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What are three John ford silent Westerns I could show to set up Stage Coach?
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Nov 13, 2019 18:34
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 20:35 |
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Ok, I've made the following list of westerns for my freinds to watch and discuss, in something more consistent and serious than just a regular movie night. We did this previously with 10 Kurosawa films and it went well. This list is already much larger than the Kurosawa list, but is there anything I absolutely must add? Or any glaringly bad choices? I've seen some of these but not many. I plan to watch them in chronological order except that Unforgiven will be last, after Tombstone. The Great Train Robbery 1903 Hell's Hinges 1916 straight shooter 1917 iron horse 1924 Charlie Chaplain Gold Rush 1925 3 Bad Men 1926 Stage Coach 1939 My darling clementine 1946 Fort Apache 1948 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 1949 Rio Grande 1950 Shane 1953 The Searchers 1956 Rio bravo 1959 The Man who Shot Liberty Valance 1962 El Dorado 1966 True Grit 1969 For a Fistfull of Dollars 1964 For a Few Dollars More 1965 The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 1966 Once upon a time in the west 1968 High Plains Drifter 1973 Tombstone 1993 Unforgiven 1992
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Nov 13, 2019 20:16
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Added, thanks!
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Nov 13, 2019 20:30
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If I wanted to add fewer than a half dozen "modern westerns" to show after Unforgiven and Tombstone, dating from the 90s to today, what are the five I absolutely have to have?
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Nov 13, 2019 22:16
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I appreciate all the help, here is my final draft. Regarding the modern Westerns I disregarded a lot of good choices simply because we've seen them. Pre-Stage Coach: 1903 - 1926 The Great Train Robbery 1903 Hell's Hinges 1916 Straight Shooting 1917 Iron Horse 1924 The Gold Rush 1925 Three Bad Men 1926 Stage Coach to The Searchers: 1939 - 1954 * Stage Coach 1939 My Darling Clementine 1946 Fort Apache 1948 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 1949 Rio Grande 1950 High Noon 1952 Shane 1953 Johnny Guitar 1954 The Searchers to the end of John Wayne: 1956-1969 * The Searchers 1956 Rio Bravo 1959 The Magnificent Seven 1960 The Man who Shot Liberty Valance 1962 El Dorado 1966 True Grit 1969 Sergio Leone, revisionist Westerns: 1964 - 1993 * A Fistful of Dollars 1964 For a Few Dollars More 1965 The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 1966 Once Upon a Time in the West 1968 The Wild Bunch 1969 McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971 High Plains Drifter 1973 Tombstone 1993 * Unforgiven 1992 Modern Westerns: 2005 - 2018 The Proposition 2005 * The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 2007 Meek's Cutoff 2010 Sisters Brothers 2018 Note: These movies will all be viewed in chronological order with the exceptions of grouping the Sergio Leonne films after the classic American Westerns and the showing of Unforgiven, which will be the final film following after Tombstone. The *'d movies are particularly noteworthy in our sequence; they challenged the conventions of previous works and influenced future Westerns. If someone misses one of those films I'll work to schedule another viewing for them.
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Nov 13, 2019 23:36
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I didn't realize there was a film adaptation of All the Pretty Horses. I haven't read it but have read and enjoyed Blood Meredian and No Country for Old Men. The film seems well reviewed, anyone seen it?
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Nov 14, 2019 00:17
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sean10mm posted:Hot take: The Revenant looks great but is overpoweringly dumb. Fellow goon and member of this movie watching party Pharmaskittle loves Ravenous; I watched it with him once and was not on board for the "They Live alley fight but serious" finale.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:01
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I’ve almost finished watching the first segment of my Western films, "Pre-Stage Coach: 1903 - 1926" and realized I should start saying something now before I'm a dozen movies deep. These early silent films set the tone of rough action, melodrama, and stock characters that Stage Coach would go on to both culminate and transcend. Although it feels odd to assign these movies a hard rating since they’re noteworthy mostly for their influence on the genre, at least two of these films are quite good in and of themselves and could be enjoyed today even outside of some genre retrospective. Per the OP I’m going to spoil tag some stuff since, even though these films are ancient, most of them also aren't widely viewed. The Great Train Robbery (1903) 3/5 The first film is the best example of the difficulty of grading these earliest Westerns; The Great Train Robbery feels more like an extended scene than one complete movie. However, that small scene introduces core elements of the Western Genre: bandits, posses, fist fights and shootouts, bawdy dance-halls, and, of course, Train Robberies. There were a few famous visual tricks I knew to look for, like the painstaking film cutting to create a moving background and the famous “point of view” gun shot. Other highlights include the “stick `em up” scene with the passengers and the safe guard shoot out, the acting in both is surprisingly nature aside from reaching to heaven in the stage-acted deaths. Still, even if The Great Train Robbery is so raw and unsophisticated as to be almost unrecognizable compared to a modern feature-length film, it’s on youtube and short, so the barrier for entry couldn’t be lower. Hell's Hinges (1916) 3/5 Unsurprisingly, thirteen years allows a new art form to grow in complexity; this is a got-danged movie. Unlike its predecessor in this list, Hell’s Hinges features a protagonist, William S. Hart as Blaze Tracy. Since Hart is the first real Western star in this list; he’d go on to star in, produce, or direct dozens of silent westerns, and Wikipedia says that “during the late 1910s and early 1920s, he was one of the most consistently popular movie stars”. He had a background as a Shakespherian actor, including a role in the first stage production of Ben-Hur, which is going to give him a link to another early Western leading man, Harrey Carrey, who we’ll see later). Finally, while I wouldn’t exactly call him gorgeous, he has a striking face that excels in the stark close ups of early film, check this out:  Also note, in the above photo, the fantastic costume. Hart loved the west; he owned one of Billy the Kid’s revolvers and was a friend of Wyatt Earp; and he insisted on accurate props and costumes in his pictures. The visual authenticity of the movie is excellent and I’m going to really miss these outfits when we get to the 50’s and I’m watching Johnny Guitar. Furthermore, Hell’s Hinges doesn’t just provide us with a protagonist, it provides an anti-hero. The titular town is a sort of Deadwood, lawless and dangerous, and Blaze Tracy likes it that way. The gunman lives by his own rules and, as the film itself says, he’s one side of a coin that also features the reprehensible Silk Miller, a treacherous tavern owner whose evil is helpfully illustrated by an intertitle card which reveals he is *gasp* half Mexican. The basic premise is that religion comes into the town, including a beautiful and pure young woman named Faith, and Blaze is drawn into conflict with Silk and the other, seedier elements of Hell’s Hinges. The movie is still rough in it’s narrative structure and pacing, but the premise and central characters are iconic, there are some fantastic close ups, and the climax has Blaze burning the whole damned town, six guns blasting in both hands, the whole thing shot in a red filter, righteous:  While The Great Train Robbery is justly famous as the First Western, Hell’s Hinges represents an essential evolution from that film into a more sophisticated form; in support of that I’ll close with this excellent contemporary review: The New York Press posted:"Gunplay and religion lubricate 'Hell's Hinges' ... It is a film drama that combines all the elements that make for success ... Reckless riding, double-handed shooting from the hip, a dance hall of the Bret Harte description and, finally a conflagration that gives a truly Gehenna-like finish to the place known as Hell's Hinges ... No actor before the screen has been able to give as sincere and true a touch to the Westerner as Hart. He rides in a manner indigenous to the soil, he shoots with the real knack and he acts with that sense of artistry that hides the acting."
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Dec 29, 2019 18:27
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FreudianSlippers posted:William S. Hart was only five years younger than Billy the Kid. Yeah that's on my mind a lot during the earlier movies. Man, after a half dozen silent films we're watching Stagecoach next and I'm getting so excited for the dialogue. Gonna see if I can make them sit through the commentary track on the criterion channel in a follow up watching.
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Jan 8, 2020 23:37
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Calico Heart posted:Howdy folks. I run a small Youtube channel that mostly talks about media/lefty stuff and I recently made a video entitled "You couldn't make Blazing Saddles today!" Yo, this video was great; it's a thorough and smart examination of the context surrounding the film and I'm going to link it to all my friends when we get to Blazing Saddles.
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Jan 10, 2020 19:03
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drat, we've worked our way up to Fort Apache and the one other guy in our group who has seen a few westerns says both that he's seen Fort Apache and that it's bad and he won't re-watch it. I'm going to watch it myself and then we'll all meet up to see the new film in the list, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I haven't seen it yet but I think its kind if weird that someone who has liked the several John Ford films we've seen so far would hate this one enough to not want to see it. Edit: Also, trip report of the Western after Stage Coach and My Darling Clementine: It was fun watching a dozen or so silent westerns but good lord did the complexity of the narrative and characters increase with the talkies, Stage Coach might have as much dialog / interactions between characters as every preceding film combined. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 21:12
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Not to get E/N but he watched all the westerns he's seen because his recently deceased father liked them, but he also checks out real quick from anything that makes a bad first impression, so there's potentially a really good or really lame reason to not want watch it. But yeah, we're both liking John Ford's movies; I'm falling hard his themes of interweaving the myths of the west into the larger myths of American history.
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Jan 21, 2020 21:36
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ruddiger posted:Ask him if he’s seen Fort Apache, The Bronx. I've seen it, and now I've seen the Western! I liked it, it wasn't what I was expecting and I suppose I could see why my friend might be turned off by the narrative and ending, but I enjoyed a more slower paced look at life inside a frontier fort. I also appreciate the portrayal of the native Americans, I never considered that even they would use Spanish as the southwestern Lingua Franca. Uh, John Ford didn't make that up right?
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Jan 26, 2020 15:04
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These posts make me excited for Johnny Guitar, it is coming up in our list soon. Well, we’ve finished John Ford’s & John Wayne’s Calvary Trilogy (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande). The second film was the first in color and the visuals, not just in color but in props, setting, etc, were excellent, that had to be quite the movie in its day. Regarding Rio Grande, it seemed much worse by comparison, and I heard somewhere that John Wayne was sort of phoning it in, any truth to that? Next up is High Noon, which I’ve never seen, though I always liked the Frankie Laine song that I think is related to it. I’m making sure to introduce the song to my friends, because I want to try to work up some context for his singing in Blazing Saddles once we get there. I’m looking forward to High Noon; I enjoyed the “slice of life” elements of the Calvary Trilogy, and the character actor Ward Bond was a delight in all three films, but I’m ready to change gears away from the military and into some other setting. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 13:46
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I watched it because it was on some list, but the F:NV song was definitely all I knew of the movie before I saw it. I really don't think it's a good song, even after the movie.
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Mar 10, 2020 14:56
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My western watching hasn't survived social distancing, so tonight, the traditional night, I'm going to stream High Noon on a discord if anyone is interested, that isn't considered "files" is it? Edit: does it break the piracy rule of the subforum? If it does I won't do it, it's just that none of my irl friends seem much up for watching right now. Edit2: Watched High Noon. I guess the Director is Fred Zimmerman, who I've never heard of, but the tone and themes were a lot different than the run of John Ford pictures I've mostly been watching. I liked it, Gary Coopers increasing dread/panic culminating in that long rising shot above the empty town's gonna stick with me. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Apr 1, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 17:09
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I can confirm I've also been very disappointed in the Criterion Channel (for westerns). They used to have a commentary version of Stagecoach that was very, very good, which is the kind of thing I want from Criterion Channel, just not enough offerings like that imo. Edit: the last western I saw in my huge list was The Searchers and now, after just finishing a rereading of Blood Meridian and being halfway through Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, the movie is really suffering from comparison to those two books. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 21:57
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Where can I rent a copy with the original ending? Just tell me a service/platform and I'll watch it blind.
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Jul 6, 2020 22:33
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Saw The Great Silence; good music and interesting use of snow instead of desert, but I was surprised to read afterwords that it's considered a masterpiece. Maybe the ending just means a lot more in 1968 than 2020. Spaghetti westerns are always surreal, otherworldly tales to me, and maybe that undermines the impact of this one in particular, could just be me.
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Jul 7, 2020 13:45
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High noon is very, very good, and honestly the song, which I heard on a Frankie Laine album way before I saw the film, had me expecting something corny. Nope, not at all.
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Aug 10, 2020 15:30
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Rio bravo is actually next up on my chronological list 
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Aug 10, 2020 20:18
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Still working slowly through Westerns, saw Cheyenne Autumn last weekend, really not the treatment I was expecting from John Ford. I think it illustrates a real change from his earliest films like Iron Horse and Stagecoach, you can see how his ever present interest in the narrative of the American West is changing as the decades go by. Beautiful landscapes and cinematography, as always.
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Jan 28, 2021 17:20
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Yeah, maybe on the nose, though I don't know how topical that argument was in 1964. Also I did like that officer speculating that he may have taken on the same societal role as the cossack horsemen that terrorized his family at home; it seemed like he was edging towards an awareness that this kind of violence is as much about systems rather than personal hatred. Edit: Oh, also! Wtf is up with the Jimmy Stewart Wyat Earp interlude? Was he just on the set and insisting on playing the gunfighter in a western? Did Ford try to slip in a comedic beat like in the searchers and just have it go on too long? It doesn't match the feel of the rest of the movie and went on way longer than I thought it should; it was a fine couple of scenes on it's own but not in the context of the larger film. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Jan 29, 2021 |
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Jan 29, 2021 13:10
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Yeah, I agree that Ford's Westerns in particular are a direct route to the Dad History of yesteryear, I don't mean to belittle him but regarding history he's just an interested amateur expressing the conventional views of the time. Fairly populist though, lots of villainous bankers and big land owners. Finished El Dorado and True Grit a couple weeks ago, the last of the Ford/Wayne westerns I'll be watching in this list. I feel like I've been waiting through an eternity of Cavalry films for El Dorado; that's John Wayne for me, masculine but not barbaric, independent but not willing to tolerate evil. Big and stout but clean shaven and rugged without being coarse. Speaking of coarse.. True Grit has really paid off in this sequential viewing, I can see why he won the oscar, his performance really is a stretch beyond what he normally brings. The first half, aka "woman defends own interests in conversation, town shocked" was unexpectedly fantastically; nobody likes her but the audience and we love her. Rooster Cogburn recognizing and admiring her spirit (her grit!) makes for a great slow building friend ship. Honestly, now that it's all said and done, if someone said "show me old westerns" I might just shove stage coach, el Dorado, and true grit at them as THE big three. Johnny Guitar is there for a female lead, and High Noon gets you both a non-wayne picture and an usual plot, and I'd probably have those and a few others handy based on what someone asked about, but I'd probably start with these three Ford / Wayne pictures. Next up, the first of my Spaghetti Westerns, whichever one is the first of the Man With Name. Fistful of Dollars? I only ever saw the third one (which I adore). Excited! Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Mar 2, 2021 |
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Mar 2, 2021 20:33
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TheOmegaWalrus posted:If you even vaguely dig Ford/Wayne movies and haven't seen The Searchers then boy howdy, you are sitting on a goldmine. Damnit, my trio of movies! Now what I am going to do!? I saw it and loved it but now I have to have a long think about which of the four I would cut. Black westerns, hell yeah. They did noir earlier and they were great.
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Mar 2, 2021 23:54
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Saw Fistful of Dollars last weekend. Relevant: Yojimbo is my favorite Kurosawa action film (my heart must make room for Ikiru, regardless Yojimbo is certainly my favorite "fun" Kurosawa picture). What a palette change from True Grit; this movie feels so, so much NEWER. Leone is something like 36 years younger than Ford and you can feel the generational shift between the two films. I'd never seen it, and compared to one of my all time favorites, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Fistful of Dollars is rougher, and I was surprised to realize they only came out, what 2 years apart? If that's the case, and there's another movie in between them, I think I want to know more about the circumstances of making this trilogy. Still, compared to the previous Westerns in my list, this feels almost as dramatic as the change from silent to voiced (I think the first one was My Darling Clementine?) or the introduction in color (beautifully harnessed in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon); it's such a departure from what came before it in tone, style, aesthetic; in music and in the general attitude of the characters. It's just very, well, cool. Great movie, and now I can't wait to see the next one in the trilogy.
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Mar 8, 2021 22:25
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No, I get you, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly defined westerns for me, actually getting to know these older Hollywood Westerns was why I started watching all these to begin with. Leone's movie didn't seem surreal to me because I grew up with it; and it's only much later in my life that they started to seem distrurbly detached from the real world.
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Mar 8, 2021 23:01
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Payndz posted:In my mind, westerns [...] have sweaty Spanish extras looming into frame in close-up to a demented wailing score [...] Just saw For a Few Dollars More. 
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Mar 21, 2021 13:45
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Skipped way, way ahead in my list today, in order to watch something with a friend, and saw The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I'd known the film's reputation going into it, and still within the first 10 minutes, when the lanterns were doused and the train came on in the dark, the film earned it. I'm not sure I'll ever call it the best Western, but it's certainly a great film.
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Mar 25, 2021 03:49
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Red Letter Media discuss The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly https://youtu.be/17N8_E40Nl0 One is a fan of the whole trilogy, the other hadn't ever seen it. Pretty expected positive reactions, some interesting points that aren't really news to anyone who's seen and thought about the movie but if you like to see strangers discuss a film you love this is that. I do wish they didn't dismiss John Ford and John Wayne westerns as morally simplistic, but they haven't really seen them so they're just expressing a common misconception in pop culture that conflates 50's and 60's TV shows with the more subtle and varies films. The Searchers is just screaming for a rebuttal to a lot of their assumptions.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:37
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I'm not any kind of expert on the subject but the Silent film era exists for like twenty years before Stagecoach and it was a much bigger deal than we generally acknowledge today; movie makers in the mid twenties are already working in a decades old tradition. Also, apparently The Virginian was published in 1902 so yeah it's two decades of Westerns before then. The Great Train Robbery might not have real characters, but Hell's Hinges does.
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Jan 24, 2023 19:33
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Heavy Metal posted:That sounds like wild times. I've seen 50s 3:10 to Yuma. I recall the prisoner landed different for me as character in his major scenes where he enticed/challenged the protagonist, compared to the remake. It just seemed like movies had different ways to show the character; 50s one was much more conventionally charming? I'd seen the remake first so that set my expectations going into the original, I'd be curious how other folks compare them.
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Feb 25, 2023 11:01
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