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The 50 Greatest Western Movies Ever Made
The Western is a vital genre with the habit of reinventing itself . These are the best of the past 120 years.
The story of a gunfighter facing down death, The Shootist didn’t begin as an elegiac tribute to the star — a number of other, younger actors passed on the part — but it works beautifully as Wayne’s swan song, giving him a character who’s lived long enough to become a Western legend only to learn that that status has more detriments than benefits. Filled with deep knowledge of and affection for the classic Western, and a willingness to blow raspberries at it anyway, Blazing Saddles finds Mel Brooks (and a writing team that included Richard Pryor and Andrew Bergman) deploying every sort of gag known to comedy, from dark, anachronistic asides (“I must’ve killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille”) to a concerto of bean-assisted farts. Released the same year as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a far more genial if no less doom-laced story of outlaws facing the end of the road as the Old West era draws to a close, Sam Peckinpah’s landmark Western attracted controversy for its graphic violence, some of it depicted in agonizing detail through slow motion.
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