77-571: Canyon Passage is a 1946 American Western film directed by Jacques Tourneur and set in frontier Oregon . It stars Dana Andrews , Susan Hayward and Brian Donlevy . Featuring love triangles and an Indian uprising, the film was adapted from the 1945 Saturday Evening Post novel Canyon Passage by Ernest Haycox . Hoagy Carmichael (music) and Jack Brooks (lyrics) were nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Song for " Ole Buttermilk Sky ." In 1856, ambitious freight company and store owner Logan Stuart agrees to escort Lucy Overmire home to
154-561: A "mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West". Specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons, railways, wilderness, and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Many Westerns use a stock plot of depicting a crime, then showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution, which is often dispensed through a shootout or quick draw duel. The Western genre sometimes portrays
231-593: A Dreamer . While living there, he began writing film and literary criticism for The Village Voice , based in Greenwich Village in New York City , Film Comment , and Sight & Sound . In 1974, he moved from Paris to London , where he remained until March 1977, when he was offered a two-semester teaching position at the University of California, San Diego by Manny Farber . Farber had
308-600: A collection of interviews and other materials relating to Welles. Rosenbaum consulted on both the 1998 re-editing of Welles's Touch of Evil (which was based on a lengthy memo written by Welles to Universal Pictures in the 1950s) and the 2018 completion of Welles's The Other Side of the Wind . In August 2007, Rosenbaum marked the passing of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman with an op-ed piece in The New York Times , titled "Scenes from an Overrated Career." He
385-479: A dreamlike Technicolor glow, a pastoral film noir." Elliott Stein of The Village Voice would also call it a "great, dazzling, underrated and unconventional Western...memorable largely for the director’s concentration on the massive beauty of the American landscape." According to Variety , the film earned $ 2,250,000 in rentals in 1946 but resulted in a loss of $ 63,784. Western (genre) The Western
462-659: A drummer and Blythe Danner as a vocalist. He studied literature at Bard with the intention of becoming a writer. Among his professors was German philosopher Heinrich Blücher , whose teaching had a strong effect on Rosenbaum. After graduate school, he moved to New York and was hired to edit a collection of film criticism , which marked his first foray into the field. Rosenbaum moved to Paris in 1969, working briefly as an assistant to director Jacques Tati and appearing as an extra in Robert Bresson 's Four Nights of
539-447: A horse and is armed with a revolver or rifle . The male characters typically wear broad-brimmed and high-crowned Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas , vests , and cowboy boots with spurs . While many wear conventional shirts and trousers, alternatives include buckskins and dusters . Women are generally cast in secondary roles as love interests for the male lead; or in supporting roles as saloon girls, prostitutes or as
616-505: A major influence on Rosenbaum's criticism, but the two men had never met until the latter arrived in San Diego . Rosenbaum was chosen to succeed Dave Kehr as the main film critic for The Chicago Reader ; he served in that position until 2008. In addition, he has written many books on film and its criticism, including Film: The Front Line 1983 (1983), Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism (1995), Moving Places: A Life at
693-481: A number of occasions, famous examples being Support Your Local Sheriff! , Cat Ballou , Mel Brooks 's Blazing Saddles , and Rustler's Rhapsody . George Lucas 's Star Wars films use many elements of a Western, and Lucas has said he intended for Star Wars to revitalize cinematic mythology, a part the Western once held. The Jedi , who take their name from Jidaigeki , are modeled after samurai, showing
770-452: A popular art form. Western films commonly feature protagonists such as 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
847-570: A setting, where it tasked players to lead a party of settlers moving westward in a covered wagon from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon. The game only grew popular in the 1980s and 1990s as an educational game. The first video game Westerns to engage the mass public arrived in arcade games focused on the gunfighter in Westerns based on depictions in television shows, films and Electro-mechanical games such as Dale Six Shooter (1950), and Sega 's Gun Fight (1970). The first of these games
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#1732801220901924-688: A sheriff in fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming . Originally aired on the A&;E network from 2012 to 2014, it was picked up by Netflix in 2015 until the show's conclusion in 2017. AMC and Vince Gilligan's critically acclaimed Breaking Bad is a much more modern take on the Western genre. Set in New Mexico from 2008 through 2013, it follows Walter White ( Bryan Cranston ), a chemistry teacher diagnosed with Stage III Lung Cancer who cooks and sells crystal meth to provide money for his family after he dies, while slowly growing further and further into
1001-414: A very comfortable margin in its favor." The film's reputation has grown substantially over the years despite its sporadic availability. Chris Fujiwara would call it “one of the greatest westerns” in his book The Cinema of Nightfall: Jacques Tourneur and Jonathan Rosenbaum hailed it as perhaps the most complex and most impressive of Tourneur's westerns. Richard Brody of The New Yorker would champion
1078-570: A visiting lecturer at Béla Tarr's Film Factory in Sarajevo , Bosnia. Rosenbaum participated in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll ; he responded with these films as the ten best ever made: Vampir-Cuadecuc , Greed , Histoire(s) du cinéma , I Was Born, But... , Ivan , Rear Window , Sátántangó , Spione , The Wind Will Carry Us , and The World . He chose films other than those he had previously chosen for earlier Sight and Sound top ten lists. Rosenbaum appears in
1155-679: Is a genre of fiction typically set in the American frontier (commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West") between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890, and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States , particularly the Southwestern United States , as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada . The frontier
1232-811: Is a frequent contributor to the DVD Beaver website, where he offers his alternative lists of genre films. He also writes the Global Discovery Column in the film journal Cinema Scope , where he reviews international DVD releases of films that are not widely available. He also writes a column called En Movimiento for the Spanish magazine Caimán Cuadernos De Cine . Rosenbaum was a visiting professor of film at Virginia Commonwealth University 's art history department in Richmond, Virginia from 2010 to 2011. From 2013 to 2015, he taught four times as
1309-589: Is a genre of literature set in the American Old West, most commonly between 1860 and 1900. The first critically recognized Western was The Virginian (1902) by Owen Wister . Other well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey , from the early 1900s, Ernest Haycox , Luke Short , and Louis L'Amour , from the mid 20th century. Many writers better known in other genres, such as Leigh Brackett , Elmore Leonard , and Larry McMurtry , have also written Western novels. The genre's popularity peaked in
1386-512: Is a series of seven books that meshes themes of Westerns, high fantasy , science fiction, and horror. The protagonist Roland Deschain is a gunslinger whose image and personality are largely inspired by the Man with No Name from Sergio Leone's films. In addition, the superhero fantasy genre has been described as having been derived from the cowboy hero, only powered up to omnipotence in a primarily urban setting. The Western genre has been parodied on
1463-443: Is a war film, but its action and characters are Western-like. The character played by Humphrey Bogart in noir films such as Casablanca and To Have and Have Not —an individual bound only by his own private code of honor—has a lot in common with the classic Western hero. In turn, the Western has also explored noir elements, as with films such as Colorado Territory and Pursued . In many of Robert A. Heinlein 's books,
1540-416: Is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for The Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to such notable film publications as Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment . Regarding Rosenbaum, French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard said, "I think there is a very good film critic in
1617-606: Is depicted in Western media as a sparsely populated hostile region patrolled by cowboys , outlaws , sheriffs , and numerous other stock gunslinger characters. Western narratives often concern the gradual attempts to tame the crime-ridden American West using wider themes of justice , freedom, rugged individualism, manifest destiny , and the national history and identity of the United States . Native American populations were often portrayed as averse foes or savages . Originating in vaquero heritage and Western fiction ,
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#17328012209011694-413: Is maintained predominantly through relatively impersonal institutions such as courtrooms . The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a seminomadic wanderer, usually a cowboy or a gunfighter. A showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered
1771-463: Is more interested in the prospect of getting rich quick without hard work. What Logan does not know is that George has been stealing gold dust left in his safekeeping by the miners to pay some of his losses. George also has a secret he is keeping from Lucy; he keeps propositioning Lestrade's wife Marta, though she shows no interest in him. Bragg keeps trying to provoke Logan into a fight and finally succeeds. Logan wins, but does not kill Bragg when he has
1848-757: Is the place to go for music (raucous piano playing), women (often prostitutes ), gambling (draw poker or five-card stud), drinking ( beer , whiskey , or tequila if set in Mexico), brawling, and shooting. In some Westerns, where civilization has arrived, the town has a church, a general store, a bank, and a school; in others, where frontier rules still hold sway, it is, as Sergio Leone said, "where life has no value". Author and screenwriter Frank Gruber identified seven basic plots for Westerns: Gruber said that good writers used dialogue and plot development to develop these basic plots into believable stories. The American Film Institute defines Western films as those "set in
1925-412: Is usually punctuated with a Western music score , including American folk music and Spanish / Mexican folk music such as country , Native American music , New Mexico music , and rancheras . Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid , desolate landscape of deserts and mountains . Often, the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting
2002-1342: The Atari 2600 and Gun Fight (1978) for the Bally Astrocade were derivative of Midway's Gun Fight . These early video games featured limited graphical capabilities , which had developers create Westerns to the most easily recognizable and popular tropes of the gunfighter shootouts. Western radio dramas were very popular from the 1930s to the 1960s. There were five types of Western radio dramas during this period: anthology programs, such as Empire Builders and Frontier Fighters ; juvenile adventure programs such as Red Ryder and Hopalong Cassidy ; legend and lore like Red Goose Indian Tales and Cowboy Tom's Round-Up ; adult Westerns like Fort Laramie and Frontier Gentleman ; and soap operas such as Cactus Kate . Some popular shows include The Lone Ranger (first broadcast in 1933), The Cisco Kid (first broadcast in 1942), Dr. Sixgun (first broadcast in 1954), Have Gun–Will Travel (first broadcast in 1958), and Gunsmoke (first broadcast in 1952). Many shows were done live, while others were transcribed. Westerns have been showcased in short-episodic web series. Examples include League of STEAM , Red Bird , and Arkansas Traveler . Within
2079-537: The Grand Canyon , Yosemite , and the giant redwoods , due in part to exhibitors' inability to switch over to widescreen during the Great Depression . After renewed commercial successes in the late 1930s, the popularity of Westerns continued to rise until its peak in the 1950s, when the number of Western films produced outnumbered all other genres combined. The period from 1940 to 1960 has been called
2156-457: The space opera series Firefly used an explicitly Western theme for its portrayal of frontier worlds. Anime shows such as Cowboy Bebop , Trigun and Outlaw Star have been similar mixes of science-fiction and Western elements. The science fiction Western can be seen as a subgenre of either Westerns or science fiction. Elements of Western films can be found also in some films belonging essentially to other genres. For example, Kelly's Heroes
2233-419: The "Golden Age of the Western". It is epitomized by the work of several prominent directors including Robert Aldrich , Budd Boetticher , Delmer Daves , John Ford , and others. Some of the popular films during this era include Apache (1954), Broken Arrow (1950), and My Darling Clementine (1946). The changing popularity of the Western genre has influenced worldwide pop culture over time. During
2310-432: The 1960s and 1970s, Spaghetti Westerns from Italy became popular worldwide; this was due to the success of Sergio Leone 's storytelling method. After having been previously pronounced dead, a resurgence of Westerns occurred during the 1990s with films such as Dances with Wolves (1990), Unforgiven (1992), and Geronimo (1993), as Westerns once again increased in popularity. When television became popular in
2387-416: The 1960s, due in part to the shuttering of many pulp magazines, the popularity of televised Westerns , and the rise of the spy novel. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and reached a new low in the 2000s. Most bookstores, outside of a few Western states, now only carry a small number of Western novels and short-story collections. Literary forms that share similar themes include stories of
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2464-458: The 1970s. These games and drew on the imagery of a mythic West portrayed in stories, films, television shows, and other assorted Western-themed toys. When game developers went to the imaginary West to create new experiences, they often drew consciously or unconsciously from Western stories and films. The 1971 text-based, Mainframe computer game The Oregon Trail was first game to use the West as
2541-770: The 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism , where he discusses the film criticism of Manny Farber . He has said that his three favorite narrative films are Day of Wrath , Ordet and Gertrud , all directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer , the order depending, "almost entirely on which one I’ve seen most recently". In response to the AFI list of 100 greatest American movies published in 1998, Rosenbaum published his own list, focusing on less well-established, more diverse films. It also includes works by important independent American directors (such as John Cassavetes and Jim Jarmusch ) who were absent from
2618-657: The AFI list. A second list by the AFI incorporated five titles from Rosenbaum's list. In Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons (2004), he appended a more general list of his 1,000 favorite films from all nations; slightly more than half were American. He starred his 100 favorite films on the list, marking both traditionally canonical films such as Greed (silent - ) and Citizen Kane , and harder-to-find films such as Michael Snow's La Région Centrale and Jacques Rivette 's Out 1 . Rosenbaum has compiled "best of
2695-582: The American West that [embody] the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier ". Originally, these films were called "Wild West dramas", a reference to Wild West shows like Buffalo Bill Cody's . The term "Western", used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western fiction , and were firmly in place before film became
2772-514: The American frontier, the gaucho literature of Argentina , and tales of the settlement of the Australian Outback. A number of visual artists focused their work on representations of the American Old West. American West-oriented art is sometimes referred to as "Western Art" by Americans. This relatively new category of art includes paintings, sculptures, and sometimes Native American crafts. Initially, subjects included exploration of
2849-672: The Eastern Bloc, or action films involving the Russian Revolution , the Russian Civil War , and the Basmachi rebellion. Many elements of space-travel series and films borrow extensively from the conventions of the Western genre. This is particularly the case in the space Western subgenre of science fiction. Peter Hyams 's Outland transferred the plot of High Noon to Io, moon of Jupiter. More recently,
2926-722: The Indians have murdered a number of settlers, including Ben Dance and one of his sons. When Bragg seeks the party's protection, Logan refuses and Bragg is killed by the Indians. The Indians are then driven off by Logan's men. Afterward, Logan and Lucy learn that George was found and killed by one of the townsfolk. Caroline also has second thoughts about marriage to a man who is away so frequently on business; she breaks their engagement and accepts Vane. Logan and Lucy are free to follow their hearts. The film's premiere in Portland, Oregon , attracted large crowds. The arrival of Walter Wanger and
3003-611: The Movies (1980; reprint 1995), Movies as Politics (1997), and Essential Cinema (2004). His most popular work is Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See (2002). He has written the best-known analysis of Jim Jarmusch 's film Dead Man ; the book includes recorded interviews with Jarmusch. The book places the film in the acid western subgenre. He edited This Is Orson Welles (1992), by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich ,
3080-524: The Prairie , McCloud , The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams , and the short-lived but highly acclaimed How the West Was Won that originated from a miniseries with the same name. In the 1990s and 2000s, hour-long Westerns and slickly packaged made-for-TV movie Westerns were introduced, such as Lonesome Dove (1989) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman . Also, new elements were once again added to
3157-672: The United States today, a successor of James Agee , and that is Jonathan Rosenbaum. He's one of the best; we don't have writers like him in France today. He's like André Bazin ." Rosenbaum grew up in Florence , Alabama , where his grandfather had owned a small chain of movie theaters. He lived with his father Stanley (a professor) and mother Mildred in the Rosenbaum House , designed by notable architect Frank Lloyd Wright ,
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3234-419: The Western formula, such as the space Western , Firefly , created by Joss Whedon in 2002. Deadwood was a critically acclaimed Western series that aired on HBO from 2004 through 2006. Hell on Wheels , a fictionalized story of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad , aired on AMC for five seasons between 2011 and 2016. Longmire is a Western series that centered on Walt Longmire ,
3311-881: 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). 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
3388-705: The Western states and cowboy themes. Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell are two artists who captured the "Wild West" in paintings and sculpture. After the death of Remington Richard Lorenz became the preeminent artist painting in the Western genre. Some art museums, such as the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming and the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, feature American Western Art. With anime and manga ,
3465-478: The Wild West and modern technology like cars and cellphones, while also focusing primarily on being a Crime drama makes the show a unique spin on both genres. Walter's reliance on the desert environment makes the Western-feel a pivotal role in the show, and would continue to be used in the spinoff series Better Call Saul . The neo-Western drama Yellowstone was streamed from 2018-2024. Western fiction
3542-589: The actors featured a Native American ceremony and a parade through Portland's streets led by Governor Earl Snell . The location photography in Umpqua National Forest and the performances by Hayward and Roc were praised by critics from Time and The New York Times . The unsigned review in the latter regretted the film's reliance on formulaic plot devices and characters typical of "sagebrush melodrama," but concluded that, "[w]eighing its good points against its bad ones, 'Canyon Passage' still has
3619-418: 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
3696-410: The chance. Humiliated, Bragg tries to ride Logan down on his way out of town. George decides to move away to make a fresh start and finally gets Lucy to agree to marry him. Logan then proposes to Caroline and is accepted, much to the disappointment of Vane Blazier, Logan's employee, who is in love with Caroline himself. Lucy decides to accompany Logan to San Francisco to pick out a wedding dress. Along
3773-618: The classic comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s (namely Kid Colt, Outlaw , Rawhide Kid , and Red Ryder ) or more modern ones as Blueberry ), cartoons, and parodies (such as Cocco Bill and Lucky Luke ). In the 1990s and 2000s, Western comics leaned towards the fantasy , horror and science fiction genres, usually involving supernatural monsters, or Christian iconography as in Preacher . More traditional Western comics are found throughout this period, though (e.g., Jonah Hex and Loveless ). Video game Westerns emerged in
3850-752: The conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original, Native American, inhabitants of the frontier. The Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–"frontier justice"–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are often played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them (e.g., True Grit has revenge and retribution as its main themes). This Western depiction of personal justice contrasts sharply with justice systems organized around rationalistic, abstract law that exist in cities, in which social order
3927-430: The crime), Bragg apparently wants to take no chances. On their journey, Logan and Lucy become attracted to each other. They stop one night at the homestead of Ben Dance and his family. There, Logan introduces Lucy to his girlfriend, Caroline Marsh. In Jacksonville, Logan tries to get George to stop playing poker with (and losing to) professional gambler Jack Lestrade, even giving him $ 2000 to pay off his debts, but George
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#17328012209014004-428: The culture, such as spaghetti Westerns (Italy), meat pie Westerns (Australia), ramen Westerns (Asia), and masala Westerns (India). Being period drama pieces, both the Western and samurai genre influenced each other in style and themes throughout the years. The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Akira Kurosawa 's film Seven Samurai , and A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo , which itself
4081-407: 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 (as mentioned above) 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
4158-463: The early 1960s, and their replacement by hour-long television shows, increasingly in color. Traditional Westerns died out in the late 1960s as a result of network changes in demographic targeting along with pressure from parental television groups. Future entries in the genre would incorporate elements from other genera, such as crime drama and mystery whodunit elements. Western shows from the 1970s included Hec Ramsey , Kung Fu , Little House on
4235-496: The film as well, describing it as "a complex array of subplots and side characters that offers a quasi-sociological view of frontier life. The relentless drinking, gambling, gunplay, and battles with Native Americans blend with struggles for love and money to evoke a raw and violent culture that plays, in the year after the Second World War ended, as utterly contemporary; avoiding history and politics, Tourneur serves up, in
4312-475: The genre popularized the Western lifestyle , country - Western music , and Western wear globally. Throughout the history of the genre, it has seen popular revivals and been incorporated into various subgenres. The classic Western is a morality drama , presenting the conflict between wilderness and civilization . Stories commonly center on the life of a male drifter , cowboy , or gunslinger who rides
4389-426: The genre tends towards the science-fiction Western – e.g., Cowboy Bebop (1998 anime), Trigun (1995–2007 manga), and Outlaw Star (1996–1999 manga). Although contemporary Westerns also appear, such as Koya no Shonen Isamu , a 1971 shonen manga about a boy with a Japanese father and a Native American mother, or El Cazador de la Bruja , a 2007 anime television series set in modern-day Mexico. Part 7 of
4466-464: The harshness and isolation of the wilderness, and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Western films generally have specific settings, such as isolated ranches, Native American villages, or small frontier towns with a saloon. Oftentimes, these settings appear deserted and without much structure. Apart from the wilderness, the saloon usually emphasizes that this is the Wild West ; it
4543-466: The heroes of Westerns frequently rescue damsels in distress . Similarly, the wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture. The Western typically takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, although some notable examples (e.g. the later Westerns of John Ford or Clint Eastwood 's Unforgiven , about an old contract killer ) are more morally ambiguous. Westerns often stress
4620-401: The illicit drug market, eventually turning into a ruthless drug dealer and killer. While the show has scenes in a populated suburban neighborhood and nearby Albuquerque , much of the show takes place in the desert, where Walter often takes his RV car out into the open desert to cook his meth, and most action sequences occur in the desert, similar to old-fashioned Western movies. The clash between
4697-717: The influence of Kurosawa. The character Han Solo dressed like an archetypal gunslinger, and the Mos Eisley cantina is much like an Old West saloon. Meanwhile, films such as The Big Lebowski , which plucked actor Sam Elliott out of the Old West and into a Los Angeles bowling alley, and Midnight Cowboy , about a Southern-boy-turned-gigolo in New York (who disappoints a client when he does not measure up to Gary Cooper), transplanted Western themes into modern settings for both purposes of parody and homage. Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943)
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#17328012209014774-406: The larger scope of the Western genre, there are several recognized subgenres. Some subgenres, such as spaghetti Westerns , maintain standard Western settings and plots, while others take the Western theme and archetypes into different supergenres, such as neo-Westerns or space Westerns . For a time, Westerns made in countries other than the United States were often labeled by foods associated with
4851-788: The late 1940s and 1950s, Television Westerns quickly became an audience favorite. Beginning with rebroadcasts of existing films, a number of movie cowboys had their own TV shows. As demand for the Western increased, new stories and stars were introduced. A number of long-running TV Westerns became classics in their own right, such as: The Lone Ranger (1949–1957), Death Valley Days (1952–1970), The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955–1961), Cheyenne (1955–1962), Gunsmoke (1955–1975), Maverick (1957–1962), Have Gun – Will Travel (1957–1963), Wagon Train (1957–1965), The Rifleman (1958–1963), Rawhide (1959–1966), Bonanza (1959–1973), The Virginian (1962–1971), and The Big Valley (1965–1969). The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp
4928-485: The literary descendants of the knights-errant , who stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian romances . Like the cowboy or gunfighter of the Western, the knight-errant of the earlier European tales and poetry was wandering from place to place on his horse, fighting villains of various kinds, and bound to no fixed social structures, but only to his own innate code of honor. Like knights-errant,
5005-461: 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. An exception was The Big Trail, a 1930 American pre-Code Western early widescreen film shot on location across the American West starring 23-year-old John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh. The epic film noted for its authenticity
5082-683: The manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is based in the American Western setting. The story follows racers in a transcontinental horse race, the "Steel Ball Run". Golden Kamuy (2014–2022) shifts its setting to the fallout of the Russo-Japanese War , specifically focusing on Hokkaido and Sakhalin , and featuring the Ainu people and other local tribes instead of Native Americans, as well other recognizable Western tropes. Western comics have included serious entries, (such as
5159-473: The miner's lucky gold nugget is found in George's possession. The locals, led by Johnny Steele, find George guilty of murder and lock him up, intending a late-night lynching . However, when one of the settlers rides in with a warning that the Indians are on the warpath after Bragg killed a woman, Logan helps George escape in the confusion. Logan organizes a party to fight the Indians; Logan's group discovers that
5236-543: The only building by Wright in Alabama. As a teenager, he attended The Putney School in Putney, Vermont , where his classmates included actor Wallace Shawn . He graduated from Putney in 1961. Rosenbaum developed a lifelong interest in jazz as a teenager. He frequently refers to it in his film criticism. He attended Bard College , where he played piano in an amateur jazz ensemble that included future actors Chevy Chase as
5313-432: 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 . Western films were enormously popular in the silent film era (1894–1927). With the advent of sound in 1927–1928,
5390-487: The settlement of Jacksonville, Oregon , along with his latest shipment. Lucy is engaged to Logan's best friend, George Camrose. The night before they depart, however, Logan has to defend himself from a sneak attack in his hotel room; though it is too dark to be sure, he believes his assailant is Honey Bragg. Later, he explains to Lucy that he once saw Bragg leaving the vicinity of two murdered miners. Despite Logan's unwillingness to accuse Bragg (since he did not actually witness
5467-637: The settlement of other planets is depicted in ways explicitly modeled on American settlement of the West. For example, in his Tunnel in the Sky , settlers set out to the planet New Canaan, via an interstellar teleporter portal across the galaxy, in Conestoga wagons , their captain sporting mustaches and a little goatee and riding a Palomino horse—with Heinlein explaining that the colonists would need to survive on their own for some years, so horses are more practical than machines. Stephen King 's The Dark Tower
5544-418: The way, they are ambushed by Bragg. Though their horses are shot dead, Logan and Lucy get away and return to town, only to discover that George is in grave trouble. When a miner appears months earlier than George had expected and informs him that he wants to get his gold the next day, George kills the drunk miner. His crimes are traced back to him as mule-riding musician Hi Linnet saw him stealing some gold, and
5621-486: The wives of pioneers and settlers . The wife character often provides a measure of comic relief . Other recurring characters include Native Americans of various tribes described as Indians or Red Indians, African Americans , Chinese Americans , Spaniards , Mexicans , law enforcement officers , bounty hunters , outlaws , bartenders , merchants , gamblers , soldiers (especially mounted cavalry ), and settlers ( farmers , ranchers , and townsfolk). The ambience
5698-439: Was Midway 's Gun Fight , an adaptation of Taito 's Western Gun (1975) which featured two players against each other in a duel set on a sparse desert landscape with a few cacti and a moving covered wagon to hide behind. Atari 's Outlaw (1976) followed which explicitly framed the shootouts between "good guys" and "outlaws" also borrowing from gunfighter themes and imagery. Early console games such as Outlaw (1978) for
5775-635: Was a financial failure due to Depression era theatres not willing to invest in widescreen technology. 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
5852-470: Was inspired by Red Harvest , an American detective novel by Dashiell Hammett . Kurosawa was influenced by American Westerns and was a fan of the genre, most especially John Ford . Despite the Cold War , the Western was a strong influence on Eastern Bloc cinema, which had its own take on the genre, the so-called Red Western or Ostern. Generally, these took two forms: either straight Westerns shot in
5929-515: Was the first Western television series written for adults, premiering four days before Gunsmoke on September 6, 1955. The peak year for television Westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during primetime. At least six of them were connected in some extent to Wyatt Earp : The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp , Bat Masterson , Tombstone Territory , Broken Arrow , Johnny Ringo , and Gunsmoke . Increasing costs of American television production weeded out most action half-hour series in
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