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Top Ten Western Movies: The Great Westerns Debate
Top ten lists of any kind invite discussion, but when it comes to the top ten cinematic westerns of all time, the opinons are as endless as the sagebrush and just as deeply rooted.
By Jesse Mullins Jr.
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It was a surefire cinch that when the American
Film Institute released its list of Top Ten
Westerns this summer, the Western-watching
public would weigh in with its own verdicts, whether
pro or con, pleased or not—but never indifferent.
Such is always the case with lists of this sort and, one
can argue, part of their appeal. Meanwhile, the whole
affair offers us a good perch for sizing up the whole
herd of Classic Western films, whether we’re surveying
AFI’s string or ballyhooing our own.
So we’ve rounded up the opinions of some
Western-savvy observers. But first, a little insight
into the AFI’s process.
AFI didn’t rank just Westerns. They made their
pronouncements on all film genres, whether musicals
or comedies or science fiction or what-have-you.
But their overall ballot had 50 Westerns on it, and
their 1,500 respondents were to whittle the field
down to just ten, with latitude given for inserting
write-in choices. And so, without further ado, the
winners were:
1) The Searchers
2) High Noon
3) Shane
4)Unforgiven
5) Red River
6) The Wild Bunch
7) Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid
8) McCabe and Mrs. Miller
9) Stagecoach
10) Cat Ballou
Robert Gazzale, president and CEO of the
American Film Institute, told AC that this is the 11th
year AFI has presented a list of top films—their
“Celebration of the Cinema Centennial,” it is called.
The ballot AFI created went to a wide variety of
respondents, from scholars to archivists to film critics
to academics and other individuals who are intimately
knowledgeable about the cinema.
What the results gave them, Gazzale says, is “a cultural
flashpoint, something to say that at this
moment in time, this is what the AFI and these great
collective voices believe are the greatest Westerns of
all time.”
| THE WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA’S TOP 10 WESTERNS |
1. SHANE
2. HIGH NOON
3. THE SEARCHERS
4. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
5. DANCES WITH WOLVES
6. THE WILD BUNCH
7. RED RIVER
8. TOMBSTONE
9. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
10. OPEN RANGE |
Gazzale advises that if someone is bothered that
his or her favorite film did not make the list, “then
tell 100 people, because only then will this conversation
about American film continue. Because that is
our goal: to catalyze a national conversation and,
ultimately, to drive people back to watch and enjoy
the classics of American film.”
Asked why more Westerns aren’t being made today,
Gazzale says that the genre’s popularity ebbs and
flows. But “AFI’s mandate is to remind people not just
about the movies that are being made today, but the
extraordinary cultural legacy that is American film.
And across those first 100 years there is a spectacularly
rich history of the West.” It’s a history, Gazzale says,
that will continue to find expression.
Terry Teachout, the drama critic of the Wall Street
Journal and a past contributor to American Cowboy, is
a devotee of Westerns but he remarks that he “didn’t
think much of the AFI’s Top Ten list.” He adds, however,
that he does like most of the films on it.
“The problem,” Teachout says, “is that it struck me
as the kind of list that could have been drawn up by a
bunch of film buffs who don’t really like Westerns—
which is probably true. I, on the other hand, like
Westerns very much, take them seriously as art, and
watch them frequently for pleasure, which may or may not qualify me to draw up a more representative and
interesting list. It happens that I did just that five years ago,
and haven’t had occasion to change my mind since then. I tried
to limit myself to ten films, but ended up with eleven because
I couldn’t bear not to: Canyon Passage , Ramrod , Blood on the
Moon , Four Faces West , Red River , Winchester ’73 , Hondo , The
Searchers , Ride Lonesome , Rio Bravo , and Ride the High Country .
If you’ve never seen a Western—and especially if you think
Westerns consist solely of a bunch of weather-whacked guys
on horses riding around in circles, shooting at each other,
chewing tobacco, and saying ‘yup’ and ‘nope’—any of these
films will set you straight.”
| PAUL HUTTON’S TOP 10 WESTERNS |
1. THE WILD BUNCH
2. THE SEARCHERS
3. SHANE
4. HIGH NOON
5. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
6. FORT APACHE
7. RED RIVER
8. STAGECOACH
9. RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY
10. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID |
Adds Teachout: “It is, by the way, a scandal that several
of the films on my list have yet to be transferred to DVD. May
that change soon.”
Filmmaker and leading man Ed Harris, who is profiled elsewhere
in this issue, directed and stars in the newest big-budget
theatrical Western, Appaloosa. He only heard about the AFI
list through AC’s interviewer, so he did not have a ready opinion,
but being a fan of Westerns, Harris has his favorites and
he’s still refining those tastes.
“I developed quite a nice Western library in the process of
researching the film,” Harris says. He also revisited classic
Western films such as High Noon, The Wild Bunch, and the
spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone. One-Eyed Jacks, directed
by and starring Marlon Brando, surprised him as a film that he
had almost forgotten about, but one that has withstood the
test of time quite well.
When asked to conjecture as to why so many Westerns now
regarded as “classic” came out of the 1950s and ’60s, Harris
ventured this explanation:
“Directors like Ford and Peckinpah were also their own producers,
and they were able to make films the way they wanted
to make them,” he says. “Also there were some amazing
scriptwriters working during that time.”
Film critic Leonard Maltin, of Entertainment Tonight fame,
said he is not a great fan of lists, but only because he “has too
many movies [he] like[s] and trying to whittle them down to
an arbitrary number is always painful.”
The Searchers, High Noon, Shane, and Stagecoach—would
make most lists, Maltin says. “And I think most people would
name The Wild Bunch. Some traditionalists would not, but I think even the traditionalists have been
won over by The Wild Bunch. It’s been 40
years,” he says with a laugh.
“Of course, as a die-hard silent film
buff, I despair when these come out
because they almost never include
silent movies,” Maltin says. “These
lists—not just the AFI’s list, but the pop
culture lists you see on television or in
popular magazines out there—ought
really be called ‘The Top Ten Movies
We’ve Heard Of.”
Two of Maltin’s favorite silents are
William S. Hart’s Hell’s Hinges—“a great
film that belies its age”—and John
Ford’s Three Bad Men, “which I loved
even more than The Iron Horse.”
He likes the Budd Boetticher
Westerns—Seven Men from Now might
be a favorite there, he says—and Destry
Rides Again deserves a better remembrance
than it gets. “That’s why I hate
lists,” Maltin says. “How can you leave
out the Anthony Mann/James Stewart
Westerns? How can you leave out the
Richard Brooks Westerns?”
Maltin, too, hears it asked: Why aren’t
more Westerns being made?
“I think that one of the problems is
that a number of films from recent years
that might qualify as Westerns don’t [get
noticed that way because they don’t]
hew to a traditional formula or pattern,”
says the critic, who has started hosting
and writing a cable TV show on movies
called Secret’s Out with Leonard Maltin on
the new Reelz Channel. (It’s also at
reelzchannel.com, and visitors can view
movie clips there.) “Hidalgo, which I
love, doesn’t even take place out west. The Missing is a Western strictly by virtue
of its setting. A lot of people are referring
to No Country for Old Men as a Western.
Is it? It takes place in Texas and it certainly
does address the mindset of a
Texas lawman… Also Tommy Lee Jones’
Three Burials of Melchiades Estrada .
These are very untraditional Westerns,
and so it is hard to even think them in the
same category as My Darling Clementine
and Shane.”
The Western is “not gone,” Maltin
avers, but across the board “a lot of traditions
are gone. They don’t make history
movies anymore. Whodunnits have
vanished. I think it’s because Hollywood
producers think people get enough of
[this fare] on television. But even if a lot
of the traditional genres have been dormant,
all it takes is one good film to get
people interested again.”
Paul Hutton, distinguished professor
of history at the University of New
Mexico and executive director (and
past president) of the Western Writers
of America, has written scripts for
Westerns.
Remarking that he doesn’t feel Unforgiven , Cat Ballou, or McCabe and
Mrs. Miller (all are on AFI’s list) deserve
a place among a top ten, Hutton says
that for him the real question has been
what ought be number one, and, for him
at least, that has been strictly a question
between The Searchers and The Wild
Bunch. “They are so very different,” he
says. “And yet so much alike as well.” He
has noticed that his university students
respond best to The Wild Bunch. The
Searchers leaves them less affected,
mainly because Ford’s brand of humor
falls flat with them.
Still, “the themes in The Searchers are
more powerful. Themes of family,
racism, character,” Hutton says. “It is
almost the ultimate American movie.”
For all of that, The Wild Bunch holds
up better, in his view. “Peckinpah [director]
was the natural heir of Ford’s mantel,”
he says.
In conclusion, Hutton says that we
live in interesting times, seeing, as we
are, the rise of the West both socially
and politically. And because of that,
“there is a renewed interest in the West
and a more positive outlook about it.”
The West used to be a subject for nostalgia.
But increasingly it is perceived as
a place of dynamic change, of increasing
political power and wealth. “There is a
lot of talk that this election will hinge on
the West,” he says.
And, voicing what so many of us are
thinking—or hoping—he adds: “And
that could bode well for Westerns.”
20 WESTERNS EVERYONE SHOULD SEE
As selected by Leonard Maltin |
1.STAGECOACH – John Ford’s classic that made a star of John Wayne
2.THE SEARCHERS – Ford and Wayne at their peak in a very dark story
3. SHANE – George Stevens’ breathtaking film, with Alan Ladd as a gunfighter who can’t escape his past
4. DANCES WITH WOLVES – Kevin Costner’s ode to Indian traditions
5. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – the ultimate
spaghetti Western, by Sergio Leone, with Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef
6. MY DARLING CLEMENTINE – Another John Ford
masterpiece, about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with Henry Fonda and Victor Mature
7. THE WILD BUNCH – Sam Peckinpah’s greatest film, with violence and melancholia in equal measures
8. BLAZING SADDLES – the funniest Western parody ever made, by Mel Brooks
9. HIGH NOON – Gary Cooper in a defining performance as a sheriff who must face his enemies alone
10. MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER – Robert Altman’s
re-imagining of the Old West—grittier than Hollywood used to make it look—with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie
11. RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY – Joel McCrea and
Randolph Scott star in this valedictory film directed by Sam Peckinpah
12. OPEN RANGE – Kevin Costner celebrates the Western—with an ace up his sleeve named Robert Duvall
13. SEVEN MEN FROM NOW – Randolph Scott stars in
this taut, trim Western written by Burt Kennedy and directed by Budd Boetticher
14. DESTRY RIDES AGAIN – James Stewart plays a sheriff
who never fires a gun in this classic costarring Marlene Dietrich
15. HELL’S HINGES – the great silent film star William S.
Hart is the antihero of this hard-edged 1916 movie about a town in need of redemption
16. HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER – Clint Eastwood directed and stars in this dark-tinged Western allegory
17. THE OX-BOW INCIDENT – the great anti-mob movie directed by William A. Wellman starring Henry Fonda
18. THE GUNFIGHTER – Gregory Peck stars in this story of a professional gunman who wants to retire—but can’t
19. THE PROFESSIONALS – a large-scale Western saga in the sure hands of filmmaker Richard Brooks, with Lee Marvin heading a top-notch cast
20. THE SHOOTIST – John Wayne’s last movie is also one of his best—another melancholy look back at a changing way of life in the West |
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF'S PICKS |
1. THE SEARCHERS – The brand of humor is a detriment,
but the tale itself, and the performance by John Wayne,
makes it one of the greatest motion pictures ever made.
2. SHANE – The climactic scene in Grafton’s saloon
remains the best cinematic shootout ever—not for its
action but for its dialogue and tension.
3. THE NAKED SPUR – Hard to select just one Anthony
Mann Western—Winchester ’73 was better produced,
Bend of the River had more style. But this one’s emotional
power exceeded the others’.
4. HIGH NOON – The ultimate gunfight picture seems not
as esteemed as once it was but is still a study in courage.
5. STAGECOACH – The film that made Wayne a major star
had a little bit of everything, and a great romantic finish.
6. RIO BRAVO– Fun, rollicking, light-hearted, playful,
action-packed, and yet with touches of seriousness, too.
7. THE TALL T – Hard to pick from among the Budd
Boettecher/Burt Kennedy/Randolph Scott Westerns also,
but this gritty, austere offering is a classic of its kind.
8. TOMBSTONE – Not the greatest story—I’m not so fond
of attempts to bring real Old West events to the screen—
but great casting, great lines, great pacing here.
9. HOMBRE – This one didn’t even make AFI’s ballot. But
Paul Newman was never better.
10. SILVERADO – Not as gripping, perhaps, and a little
uneven, but fun nonetheless, and the best Western to
come out of the ’80s, as Tombstone was to the ’90s. |
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