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Favourite western?

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We did this at the old place, but I find such threads useful reference points so what the hey. Your favourite western? And why? Me – there are many, but I’ll say “The good, the bad and the ugly” for reasons too many to list, but, oooh, the music, Clint, Eli Walach, the atmosphere…it’s a masterpiece. And at the other end of the scale, “Silverado” – rites of passage buddy movie, great cast, cool, funny, unpredictable – who saw the cows coming the first time they saw it? Costner on fire…baddies super bad, goodies flawed but good , Kevin Kline – here’s to the good stuff.

No monster lists – just the ones you really like.

You?

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Comments

    • Yes, Unforgiven. That gets my vote, too.

      The Schofield Kid: [after killing a man for the first time] It don’t seem real… how he ain’t gonna never breathe again, ever… how he’s dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.
      Will Munny: It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
      The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.
      Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid.

      How much more Clint could it be? None. None more Clint.

  5. Yes, it’s very sentimental and awful in so many ways, but I still have a soft spot for the John Ford film “3 Godfathers”, which basically is “Three Men and a Baby” in the desert with added Christian morality…!
    John Wayne plays one of three soft-hearted bandits, taking care of an orphan baby while on the run from the sherriff’s posse.
    Yup, it’s weird, but that’s why I like it.
    I’m not a big fan of westerns actually. Marlon Brando is in one that I liked (it could be the one called “One-Eyed Jacks” but I’m not sure) but the reason I loved it was that he was so incredibly beautiful in that film! I don’t even remember what it was about, I was too busy drooling over Brando’s sexy perfection…definitely one for the girls.

  7. The Magnificent Seven – great cast, script, music

    The Shootist – John Wayne somehow playing both his usual character and against type, when Westerns were really dying at the box office, in a story set at the end of the old West.

  8. Mag 7
    The Searchers – I can go back, and back, and back to this. It is beyond reproach.
    Josie Wales
    She Wore A Yellow Ribbon – Naytan. It’s an archly sentimental movie (aren’t all the cavalry ones?) and none the worse for it .
    Rio Grande.
    Cogburn – shan’t lie. I like John Wayne.
    My Darling Clementine, close followed by Gunfight at the OK Corral – stick the modern ‘ remakes’, these two are all you need.
    Once Upon A Time in the West. Henry Fonda as a bad guy; Claudia Cardinale. Game over man.
    Shane. It is. Don’t fight it.
    The Wild Bunch.
    Rio Bravo
    Red River. Cowboys; cattle. The Western.

    More tomorrow maybe. I LOVE Westerns. They were my grandads’ movie of choice (and the apostrophe is in the right place) and I will never turn one down

  13. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It has everything – (except the Gene Pitney song of the same name of course). Classic Jimmy Stewart rectitude, genuine menace from Lee Marvin and The Duke on top form as the bloke who’s too macho to admit he’s in love. Plus line after line of quotable gems – including one of the best ever in any movie – ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’. Wo’er, taker easy there Pilgrim…

  17. Brilliant, keep ’em coming. I can always watch Paul Newman in Hombre, and one I have never seen reshoown but saw as a kid called The Five Man Army. It’s a heist caper set in the west, with a crack team readying to rob a train. Too stuff (or it was when I was 10).

  20. Saw 1950s The Gunfighter on TV a few years ago and was knocked out by it. Gregory Peck is superb, and the black and white cinematography is really striking. And this is, of course, the film cited in Dylan’s ‘Brownsville Girl’.

  22. The Searchers and particularly Shane are my two favourites but one that hasn’t been mentioned is Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

    Not your classical Western perhaps but a great film regardless of genre and has many Western style elements. I don’t even know what century it’s set, it could be the 20th for all I know.

    If you’ve ever wondered where the phrase, “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” comes from the answer is this.

  23. Well all my favourites have already been mentioned, so on a related tangent I can highly recommend Ken Burns superb documentary series ‘The American West’. It’s a masterpiece, as is his ‘The American Civil War’ series.

  24. Well Jezk already mentioned Pat Garrett and The Wild Bunch is also prime Peckinpah.

    I disagree on Unforgiven…it’s a great film until the end when Eastwood’s character suddenly transforms from an uncertain and above all human old timer to the usual Serge Leone killing machine, dispatching everyone in the room.

    Others to consider are:
    High Plains Drifter
    Once Upon A Time in the West
    A Fistful of Dynamite
    The Hired Hand
    Ulzana’s Raid

    and this film is great for its cast alone

    • He doesn’t, though. His gun jams — he ends up throwing it at Little Bill — and he misses on two or three occasions. The key to him winning that shootout isn’t that he’s a killing machine, it’s that he’s less cowardly, less crap and has a more fearsome reputation than his opposition. It’s absolutely in keeping with the rest of the film. Little Bill practically describes what’s going to happen when he tells Beauchamp the truth of the English Bob shootout earlier in the film.

  25. I’m going for “Once Upon A Time In The West” and “The Wild Bunch”. As someone said earlier, Fonda is a magnificent baddie playing against type in OUATITW and the soundtrack is the best of any Western. I will always have a soft spot for “The Magnificent Seven” too – a big big part of my childhood along with “The Great Escape” and “633 Squadron”.

  26. Ah the Western. So many to choose from, but the ones I’d watch again and again are:

    Once Upon A Time In The West (Possibly the greatest Western ever made. Fonda cast against type. Bronson before he became a parody of himself. Great score.)

    The Searchers (The Duke and John Ford’s finest moment)

    The Outlaw Josey Wales (For me Clint’s finest western. Yes Unforgiven is great, but I like this one more)

    The Magnificent Seven (watched this recently and it’s still brilliant. McQueen the epitome of cool)

  31. Great selection above, so I’ll go slightly left-field, as the movie itself is, and nominate the magnificent ‘Destry Rides Again’. The peerless James Stewart, laconic, wry, gently humorous, kindly, humane, but with a steel core. Marlene Dietrich is as stunning as ever – this persona and, particularly, her vocalising were later lovingly and devastatingly parodied by Madeline Kahn.
    Also, ‘ Red River’, which is one of Wayn’e’s greatest, with wonderful performances from him as the unfeeling patriarch in conflict with the sensitive son, played by Montgomerie Clift who also gives a great performance.
    I think ‘The Shootist’, which is probably my favourite Wayne film, and ‘The Unforgiven’ have much in common, especially their elegiac nature and the parallels between the weary old men, tired of killing and uncomfortable with their past.
    I’d slightly disagree with Charlie as regards the sudden change in Clint’s character as it’s obvious from the off that he is not coping at all well with civilian life and it’s also made abundantly clear from others’ reactions to him that he was a stone cold killer in the past. The key to what can appear a sudden change, apart from his practising and improving his acknowledged former skills, is that he imbibes a hefty amount of firewater to inflame him just before the killing spree. His past reliance on alcohol, prior to his marriage, and his consequent violent behaviour when drunk is referred to several times before the final scene. The shootout is rather fanciful, but that’s the movies for you.

  37. My vote for neo western is ‘The Three Burials of Melquidas Estrada’ directed by Tommy Lee Jones. Terrific.
    Also in the neo camp I’d vouch for ‘Red Rock West’ and ‘Lone Star’ both of which seem to have been kind of forgotten but are great.
    Honourable mentions also to the Coen’s ‘True Grit’ & ‘ No Country For Old Men’ & the brilliant slow burner ‘Meek’s Cut Off’ from 3 or 4 years back ( not by Joel & Ethan obvs.)

  38. All of my favourites are in this list somewhere or other. “Once Upon A Time In The West” is my toppermost. Fonda is just incredible as a cold-eyed killer and the music is divine. A proper Epic of a Western.

  39. They’ve also been mentioned already. I have all John Wayne’s masterpieces. I’d also add:

    “Chato’s Land” (a gripping revenge starring Bronson has a hunted half breed);
    Joe Kidd (another Eastwood classic);
    The Beguiled (Eastwood’s Gothic masterpiece);
    Valdez is Coming (Burt Lancaster, ageing gunfighter, revenge);
    Hannie Caulder (Raquel Welch being sexy as hell)
    The Tall T (Randolph Scott classic)
    Seven Men from Now (ditto)
    The Big Country (Burl Ives steals the scenes from Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons)
    A Man Called Horse (Richard Harris doing the sun dance, ouch!)
    Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman in a very tall tale about the survivor of Custer’s Last Stand)
    Dances With Wolves (probably the only decent movie Costner ever made, a masterpiece)

    But my overall favourite, the western that captured my imagination as a boy, is the peerless and poetic portrait of the outsider and loner in American frontier society, George Stevens classic “Shane”. Here is one of the greatest scenes in Hollywood history, which competes with any film in any other genre, beautifully constructed, photographed and acted.

  43. No-one has mentioned “Django Unchained” yet. Great movie, great performances, completely wrecked for me by the ridiculous final forty minutes or so.

  44. The best classic Western is High Noon.

    The best revisionist Western is Lonely Are The Brave

    The best slightly weird Western is The Left Handed Gun

    The best Western made in last decade is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

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