the American landscape. 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. Director John Ford is often considered one of the genre’s greatest filmmakers.
With the proliferation of television in the 1960s, television Westerns began to supersede film Westerns in popularity. 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. 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.
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. Film critic Philip French has said that the Western is “a commercial formula with rules as fixed and immutable as the Kabuki Theater.” 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.
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).
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.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”. 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. Jesse James Under the Black Flag (1921) was an early full-length silent feature Western starring Jesse James Jr as his father.
With the advent of sound in 1927–28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, 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.
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. The period from 1940 to 1960 has been called the “Golden Age of the Western”.
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.” During the 1960s and 1970s, Spaghetti Westerns from Italy became popular worldwide; this was due to the success of Sergio Leone’s storytelling method in the Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy featuring Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), as well as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). 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. At the turn of the 21st century, Westerns have once again seen an ongoing revival in popularity. 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 video games series such as Red Dead.
Western film
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, 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. Originally referred to as “Wild West dramas”, the shortened term “Western” came to describe the genre. Although other Western films were made earlier, The Great Train Robbery (1903) is often considered to mark the beginning of the genre. 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 made up roughly a quarter of studio output. The advent of color and widescreen during this era opened up new possibilities for directors to portray the vastness of the American landscape. 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. Director John Ford is often considered one of the genre’s greatest filmmakers.
With the proliferation of television in the 1960s, television Westerns began to supersede film Westerns in popularity. 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. 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.
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. Film critic Philip French has said that the Western is “a commercial formula with rules as fixed and immutable as the Kabuki Theater.” 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.
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).
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. 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”. 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. Jesse James Under the Black Flag (1921) was an early full-length silent feature Western starring Jesse James Jr as his father.
With the advent of sound in 1927–28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, 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.
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. The period from 1940 to 1960 has been called the “Golden Age of the Western”.
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.” During the 1960s and 1970s, Spaghetti Westerns from Italy became popular worldwide; this was due to the success of Sergio Leone’s storytelling method in the Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy featuring Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), as well as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). 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. At the turn of the 21st century, Westerns have once again seen an ongoing revival in popularity. 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 video games series such as Red Dead.
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