The greatest westerns not set in "the West"
Aug 14 '02 (Updated Aug 17 '02)
The Bottom Line Three lists for the price of one?
Having grown up in a "Midwest" that any map shows in the eastern half of the United States and living more than half of my life west of "the West" where westerns take place, I was perhaps destined to produce a list of the best "westerns" not set in the US "West."
I have a weakness for "North to Alaska" (1960 with Ernie Kovacks John Wayne, Capucine, and Fabian) seen at an impressionable age and "The Wrath of God" (1972), Rita Hayworth's last film with Robert Mitchum as a fake priest and Frank Langella as a virulently anticlerical fanatic ) because I saw it in a theater in a small town in southern Mexico with an audience that found it wonderfully hilarious. Both are great fun, but not serious contenders for any "best" list. Given that "the West" seems to be east of the Sierra Nevadas and that it is set in California before it was annexed by the US, perhaps I can include the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) The Mark of Zorro? It is more conventionally heroic than anything else on my list.
I don't know which of the Anthony Mann films with James Stewart ranging from irritable to psychotic is the best (and have been told that the one I haven't seen, "The Man from Laramie" is the best), but the one that fits on this list is The Far Country (1955) in which Stewart has some difficulties in getting cattle from Seattle to Alaska. It has a particularly entertainingly suave corrupt judge (and has Walter Brennan, who won one of his three Oscars for playing Judge Roy Bean).
The most essential "northwestern" is Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The first title role is one of very few in which I find Warren Beatty bearable. In the second is the incomparable Julie Christie as an opium-addicted madame/prostitute. It is beautifully photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond and uses a group of mournful, nearly tuneless, Leonard Cohen songs to great effect (in contrast to the distracting, often saccharine ballads that marred so many 1950s westerns, beginning with Fritz Lang's "Rancho Notorious").
Two of my favorites begin or end on Mexico's east coast with American schemers/drifters: an oily Burt Lancaster and an earnest Gary Cooper switching sides from that of the Hapsburg Emperor Maxmillian to the revolutionaries in Robert Aldrich's entertaining Vera Cruz (1954) and the the gold prospectors in John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) including the increasingly psychotic Fred C. Dobbs played by Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston winning an Oscar for playing one of those grizzled avuncular roles Walter Brennan played in Howard Hawks movies. A lot of bullets fly in the former; none that I remember in the latter, though something els eimportantly flies at the end.
Richard Brooks's The Professionals (1966) similarly involves switching sides--returning Claudia Cardinale from her abductor, caudillo Jack Palance and changing their minds. The "professionals" live up to that name with some ingenuous derring-do by Burt Lancaster and Woody Strode. Lee Marvin gets to shake his head and sigh a lot at the residual idealism of Lancaster and Robert Ryan.
Sam Peckinpagh's The Wild Bunch (1969) is a serious contender for the "great American movie" competition. Although it starts with vicious American children, most of it takes place in Mexico, where an aging gang of Academy Award winners (William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson) take on the impossible task of rescuing the Mexican pretty boy named Angel (Jaime Sanchez) who was snatched by some caudillo before the bounty hunters led by their former partner Robert Ryan hunts them down. Along with the legendary editing and what is remembered as inventing slo-mo death (whether or not it did), "The Wild Bunch" has a complement of great performances.
There was a great ensemble cast in Akira Kurosawa's film of drifting swordsmen (rather than gunmen) who decide to protect a village of farmers from depredation, Seven Samurai (1954). The version placed in the American West, "The Magnificent Seven," is fun and has a catchy musical theme, but "Seven Samurai" is a great film, "The Magnificent Seven" only a good movie. Toshior Mifune is the most memorable (most flamboyant) of the samurais, and places the central role in my favorite western not set in "the West," Yojimbo (1961) and its seqel, Sanjuro (1963). In both Mifune plays a crafty masterless samurai playing off violent factions off against each other. In the second, he has a group of earnest followers trying to save a man who has been framed by a corrupt official. Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" derives fairly directly from "Yojimbo," the 1996 Bruce Willis "Last Man Standing" credits Kurosawa's story, though Willis is no Mifune (and director Walter Hill no Akira Kurosawa) and the callow troop of "Sanjuro" seems to me imitated by "The Cowboys" organized by John Wayne.
Kurosawa admired John Ford and the adaptations to the American West of Kurosawa's irony-filled portratis of a ronin constantly pressed to draw his sword and show what he could do with it is analogous to gunfighters who don't want to be bothered but have to keep on drawing their guns.
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I do have a list of westerns set in the American West, too, which I will elaborate upon if I can post two lists... and try to rank order.
John Ford has to occupy more than one slot and I'd include the two "revisionist" westerns "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" with the hard, elegaic, and scenic cavalry trilogy "Fort Apache/She Wore a Yellow Ribbon/Rio Grande" (the last is the least, but still a masterpiece).
There have to be two Howard Hawks's films: "Red River" and "Rio Bravo."
Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" is my favorite western (though I like its Ennio Morricone soundtrack, I think his "Hang 'Em High" one is his best) with its almost abstract opening and the shock of Henry Fonda as a ruthless killer. Plus the indomitable Claudia Cardinale.
Bob Dylan ("Brownsville Girl") guarantees a slot for Gregory Peck as "The Gunfighter" and Peck was also very impressive as the man obsessed with revenge in "The Bravados" (matching John Wayne's vengeful character in "The Searchers").
Bob Dylan also propels Sam Peckinpagh's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" onto my list--not for his acting (he is not given a whole lot to do) but for how "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is used with Katy Jurado's heart visibly breaking. As the title characters, Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn have the right combinations of charm and despair, but the old couple of Andy Devine and Katy Jurado is more affecting and memorable than the title characters.
I'm not sure that George Stevens's "Shane" is a western, although there is a long-building shoot-out between Alan Ladd and Jack Palance. It's a great movie and including it simplifies choosing among some other outstanding westerns"
Other contenders:
I think that the reluctant manhunter Walter Matthau provided in "Lonely Are the Brave" is oustanding in the adaptation of Edward Abbey's novel starring Kirk Douglas. I admire this more than Peckinpagh's "Ride the High Country," I need to see "Bend of the River" again (and "The Man from Laramie" for the first time along with several suggestions made in comments). The very gritty Robert Aldrich film "Ulzana's Raid" also deserves serious consideration (though I have an Aldrich-Lancaster film on my outside-the-west list: "Vera Cruz") and perhaps John Huston's "The Unforgiven" (which I don't remember much about) also with Lancaster.
My favorite western comedies: "Little Big Man," "The Ballad of Cable Hogue," "The Hallelujah Trail," "A Big Hand for the Little Lady," "True Grit," "The Wrath of God," "Blazing Saddles," "Destry Rides Again," "The Cheyenne Social Club" (for when James Stewart's patience finally runs out on the long ride from Texas to Wyoming), and "Johnny Guitar" (not, I think, intended as a comedy: Joan Crawford and Mercedes MacCambridge seem to really hate each other).
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