Growing up I really didn’t have an appreciation for the western genre, of course I knew of it’s icons John Wayne and Clint Eastwood though the films never interested me. A few years ago I watched Sergio Leone’s  Once Upon A Time in The West which I really loved but didn’t get me all interested in the genre. About two years ago I watched Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch which really intrigued me and wanted me to seek out more from the genre.

The late 1930’s  to the early 1960’s was they heyday of the John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda, Alan Ladd, Kirk Douglas and James Stewart etc led westerns, these films were romanticised visions of the old west. They are films from this period which are absolute classics like High Noon, Gunfight At The O.K Corral, Shane, The Man From Laramie and The Searchers and many others. In all honesty I am not a fan of John Wayne but I wouldn’t argue with anyone that The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are classic films. Though they were some films made in this period that were called Revisionist Westerns which all Westerns fall under today. The RW’s really came to prominence in the 1960’s.

Revisionist Westerns were less romanticised, more realistic and dealt with morally grey characters and in some cases more violent. The Revisionist Western still very much exists today, though it’s had it’s ups and downs in popularity. I love Revisionist Westerns because they show the Old West for what it really was. I haven’t seen many of the Revisionist Westerns from the 1960’s ( I really want to see One Eyed Jacks) but from the ones I’ve seen The Wild Bunch is my favourite.
The Wild Bunch focuses on a group of aging outlaws trying to to exist in the then modern world of 1913. it’s a excellent, epic and a brutally violent film. The slow-mo shootouts are incredible and brutal, something I’ll discuss in a later article on Bloody Sam. But what I love about the film is the characters and the dialog. In the cast you have Robert Ryan, William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O’Brien, Jaime Sanchez, Warren Oates, Strother Martin and many others. Even though most of our protagonists are crude,  violent men they are sympathetic (especially Holden and Borgnine) who have some absolutely fantastic dialog and the themes of the film are very clear.

The Western flourished in the 1970’s until the unfortunate box office failure of Michael Cimino’s Heavens Gate. In the 90’s the Western boomed again with Clint Eastwood’s Western swansong Unforgiven and Kevin Costner’s Dancing With Wolves. The other westerns that I have seen that I absolutely love are High Plains Drifter, True Grit (2010), The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Lone Ranger, Django Unchained and 3:10 To Yuma (2007).I love the themes of Revisionist Westerns which includes deconstructing the myth of the hero/outlaw, outsiders, realism, redemption, morally grey characters, depiction of violence and historically accurate representation of Native Americans.

On a side note i highly recommend the video game Red Dead Redemption it’s a distilled Revisionist Western in game form with a brilliant protagonist and story.

I have many westerns in my collection to watch both traditional and revisionist Westerns that I need to sit down and watch. I’m currently watching Deadwood which is a excellent western series and you can sure bet I’ll be writing a review on that when I’m done watching it.I have written this article and haven’t yet explained why I love it so much. I love the mysticism, settings, themes, stories and characters and the history of the West as that isn’t something that I know all that much about and I also love how westerns have changed in their history of film and television. I always get excited with the news of a new western film or television series.

Expect many more articles on this subject in the future