The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[knives]

Days of Heaven doesn't have that need of the west for me. A western goes west to achieve something while Days of Heaven is escaping which is what symbolically prevents me from watching it as a western.

[Nothing]

Achieving what though? Many revisionist westerns are about regression/futility rather than progress/achievement. Ride in the Whirlwind is specifically about an escape, but I don't think anyone would claim that isn't a western.

[knives]

Maybe achieve wasn't direct enough of a word. The characters are looking to accomplish something tangible. Even the revenge films are looking for murder, but Days of Heaven is (at least through it's characters) about escaping from punishment, from worry, from modern concerns of any nature.

[Nothing]

What about Ride in the Whirlwind then?

[knives]

I haven't seen it, though I'm sure if I did I could construe something to fit my separation.

[zedz]

Nb. in the interests of this list, have just been watching Major Dundee again. It's such a painful film to watch in that you can see all the seeds of greatness within and yet, like Magnificent Ambersons and Greed, you have to use you your imagination and picture what the film might have been without studio editing, as opposed to what it is. Still, on reflection, I think there is enough of quality and interest in there to merit a Top 50 place.

Major Dundee does indeed play like a 'broken' film, but in that respect it's not alone in Peckinpah's filmography and, as you say, there's the ghost of greatness behind the screen. I don't know whether Peckinpah would have been able to get a masterpiece out of it even with final cut, though: Heston seems to be quite a hurdle.

Further to Days of Heaven, it seems to me that industrial civilisation is just outside the frame in the film (it's what Gere's running away from - the film begins in a steel mill, after all), rather than being an entirely different world. When cars appear in The Wild Bunch or The Ballad of Cable Hogue it's like Martians have landed, but in this film they're just a regular fact of life, like steel mills and tractors.

[Nothing]

There are industrial scenes in Heaven's Gate, if I recall. One scene at least is set in the grounds of a factory. Plus, of course, the Harvard scenes, which are hardly common western material.

[Cold Bishop]

My problem with Day of Heaven is that I don't feel the farmlands to be a real frontier... at least not in the sense of the Western, which is always defined by the clashes and conflicts that come with settling the frontier. Heaven's Gate works because it is a battle between homesteaders and cattle barons for the future of that frontier. I think by the time we get to Days of Heaven, the frontiers have been settled: the Texas panhandle has been settled as farmland, just as Chicago has been settled as a city; the frontier has been closed.

[Nothing]

There are plenty of westerns that don't depict the frontier, though. Whereas The New World is about settling the frontier but we seem to be ruling that out...

Btw, another good one if folks haven't seen it is Ulzana's Raid. Slightly flat cinematography but a great script (although the Vietnam comparisons that some like to draw don't really figure, given that the US and her allies were far more brutal than the Vietcong).

[Cold Bishop]

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single Western, that in some form or other, doesn't revolve around the expanding frontier. Some may marginalize that theme for some other, but it always remains at least as a structural convention of genre. I think it's fair to point towards a similarity between The Wild Bunch and Days of Heaven, set as they are three years apart. But in The Wild Bunch, the characters are already (barely) outracing "civilization", and to do so, they have to chase the frontier down to Mexico (which Americans have always seen as some sort of extension of the Western wilderness). If Westward Expansion isn't complete and final by 1913, it certainly is by 1916. Furthermore, in Peckinpah, we're dealing with men of the West, outlaws, anachronisms that simply don't fit into the landscape anymore. In Malick, we're dealing with three youngsters who, if outsiders to the Texas Panhandle, are certainly very much children of the 20th Century, and of eastern society (the city).

I think dilemma with The New World is this: where does American Westward Expansion begin as opposed to British Colonial Expansion?

[knives]

I think dilemma with The New World is this: where does American Westward Expansion begin as opposed to British Colonial Expansion?

For that I'd say probably around the Indian wars and at earliest the French-American war which would of course put The New World firmly into colonial rather than westward expansion. The western even in it's most pacifist form has always dealt with violence and probably should begin with an act of brutality which war of course is the most extreme form of.

Speaking of all of these lines I wonder if space westerns should count. They have that frontier, anachronisms, and other elements of the west we've been talking about, but by their very nature are alien to the setting. It's totally ineligible for this list because it's a comic, but Trigun for example is to me absolutely a western, but the entire planet is the frontier so there's no where to expand to amongst a handful of other problems.

[Yojimbo]

Just a quickie: watched 'Cowboy' for the first time last night, and although it featured two of my non-favourite actors, Jack Lemmon and Glenn Ford, its one I unreservedly recommend.
(Lemmon,thankfully, never descended to whiney mode, nor sub Jerry Lewis manic, although Ford was particularly impressive, perhaps close to his 'Yuma' peak)
Off the top of my head I think its my only screen viewing of ex-Brando squeeze, Anna Kafshi and gotta say she's a stunner: something of an olive-skinned version of a cherub-lipped Scarlet Johansson.
As I've recently come to expect from Dalton Trumbo it boasts an interesting, slightly left-field script, particularly impressive widescreen cinematography, and some well-staged action scenes, mostly revolving around bulls and cattle.

My only previous Western list contained 40 films, and I don't think I've watched too many other serious contenders for this expanded list, so 'Cowboy' certainly could squeeze in, probably no higher than 40, though.

[swo17]

Call me old fashioned, but westerns are films where people dress like this:

[Yojimbo]

Call me old fashioned, but westerns are films where people dress like this:

specifically those colours? :-s

[zedz]

There's a reason why all proper cowboys wear pink, honey.

[swo17]

C'mon, guys. Obviously the article of clothing I was intending to single out was that very manly bracelet he's wearing.

On a side note, when is the forum going to tackle the best gay films of all time? (aka every film ever made)

[knives]

No. 1 The Transporter or is that too obvious?

[domino harvey]

On a side note, when is the forum going to tackle the best gay films of all time? (aka every film ever made)

Well, the next genre project could very well be musicals

[Yojimbo]

C'mon, guys. Obviously the article of clothing I was intending to single out was that very manly bracelet he's wearing.

On a side note, when is the forum going to tackle the best gay films of all time? (aka every film ever made)

to think that some people actually considered 'Brokeback Mountain' to be groundbreaking
And there it was, staring them in the face, all along!
(something in the way he moved, too,....!)

[Cold Bishop]

Might as well make the reference before someone else does

[triodelover]

Might as well make the reference before someone else does

Well, if you're going to do that, you've got to add Nathan Lane's "Walk like John Wayne" scene from The Birdcage. (Actual walk starts about 3:30 in.)

[domino harvey]

Also, now I'm going to look like I'm just piling on when I post my thoughts on Heller in Pink Tights later

[Yojimbo]

Might as well make the reference before someone else does

Well, if you're going to do that, you've got to add Nathan Lane's "Walk like John Wayne" scene from The Birdcage. (Actual walk starts about 3:30 in.)

and pink shirt, an' all!

[triodelover]

Might as well make the reference before someone else does

Well, if you're going to do that, you've got to add Nathan Lane's "Walk like John Wayne" scene from The Birdcage. (Actual walk starts about 3:30 in.)

and pink shirt, an' all!

Right! You know, since seeing that for the first time I can't watch any Wayne film without thinking of that scene and totally cracking up.

[Yojimbo]

Also, now I'm going to look like I'm just piling on when I post my thoughts on Heller in Pink Tights later

I await your review, dom; aside from Sophia Loren's presence I'm not sure whether it warrants a re-watch, some 30+ years later, although it should be interesting to see Cukor's take on the Western, almost a full half century before 'Brokeback Mountain'!