Film Language - The Development of the Western

In today's Film Language lesson, we spoke about the development of the Western film throughout the decades. We talked about themes that many Westerns contain and also actors and directors involved in them. Here are the lists of films through the decades:


1960's - 1970's:

• Ride the High Country
• The Wild Bunch
• Little Big Man
• McCabe an Mrs Miller
• Buck and the Preacher
• The Shootist

1980's:

• Heaven's Gate
• Pale Rider
• Young Guns

1990's:

• Dances With Wolves
• Unforgiven
• Posse
• The Ballad of Little Joe
• Bad Girls
• Legend of the Fall
• The Quick and the Dead
• The Postman
• Ride With the Devil

2000's:

• Brokeback Mountain
• 3:10 to Yua
• The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robery Ford

2010's:

• Jonah Hex
• True Grit
• Meeks Cutoff

What I would like to try and do is watch a film from each decade to get a feel for how the genre has changed over the years. Of course, I have seen a few of these so I am going to watch ones that I have not yet seen. It is interesting to look at how the genre has changed because there are so many variations of Western film now that it is hard to distinguish. We also spoke about different styles of Western:

Spaghetti Westerns:

• A Fistful of Dollars
• For a Few Dollars More
• The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
• Django
• Once Upon a Time in the West

Acid Westerns:

• Ride in the Whirlwind
• The Shooting
• El Topo
• Dead Man

I had not heard of Acid Westerns before so this was beneficial to discuss what they were. I discovered that Acid Westerns is a sub-genre of the Western film which tries to avoid typical conventions of the Western genre however they are still set in the west. They look very interesting and also, as our lecturer pointed out, the name does suggest some sort of acid trip. We saw this through a few stills of these films and they are very crazed and deranged.

I feel that the presentations that we have before our screening each Friday are very beneficial because I seem to learn a lot from them. I also like to apply what we learn (if it involved theories) to the screening that we have straight after. This allows me to put what we learn in to practice. Glad to be back in Film Language after the Christmas break,

Speak soon!