Western Movies
| |||||||||
Westerns gave America a colorful and, at times, brutal and controversial picture of How the West Was Won, which was the innocent way we described it decades ago. In this colloquy we will take a look at eight movies that are on many critics’ lists of the best western films.
This is the movie genre that had its most popular run from about 1940 to 1970, drawing on themes of American history, character and mythology. In many of the movies, the standoffs were classic and immutable: The Army and nearly everyone else versus Native Americans; big cattle companies and ranchers versus the farmers and other settlers. These days, when some westerns are re-run on cable TV, there’s a note at the beginning of the picture that reads “Outdated Cultural Depiction.” Eventually, westerns, which, at one point, comprised 25 percent of all studios’ production, petered out, but came back in the late 20th century with such revisionist – and highly successful – pictures as Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven. We’ll talk about what we thought about these films, what they said to us, and what they meant – and may still mean.
Michael Taylor grew up in New York and Maine and has lived in California since 1969. Since he and his brother began haunting the RKO and Loews theaters in New York in about 1952, he has probably seen more than 4,000 movies. He was a reporter and editor at the San Francisco Chronicle from 1973 to 2009; he did not cover the movie biz.
Syllabus/Reading
Each session will concentrate on the first film listed for that day’s schedule. The second film will be a sidebar to the first film, in the sense that we’ll talk about it only if we’ve exhausted our discussion on the first film. If you only want to watch one of those two movies, please make it the first one. You can always read the Wikipedia entry for the second picture to get a gist of the story it tells.
(A note on availability, as of April 3, 2026: All the films are available on a number of streaming services, usually with a small fee. To access, Google the film’s title and put the word “streaming” at the end of the entry. All films are available on Amazon, either for rent by streaming – usually $2.99 or $3.99 — or DVD purchase, with varying prices. One film, The Magnificent Seven, is on DVD at the Blue Hill library. The following films are available on Kanopy, a free streaming service for those with a library card or a connection with a university or college: Shane, The Magnificent Seven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It helps to read the Wikipedia entry for the various movies, each of which is listed in the Sessions.)
Session 1: The Magnificent Seven (1960); Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen; directed by John Sturges; screenplay by William Roberts. Shane (1953); Van Heflin, Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur; directed by George Stevens; screenplay by A.B. Guthrie Jr.)
Session 2: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin; directed by John Ford; screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck. The Professionals (1966); Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Claudia Cardinale; written and directed by Richard Brooks.
Session 3: The Wild Bunch (1969); William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O’Brien; directed by Sam Peckinpah; screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969); Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross; directed by George Roy Hill; screenplay by William Goldman.
Session 4: Unforgiven (1992); Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris; directed by Clint Eastwood; screenplay by David Webb Peoples. Dances With Wolves (1990); Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney Grant; directed by Kevin Costner; screenplay by Michael Blake.
▼ Registration
