Revisionist Western

The Revisionist Western or Anti-Western traces to the mid 1960s and early 1970s as a subgenre of the Western movie.

Some post-WWII Western films began to question the ideals and style of the traditional Western. These films placed the context of the Native Americans and the Cowboys alike in a darker setting. They depicted a morally questionable world where the heroes and villains oftentimes resembled each other more closely than had ever previously been shown. The concept of right and wrong became blurred in a world where actions could no longer be said to be good or bad. Whereas in a majority of the classical western films the ethics were clear and defined in 'black and white', the Revisionist film looked to paint a moral 'grey' area where people had to adapt in order to survive. This led to depictions of outlaws such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where the heroes of the film are outlaw bank robbers.

Hollywood revisionist Westerns

Most Westerns from the 1960s to the present have revisionist themes. Many were made by emerging major filmmakers who saw the Western as an opportunity to expand their criticism of American society and values into a new genre. The 1952 Supreme Court holding in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, and later, the end of the Production Code in 1968 broadened what Westerns could portray and made the revisionist Western a more viable genre. Films in this category include Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and The Wild Bunch (1969), Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).

Beginning in the late 1960s, independent filmmakers produced revisionist and hallucinogenic films, later retroactively identified as the separate but related subgenre of "Acid Westerns", that radically turn the usual trappings of the Western genre inside out to critique both capitalism and the counterculture. Monte Hellman's The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970), Robert Downey Sr.'s Greaser's Palace (1972), Alex Cox's Walker (1987), and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995) fall into this category.^[1] Films made during the early 1970s are particularly noted for their hyper-realistic photography and production design.^[2] Notable examples using sepia tinting and muddy rustic settings are Little Big Man (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972).

Other films, such as those directed by Clint Eastwood, were made by professionals familiar with the Western as a criticism and expansion against and beyond the genre. Eastwood's film The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) made use of strong supporting roles for women and Native Americans. The films The Long Riders (1980) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) are revisionist films dealing with the James gang. Jeffrey Wright's portrayal of Black Confederate Daniel Holt riding with the Missouri Bushwhackers in Ride with the Devil tells the stories of the Missouri-Kansas Border War and Lawrence Massacre. Unforgiven (1992), which Eastwood directed from an original screenplay by David Webb Peoples, dramatically criticized the typical Western use of violence to promote false ideals of manhood and to subjugate women and minorities.

Spaghetti Westerns

Foreign markets, which had imported the Western since their silent film inception, began creating their own Westerns early on. However, a unique brand of Western emerged in Europe in the 1960s as an offshoot of the Revisionist Western.

The Spaghetti Western became the nickname, originally disparagingly, for this broad subgenre, so named because of their common Italian background, directing, producing and financing (with occasional Spanish involvement). Originally they had in common the Italian language, low budgets, and a recognizable highly fluid, violent, minimalist cinematography that helped eschew (some said "de-mythologize") many of the conventions of earlier Westerns. They were often made in Spain, especially Andalusia, the dry ruggedness of which resembled the American Southwest's. Director Sergio Leone played a seminal role in this movement. A subtle theme of the conflict between Anglo and Hispanic cultures plays through all these movies. Leone conceived of the Old West as a dirty place filled with morally ambivalent figures, and this aspect of the spaghetti Western came to be one of its universal attributes, as seen in a wide variety of these films, beginning with one of the first popular spaghetti Westerns, Gunfight at Red Sands (1964), and visible elsewhere in those starring John Philip Law (Death Rides a Horse) or Franco Nero, and in the Trinity series.

Red Western

The Ostern, or red Western, was the Soviet Bloc's reply to the Western, and arose in the same period as the revisionist Western. While many red Westerns concentrated on aspects of Soviet/Eastern-European history, some others like the Czech Lemonade Joe (1964) and the East German The Sons of the Great Mother Bear (1966) tried to demythologise the Western in different ways: Lemonade Joe by sending up the more ridiculous aspects of marketing, and The Sons of the Great Mother Bear by showing how American natives were exploited repeatedly, told from the Native American rather than white settler viewpoint.

A Man from the Boulevard des Capucines (1987) was a sensitive satire on the Western film itself. It was also highly unusual in being one of the few examples in Soviet film of post-modernism.

List of Revisionist Western films

Films

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

See also

• Portrayal of Native Americans in film
• History of cinema
• The West As America Art Exhibition

References

1. ↑ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (Spring 1996). "A Gun Up Your Ass: An Interview with Jim Jarmusch". Cineaste. Vol. 22 no. 2. Retrieved 2014-09-01. 
2. ↑ Brophy, Philip (1987). "Rewritten Westerns: Rewired Westerns". Stuffing. No. 1. Melbourne. Retrieved 2014-09-01.