For film of Manual Pear tree, to see Western (film) .

The western is a cinematographic Genre whose action is almost always in North America at the time of the Conquête of the West. It is located in the register of the historical film, although it belongs to the field of the Fiction.

With the cinema

Appeared as of the first years of the silent film, the western, kind primarily related to the American cinema, its apogee between the Années 1930 knows and the Années 1960, where the very great majority of them were produced. If many westerns are then entrusted to realizers of “series B” (Budd Boetticher, Ray Enright, Samuel Fuller…), several great names of the history of the cinema are illustrated there: Robert Aldrich, Michael Curtiz, Cecil Blount Of Thousand, Edward Dmytryk, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray, King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman…, giving to the kind its noble letters.

In the years 1960, the kind loses speed in the United States, the great productions, in spite of increasingly important budgets, not managing to stop the decline. The revival of the western comes then paradoxically from Europe, with the Italian realizer Sergio Leone which insufflates a new youth to him with what will become the Western spaghetti. Making the synthesis of multiple influences - the caricatural gangsters come straight of the American series B, such as for example Seven men to cut down Budd Boetticher, the dramatizing of the situations carries the mark of films of Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone plundering the scenario of Yojimbo to carry out one of its first films: For a handle of dollars (1964), without mentioning it with the credits, which started a mini-scandal with the Cannes festival - the Italian realizer establishes the codes and uses of this subcategory by carrying out some of best films of the kind, soon canted in multiple quickly forgotten productions. The “western spaghetti” divides the spectators, between those which rent the comic one squeaking, and the zealoies of the American western for which it is only one poor parody.

Other European productions (in Spain, in Czechoslovakia, in France even where one saw Fernandel with horse) show the universality of the western.

In the United States, more recently, realizers like Clint Eastwood or Sam Peckinpah, carried out westerns known as “twilight”, where heroism Manichean of the first cow-boys yielded the place to ambivalent characters, who free themselves without difficulty from the thin border between the good and the evil. The last great successes of the kind, Pat Garrett and Billy Kid of Sam Peckinpah in 1973 and Pitiless of Clint Eastwood in 1992, paradoxically draw up an acknowledgment of failure and dead end of the western.

Several actors knew glory or quite simply launched their career thanks to the western. One can quote among them Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, James Stewart, Randolph Scott, Clint Eastwood or Kevin Costner. Some, like Karl Malden or Lee Marvin incarnated there successfully of sordid villains.

One often reproaches the western for propagating a white vision of America. In films of the first decades, indeed, the Amerindians are generally represented in a caricatural way, like cruel beings and without intelligence whose good Cow-boy must get rid. By its Manicheism, the kind was used a long time as justification with the Génocide of the Indians of America. It acts, to some extent, of a Generally accepted idea because, since 1925 with the Race which dies ( The Vanishing American ), of George B. Seitz, the Indians are shown like victims of the Conquest of the West. Will follow, in the years 1950, several westerns which attempt to rehabilitate the Indians or to show the difficulties of “mixed loves”: Beyond Missouri of William Wellman, the broken Arrow of Delmer Daves and the Door of the devil of Anthony Mann, all left in 1950, are the film precursors which prove gradually increasingly committed in favor of the Indians, as Last hunting of Richard Brooks (1955), Cheyennes of John Ford in 1964, blue Soldat of James Nelson in 1970, Little Big Man of Arthur PEN, until Dance with the wolves of Kevin Costner in 1990. These films carry also the mark of a Panthéisme sometimes naive, but often lyric and inspired ( Jeremiah Johnson of Sydney Pollack, 1972), which is also one of the elements founders of the myth, that of difficult osmosis between the man and nature ( the Prisoner with the clear eyes , of Howard Hawks, 1952).

The apparent Manicheism is often the articulation of the action (the good Shérif against the gangsters, the farmers against the stockbreeders, people of the city against those of the vintage, the man of law against the véreux sheriff, the army against the civilians, etc), but it allows of this fact of touching with the universality of the situations, which contributed to popularize the kind beyond its territory of origin. So certain actors (Gary Cooper, Henry Founded, John Wayne) almost systematically incarnate the panoply of the righter of wrongs, well quickly of other actors will endorse a more ambiguous costume, like Richard Widmark, Kirk Douglas or Joel McCrea. Divided between fascination and repulsion, the western also puts in scene violence in an ambivalent way, as underline it the sadism of Wilson (Jack Palance in the Man of the lost valleys and more still the fetishistic report/ratio with the weapons and to be able to them which the protagonists maintain Warlock ( the Man with the gold Colts ) of Edward Dmytryk (1959).

The system of the western rests primarily on the American concept of frontier that the French word border translates imperfectly (the line-border corresponds to boundary whereas the frontier is the limit of the ecumene, marked by the spirit pioneer and a very relative law). The Far West (western distance) is regarded as a ground arid, hostile, where the law did not succeed in yet being essential. These ideas, constitutive of the western, were often re-used in addition with the cinema, often in police film ( Assaut of John Carpenter is the Remake of Rio Bravo of Howard Hawks), or science fiction ( Outland takes again the screen of the Train will whistle three times ), that is to say straightforwardly on a series scale such as Star Trek .

Lastly, it is necessary to note the great permeability of the western for the other kinds of the cinema. There are thus contemporary westerns ( a man passed of John Sturges or Seuls is untamed the of David Miller), of the westerns in the shape of musical comedies ( the Village fair of the West of Joshua Logan), of the comic westerns ( Go West with the Marx Brothers) or close to the Black film: the Girl of the desert ( Colorado Territory , 1949) of Raoul Walsh is the remake of the Great escape ( High sierra , 1949) from the same realizer, one of traditional of the kind with Humphrey Bogart. For the Hollywood realizers, the western constituted a required passage, as Fritz Lang pointed out it, and even for the actors, some not hesitating to pass behind the camera, like Marlon Brando with Revenge with the two faces (“One-Eyed Jacks”, 1961), John Wayne with Alamo (1960) and, of course, Clint Eastwood.

Origins and myth

Last of Mohicans of Fenimore Cooper with the novels of Gustave Aimard or Karl May, the western has initially literary origins. It also draws from the history of America itself, glorifiant the epopee of the pioneers or evoking painful the American Civil War, without neglecting the Indian Guerres. Especially, the western mythifie certain characters who it inserts in the legend: Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, and well of others. Some, as Buffalo Bill are still alive at the time when realizers as John Ford make their beginnings, thus transmitting their history and their experiment to those which will put in images West which combines legend and reality. At the end of the Man who killed Liberty Valance , a sentence summarizes the gasoline of the western: “When the legend becomes reality, print the legend! ”

Some famous westerns

The traditional ones

  • 1975 : HTTP: /ap.over-blog.org.over-blog.org/article-10112941.html the Wild Ride ( Cock the bullet ) of Richard Brooks

The spaghetti

“Twilight” westerns

Attempts at return

Cartoons

One counts also many cartoons whose action is at the same time and who can thus refer to the western kind. It should be noted that number of them are inspired directly by westerns which are former for them:

Curiosity

See too

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