Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, one of the best of all time. Casting, music, story, camera work, all great. Robert Mitchum's last appearance on screen.
Posted on 11/13/2010 9:31:23 AM PST by JoeProBono
"What components make a western truly great? That depends on who's asking, as there are so many subgenres and different takes. There's the classic, the Spaghetti western, the singing cowboy western, the comedy western and the contemporary western. We tend to favor the slow-moving epics à la Leone over fast shoot-'em-ups, and our gunslingers and cowboys to be complex, stoic characters faced with morally difficult situations we believe are microcosms for all of life. There were many contenders for this very American genre—even though some of the finest were shot by an Italian. We've also tried to include a couple of rare choices that do not easily spring to mind, such as the Australian oeuvre "The Proposition." After all, you can Google John Wayne yourself. But what list of top westerns would be complete without The Duke?"
Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, one of the best of all time. Casting, music, story, camera work, all great. Robert Mitchum's last appearance on screen.
I was naming off the top of my head and I completely forgot about The Ox Bow Incicent.
It is a greatmovie.
I would replace Dead Man with that if I started trying to pare all the westerns I like down to a Top 10.
That little kid is almost as tall as Alan Ladd on a horse! Heh, heh.
That’s another great movie!
But for some reason I can never remember its title. When I try to recommend it to someone else as a ‘great western’ I can remember the plot, the actors, almost everything about it except the title.
For what it’s worth, I consider it to be Burl Ives’ best acting performance.
It was actually the magnificent Six because Robert Vaughn was such a puke.
Everett Hitch: That was quick.
Virgil Cole: Yeah, everybody could shoot.
A lousy movie but one great line.
I’ll have to check out the original. The new one is my all time favorite Western.
I'm not familiar with it, I am not a big Western fan, but saw Lonesome Dove on accident and got hooked. Then I saw 3:10 to Yuma (the new one) and am now on a Western kick... I am sure some FReeper will recall the movie you are thinking of.
Lets don’t forget “Hondo” and “She wore a Yellow Ribbon” and “Stage Coach”
bestpart of the whole movie....
Charley: You the one killed our friend?
Butler: That’s right. I shot the boy, too.
BANG!
Crumple.
Nice selection!
The Wild Bunch
Jeremiah Johnson
Tombstone
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Will Penny
Dances with Wolves
Wyatt Earp (Kevin Costner version)
The Searchers
The Long Riders
True Grit
High Noon must lead the parade because it was such an iconic Western. An Academy award winner, and rightly so because it met one test of a great movie which is the degree to which it sets a genre or at least establishes a standard which succeeding attempts must equal. High Noon was a morality play and a psychological Western and as such it was the first of the lot. Shot in black and white it had a feeling of authenticity. The acting throughout was superb and the movie had almost perfect pacing building to the crescendo gunfight at the end. However, the movie was not a formula piece but an icon breaker and therefore it became itself iconic. Not incidentally, the music was perfect pitch.
The Long Riders, a movie which broke new ground or at least capitalized on newly breaking ground changing the way violence was depicted by the use of slow-motion and sound effects especially when bullets struck bodies. This had been done by Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch but it was also done effectively in The Long Riders. The movie is especially interesting for its depiction of the rebel society in Missouri which populated the area before, during, and after the Civil War and which caused such terrible suffering. The movie revealed the almost hypocritical striving for gentility and for something more noble than mere murder and robbery which was the occupation of the protagonists. Were they the product of a border war or did they grab onto that border mayhem to rationalize their own brutality? Ry Coders music was perfect and I was especially intrigued by his version of, "I'm a good old rebel." The music CD from the movie is great.
The Wild Bunch. Here is a movie in the Sam Peckinpah genre done so well that at the end you cannot identify and separate the good guys from the bad guys. The acting was superb and the shock value of the scenes of violence produced the kind of ambivalence about evil and good and confusion about identifying which was which that Sam Peckinpah sought.
Will Penny. This is a delightful gem of the little movie with Charlton Heston in the lead. As an exploration of the cowboy mentality there is scarcely a film that can rival it.
Wyatt Earp and Tombstone came out within a year of each other and I think Tombstone is by far the more interesting and original treatment.
Kostner came closer with Dances With Wolves but I found his political correctness cloying and off-putting. The theme can be summed up: Indians -excuse me, Native Americans good, White men bad. There is a far better film, Black Robe, which is a Dances With Wolves for grownups and presents an adult look at the clash between Red and White in 17th century Canada. But for sweep and cinematic grandeuer of a kind which goes back to The Searchers, Kostner must be acknowledged and the popularity of the effort cannot be denied. Music good to great in both the Costner and adult versions.
Jeremian Johnson. Robert Redford paves the way for Costner with political correctness in this movie but I am just a sucker for mountain man movies and this is clearly the best of the genre.
True Grit. Although not his last, True Grit is really Wayne's grand farewell and grand it is. The movie works because it follows the first rule, it lets character determine plot and Wayne carries off the character as no one else could (or can). The movie is notable not only for its scenic beauty but for the deliberate use of contemporary 19th century frontier speech patterns. Well done, Duke!
I haven’t seen all the westerns mentioned, but my favorites
are:
1)Good, Bad and the Ugly
2)For a few dollars more
I like the grittiness, the attention to the ramshackle western
pioneers, some beautiful italian music,the sometimes depraved, but can do attitude of all the characters,
bad, or good. Somehow I picture the west to have been more of that
versus the clean sets,clean clothes, organized plots, catchy music “American” made
western. Shane had a very good moral dilemna, although I
thought it took toooo loooong before he realized that he had
to fight.
If I were to pick my all time favorite it would be “The Searchers”. I thought Pale Rider was well done, too.
“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
Anyone mention The Magnificent Seven? “We deal in lead friend.”
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