What is your favorite western?

The Cowboys if only for this scene. Roscue & Colleen had such lovely chemistry.

There's others but westerns are, for me, very when the mood strikes.

And I'll admit I'm a sap for miniseries like Return to Lonesome Dove, all the throbs of 70s-90s.

several bad family films of the disney variety... and disappointed how many lesbian cowgirl films were either dull or painstakingly dull.

"The Wild Bunch" is the one I really love. Haven't seen "Shane" in a long time, but it was good too.

Who knew that Lee Marvin could do such marvellous splits?

Any one with MISS BARBARA STANWYCK!

I completely agree with you OP.

I also like how women - as represented by Cardinale - are seen as tamers of the wild west, the ones who civilized it.

Another interesting thing about the film is that all of the main characters each have their own theme music.

I can't put my finger on it, but there's also something operatic about it, which occurred to me when I saw it in a theater a few years ago.

Off the top of my head "Johnny Guitar" (1954) with Joan Crawford & "Westward The Women" (1951) with Robert Taylor.

Recently watched "Ride The High Country" (1962) with Joel McCrea & Randolph Scott and enjoyed it as well.

No love for The Westerner? DL fave Walter Brennan won an Oscar for it. It is a wonderful performance and a great film. Shows that Wyler could do anything but Sci-fi.

Who else could make a great western and a great musical?

Calamity Jane, of course!

"High Plains Drifter", & "The Seven Faces Of Doctor Lao".

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Eli Wallach was the best part of the movie.

I've never been able to decide between For A Few Dollars More or Hang 'Em High. The scene in HEH when Alan Hale Jr is walking along after being arrested is great. No dialogue but you know exactly what he's feeling.

Johnny Guitar (I loved the villain) or Magnificent Seven

I love this version of the High Plains Drifter theme r9

I find the West German adaptations of Karl May's novels interesting. (Well, I find Karl May's novels themselves interesting, as a cultural phenomenon.) Croatia serves as a surrogate for the American West here (and the fake saguaros around 1:20 are a nice touch):

It's so fucking good, R13. And thanks to my father watching them endlessly on Sundays, I never took to westerns. At least, I didn't learn to appreciate them until years after he died. Yes, even with all the bulges and tight pants. But I fucking LOVE "High Plains Drifter", and its score. Thank you for sharing.

I have only watched two westerns in their entirety, The Searchers and Rio Bravo; the only thing I remember about Rio Bravo is Ricky Nelson and Dean Martin singing this song:

UNFORGIVEN.

I have no love for Eastwood, but this one stands apart. Better than Ford.

One of my favorites too, r17 (and also in spite of Eastwood).

Blazing Saddles

As a Millennial kid I didn’t have much exposure to classic older Westerns, so growing up I was mainly watching neo-Westerns and revisionist takes.

The most powerful and moving of all I’ve seen is THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. A chilling film that also manages poignancy, and marries quiet grave and hefty performances with heartwrenching music (by Nick Cave, his best score imo) and lovely haunting visuals. It’s a Gothic revisionist piece, and a deeply bleak story, but I still get a lot of comfort out of it somehow, too.

Brad Pitt is captivating, Casey Affleck is terrifying as well as pathetic, and Sam Rockwell gives a marvellous but overlooked performance as the tragic Charley Ford (the musical cue for his character can have me sobbing like a child).

Red River! Winchester ‘73! In fact all of the Jimmy Stewart/Anthony Mann westerns!

@r19, +1 for Blazing Saddles, like Airplane it's still funny all these years later and is often referenced in memes and modern culture

I don't watch westerns, nope, never have.

Thanks for chiming in, r23 ......

From Noon to Three -- Charles Bronson

Another vote for The Cowboys. (Spoiler) It's billed as a John Wayne movie but he's killed early on and the young, gorgeous, virile teenboys take over.

I enjoyed The Searchers and I saw it in a theater in an excellent print but it wasn't the great film I was expecting.

And I was expecting The Wild Bunch to be much more violent than it was. Extreme violence is not something I like in films but to me the ending was another shoot em up.

The Quick and the Dead.

High Noon

Am I the only person to have seen Bite the Bullet with DL fave Jan Michael Vincent? Not a bad film.

I liked "Bite the Bullet", and remember thinking even Candice Bergen was pretty good in it.

R21 - Red River was a Howard Hawks film.

Every time I see YOUNG GUNS II, I always think this will be the time I come across a deleted scene where Christian Slater & Lou Diamond Philips hatefuck in the sagebrush.

Wait, what were we talking about?

I like the remake of True Grit with Jeff Bridges. It is actually better than the one with John Wayne. There I said it.

Lonesome Dove - Best mini-series ever.

Wagonmaster - My favorite of John Ford

From Hell to Texas - Directed by Henry Hathaway with Don Murray and Diane Varsi

The Magnificent Seven - the original. Great cast. Great music.

Stagecoach - both versions.

Tombstone - Kurt Russell and Sam Elliott

Bend of the River - My favorite of the James Stewart post WWII westerns directed by Anthony Mann. Great co-star Arthur Kennedy. With supporting by Julie Adams and Rock Hudson

Westward the Women - Great female cast

The Big Country - Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Chuck Connors, Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, directed by William Wyler. And great score.

Also like

Rawhide - Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward

Garden of Evil - Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark

The Professionals (1967)

Terror in a Texas Town.

Which one, R28?

My favorite is probably ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST -- followed closely by RED RIVER, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, THE WILD BUNCH, and MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER.

The Terror of Tiny Town

The only ones I like are the Spaghetti Westerns.

(R24) Your welcome.

Oh, dear r42 ...

R35 Yes to Lonesome Dove. That mini-series was the best 'western' and also a beautiful piece of history. The book won the Pulitzer and the mini-series was excellent.

I know purists won’t consider it a real western and the title makes me cringe, but I have a real weakness for How the West Was Won.

I hear you, R45. I'm not sure if From Noon Till Three is also a western but it did it for me. Frank Gilmore (the writer) won a Pulitzer for The Subject was Roses.

"Hombre", Paul Newman.

I was of my feet cheering at the greatness of the storytelling.

Rio Bravo

[quote]italic]Cat Ballou[/italic] - My grandmother took me to see it when I was a kid. From the moment the Columbia-Screen Gems lady in the credits turned into a rootin, shootin cartoon Cat Ballou, I was hooked. I also like [italic]Silverado[/italic] and [italic]Shane[/italic]. I grew up watching westerns on TV, so I'm accustomed to the genre. However, John Wayne starred in so many of the big westerns, and his screen persona was so obnoxious, that I haven't watched a lot of the "classic" westerns. I did like the Glenn Ford/Jack Lemmon vehicle [italic]the Cowboys[/italic], in which Lemmon is initially a big-city (Chicago?) hotel clerk dealing with a bunch of cowboys in town after a trail drive. When they leave, he leaves with them, becoming a cowboy himself. I haven't seen that since I was a kid.

Damn, I wish I could edit that post. Sorry about the format errors.

R49 "The Cowboys" from 1972 with John Wayne has been mentioned above. I don't think it's the same movie you remember.

I wish we all could edit posts!

Sorry, r51, it's [italic]Cowboy[/italic], not the Cowboys.

Refuse to watch anything staring John Wayne

R50 If only we could edit!

Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman and DL icon Faye Dunaway

The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox with Goldie Hawn and George Segal

Possee

Dances with Wolves

R47, directed by Martin Ritt, also made HUD with Newman.

Peckinpah's [italic]Ride the High Country[/italic] and [italic]the Wild Bunch[italic] are worth watching. When I first watched TWB, it seemed so violent, I was watching parts of it through my fingers. Now it still seems violent, but I guess I'm inured. I love that William Holden was not even close to being first choice for that role. He's wonderful in it.

The Wild, Wild West (no one said it had to be a movie)

Starring Robert Conrad's tight pants that made me realize I was "special"

For R49/R50

OTA Channel Movies!TV is showing "COWBOY' during the month of February. It was just on a day or two ago.

Here is the schedule for upcoming showings. Times are for Central Time Zone.

R45 the sequel was pretty good, How the West Was Won, Two.

Budd Boetticher's Randolph Scott Westerns are great, with THE TALL T (57) being the best. Revered by Martin Scorcese.

THE GUNFIGHTER (50) is Gregory Peck's best Western and is consecrated in the Criterion Collection.

r41, what distinguishes a spaghetti western from other westerns?

r62

[quote]The spaghetti western was born in the first half of the sixties and lasted until the second half of the seventies. It got its name from the fact that most of them were directed and produced by Italians, often in collaboration with other European countries, especially Spain and Germany. The name ‘spaghetti western’ originally was a depreciative term, given by foreign critics to these films because they thought they were inferior to American westerns. Most of the films were made with low budgets, but several still managed to be innovative and artistic, although at the time they didn’t get much recognition, even in Europe. In the eighties the reputation of the genre grew and today the term is no longer used disparagingly, although some Italians still prefer to call the films western all’italiana (westerns Italian style). In Japan they are called Macaroni westerns, in Germany Italowestern.

[quote]In general spaghetti westerns are more action oriented than their American counterparts. Dialogue is sparse and some critics have pointed out that they are constructed as operas, using the music as an illustrative ingredient of the narrative. From a long time past westerns had been called ‘horse operas’, but like professor of cultural studies Christopher Frayling pointed out, it took the Italians to show what the term really meant. For the time of making many spaghetti westerns were quite violent, and several of them met with censorship problems, causing them to be cut or even banned in certain markets. Many spaghetti westerns have an American-Mexican border setting and feature loud and sadistic Mexican bandits. The Civil War and its aftermath is a recurrent background. Instead of regular names such as Will Kane or Ethan Edwards, the heroes often have bizarre names like Ringo, Sartana, Sabata, Johnny Oro, Arizona Colt or Django. The genre is unmistakably a catholic genre (some other names in use are Hallelujah, Cemetery, Trinity or Holy Water Joe!), with a visual style strongly influenced by the catholic iconography of, for instance, the crucifixion, the last supper or the ecce homo. The surreal extravanganza Django Kill! (Se sei vivo, spara, 1967), by Giulio Questi, a former assistant of Fellini (!) has a resurrected hero who witnesses a reflection of Judgment Day in a dusty western town.

[quote]The outdoor scenes of many spaghetti westerns, especially those with a relatively higher budget, were shot in the Spain, in particular the the Tabernas desert of Almeria (Andalusia) and Colmenar Viejo and Hoyo de Manzanares (near Madrid). In Italy the province of Lazio (the surroundings of Rome) was a favourite location. Some spaghetti westerns were shot in the Alpes, North Africa or Israel. The indoor scenes were usually shot in the western towns of the Roman studios like Cinecittà or Elios. The Elios studios also had a ‘Mexican town’ next to the western town.

OP : Charles Bronson's face OMG...that was the face of a movie star. All three of them.

It's such an amazing scene r64. Jason Robards watching the goodbye in the shadows is perfect

Leone makes Bronson look like a Renaissance painting.

I haven't watched the whole film, but I love the opening of the three men riding into town

Iconic:

I find it fascinating, too, that so many spaghetti westerns weren't even filmed in the US

Grubby westerns have always bored me because there’s no decent female characters, plus the movies look cheaply made. All you needed was some trees and horses. I can also never identify with the stories. (“It’s our job to CLEAR THIS LAND for the marshal!”)

But McCABE & MRS. MILLER is interesting - great, haunting performance by Julie Christie, photography by Vilmos Zsigmond, and music by Leonard Cohen.

The Harvey Girls

Stagecoach (1939)

Has anyone mentioned The Lusty Men? Is has some prime Mitchum, Arthur Kennedy, And DL fav Helen Lawson.

Watching the clip at OP makes me want to rewatch the whole film, paying attention to where the actors are positioned. I feel like (in that scene at least, as well as the opening sequence) Leone positioned them very deliberately. Also, this scene:

Jack Elam played a drunk on Phyllis. He even got his own episode!!!

Brokeback Mountain

This thread has inspired me to watch The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Okay. I just finished watching The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

WOW. It's really unlike any other western I've seen. It almost feels like a genre unto itself, with a western aesthetic.

And I loved it ... despite my personal feelings toward Eastwood.

Thanks for updating, R78. Never saw it, myself. Watch Little Big Man next.

I read nothing; went straight to replay: Lonesome Dove (both book and miniseries).

Movie - Hell or High Water

Current: Yellowstone

100% agree with The Cowboys, Blazing Saddles, and Cat Ballou (my dad would *always* laugh at the scene of Lee Marvin and his horse drunkenly leaning against the building).

Would like to add:

A Man Called Horse

...and on the lighter side:

Support Your Local Sheriff

Support Your Local Gunfighter

The Cheyenne Social Club

If anyone wants to sit on my lap, I will tell you who Gene Autry was.

Rio Grande

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (just to gawk at the magnificent Woody Strode)

Blazing Saddles (just to hear Clevon Little respond to the "They said you wuz hung" line with "And they wuz right")

Tombstone (just for Kilmer's performance)

The Long Riders (the brothers Carradine, Quaid, Keach and Guest do bank robberies and whores)

The Unforgiven.

For comedy, Cat Ballou.

Brokeback Mountain, of course.

Without hesitation my favorites are Once Upon a Time in the West (for a classic western) and Unforgiven (for a modern one). Whenever someone says they've never seen a western before, I always recommend these two.

The Searchers & Ride the High Country

Reposted from the GBU thread:

Okay ... I think one of the reasons that The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (and Once Upon A Time In The West) appeal to me is that they recognize the "myth" of the West and don't try to frame it in any way other than that myth. Because let's face it ... the American West is a myth. Sure, it roughly corresponds to the historical reality, but starting with Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, or even before that: Deadwood Dick and the many other dime novels that took place in the west planted the seed. The heroes and villains, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Kit Carson, Calamity Jane, Nat Love – they’re all historical figures whose legends began either during their lifetimes or shortly after their deaths.

It had its mythic places, too -- Dodge, Deadwood, Santa Fe, Tombstone. The mountains. The deserts. The tumbleweeds. The plains that stretched from horizon to horizon.

Indeed, the "Wild West" had already become a myth even before it was fully settled, from the era of the mountain men onward.

The myth became heightened through Buffalo Bill's intervention, and later the novels of Max Brand, Zane Grey, and Louis L'Amour, not to mention hundreds of other authors writing in the western genre. Film also took up these myths with their familiar characters, familiar plots, and familiar sensibilities. The Great Train Robbery was a western.

I think, to truly understand the American ethos, the American character, one should look west, to these myths that have been told and retold for over 150 years.

But the thing is -- in spite of its mythic quality, Americans believe that this is how it really was, how it really happened. The romanticism of the west washed over the more horrific -- or banal -- reality.

Directors like Leone were not beholden to these myths, not molded by them; they did not leave an imprint on their psyche. (Karl May, a hugely popular author who wrote German novels about the American West, never even traveled there.) Thus, Leone consciously framed his movies as myth, with characters and situations that only gestured toward the historical reality, and only gestured toward place, his locales in Spain emphasizing this point. In some ways, they are the ideal westerns to me.

John Wayne’s last film the shootist

Not a fan of westerns. Shane is one I like.

I love a good western. My favorites: Stagecoach, The Magnificent Seven, and Tombstone.

Forty Guns, The Furies, and Cattle Queen of Montana.

I love "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

Can anyone recommend some good recent (past ten years) westerns?

I hate most Westerns, they hold no interest. The long, slow, magnificent Spaghetti Westerns, often filmed in Almería, Spain can pull me in and there's a wonderful sense of timelessness, both of historical period and of the length of the film itself. A good Spaghetti Western is a great pleasure.

Mine is Shane.

I really appreciate High Noon, especially after I learned that it was an allegory about McCarthyism.

R97, same. I don't like Westerns at all but I just finished watching Once Upon a Time in the West a few minutes ago and loved it.

Just have to remark that I am not surprised at all that Dario Argento was one of the creators of the story. The movie has moments reminiscent of ones in Argento's giallo movies. Very hypnotic.

Once Upon a Time in the West is coming out on 4k this year. Yes!

Thanks for the heads up, r102.

Destry Rides Again

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 (1956) is airing tonight on TCM, at 10pm (I've no idea what time zone). Hopefully, this will be a broadcast of the film's new restoration that was rolled out in April 2024.

I don't typically like John Wayne films, but this one has unique features in spite of him, such as its weird connection to David Lynch's 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐬.

I LOVE the True Grit remake by the Coen brothers. It might not be the "best" western, but It's definitely my favorite, and one of the few movies of any genre I not infrequently rewatch