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The Big Country (1958) with Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, and Chuck Connors.
Rio Bravo
El Dorado
True Grit (the original)
Dances with Wolves
Didn't we have a thread about favorite Westerns a while back? Anyway, it is always a good topic.
My Numero Uno: The Searchers, long before it was recognized as something special (recently it was hailed as the Best Western Ever). Everything is perfect...the character development, the locations, the dialogue, the music, and (for the 21st century) the hyper sensitive race issue which Ford handled amazingly well. Watch it with Ford's Two Rode Together; they're companion pieces. The captive girl returns home, but here she is shunned, and the small, friendly frontier society from The Searchers has become a stuffy, rigid image of prejudice. The Searchers is better, but Two Rode Together is worth watching as a continuation of Ford's internal dialogue about the facade and the "underbelly" of the West.
My other favorites? Next in line is High Noon, and yes, it was a political movie, which drove Howard Hawks crazy and inspired him to do Rio Bravo as an anti-High Noon film, but nevertheless it is a masterpiece.
Shane is way down on my list; I used to love it, but these days it seems a bit heavy-handed. Still, it's a classic. But as much as I like Alan Ladd, I read the book before I ever saw the movie, and the Shane character in the book looks a lot more like the Jack Palance gunslinger in the movie! So I'd have liked some lean, dark-haired, slightly mysterious, charismatic Hollywood actor to have played Shane, maybe Gregory Peck or Tyrone Power, dressed in a black outfit. Now that's the real Shane!
For personal reasons I'd place John Wayne's The Alamo high on my list; it affected me enormously as a kid. it will never qualify as a masterpiece, but it is so heartfelt and so visually beautiful that I don't mind it being clunky here and there.
Other favorites:
Monte Walsh, both the version with Lee Marvin and with Tom Selleck
Tom Horn
Will Penny
Rio Bravo
True Grit, both of them, although I really like the original more than the new one, authenticity notwithstanding. The old one is simply more charming...
River of No Return
Lonesome Dove
Tombstone
Ride the High Country
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Rawhide (a Western film noir with Tyrone Power)
Recently I've become a fan of the Bud Boetticher--Randy Scott Westerns filmed in Lone Pine, CA. They're just such solid stories, really well crafted, no fuss, no wasted dialogue, and great visuals. Thank goodness for the Encore Western Channel and DVDs.
Recently watched, "The Gunfighter", with Gregory Peck, liked it. "3:10 to Yuma", like both, but the latest version just a little more. The ending is different in both, how did the book end?
What? I didn't know anyone knew about Shane?
I remember going to some house in Massachusetts that there
was some filming in for Shane....when I was like 6.
My mother raved about that movie...guess I'll have to see it.
Thanks.
Shane is such a beautiful movie....... High Noon, for me, not so much. The greatest western for me is without doubt The Searchers.
Agreed
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