Western (genre) - Film - Subgenres

Subgenres

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The Western genre itself has sub-genres, such as the epic Western, the shoot 'em up, singing cowboy Westerns, and a few comedy Westerns. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Western was re-invented with the revisionist Western.

Classical Westerns

The first Western film was the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery, a silent film directed by Edwin S. Porter and starring Broncho Billy Anderson. The film's popularity opened the door for Anderson to become the screen's first cowboy star, making several hundred Western film shorts. So popular was the genre that he soon had competition in the form of William S. Hart. The Golden Age of the Western film is epitomized by the work of two directors: John Ford and Howard Hawks (both of whom often used John Wayne in lead roles).

Northerns

The Northern genre is a subgenre of Westerns taking place in Western Canada or Alaska. Examples include The Far Country with James Stewart and North to Alaska with John Wayne.

Euro Westerns

This is a colloquial idiom often used to describe Western films made in Western Europe. The term can sometimes, but not necessarily, include the Spaghetti Western subgenre (see below). One example of a Euro Western is the 1961 Anglo-Spanish film The Savage Guns. Several such films were made in Germany, derived from stories by novelist Karl May (cf. article on film adaptations).

Spaghetti Westerns

See also: Zapata Western and Weird West

During the 1960s and 1970s, a revival of the Western emerged in Italy with the "Spaghetti Westerns" or "Italo-Westerns". The most famous of them is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Many of these films are low-budget affairs, shot in locations (for example, the Spanish desert region of Almería) chosen for their inexpensive crew and production costs as well as their similarity to landscapes of the Southwestern United States. Spaghetti Westerns were characterized by the presence of more action and violence than the Hollywood Westerns. Also, the protagonists usually acted out of more selfish motives (money or revenge being the most common) than in the classical westerns.

The films directed by Sergio Leone have a parodic dimension (the strange opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West being a reversal of Fred Zinnemann's High Noon opening scene) which gave them a different tone to the Hollywood Westerns. Charles Bronson, Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood became famous by starring in Spaghetti Westerns, although they were also to provide a showcase for other noted actors such as Jason Robards, James Coburn, Klaus Kinski and Henry Fonda.

Osterns

Eastern-European-produced Westerns were popular in Communist Eastern European countries, and were a particular favorite of Joseph Stalin. "Red Western" or "Ostern" films usually portrayed the American Indians sympathetically, as oppressed people fighting for their rights, in contrast to American Westerns of the time, which frequently portrayed the Indians as villains. They frequently featured Gypsies or Turkic people in the role of the Indians, due to the shortage of authentic Indians in Eastern Europe.

Gojko Mitić portrayed righteous, kind hearted and charming Indian chiefs (e.g. in Die Söhne der großen Bärin directed by Josef Mach). He became honorary chief of the tribe of Sioux when he visited the United States of America in the 1990s and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his films. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films.

Revisionist Western

After the early 1960s, many American film-makers began to question and change many traditional elements of Westerns. One major change was in the increasingly positive representation of Native Americans who had been treated as "savages" in earlier films (Little Big Man, Dances with Wolves). Audiences were encouraged to question the simple hero-versus-villain dualism and the morality of using violence to test one's character or to prove oneself right.

Some recent Westerns give women more powerful roles. One of the earlier films that encompasses all these features was the 1956 adventure film The Last Wagon in which Richard Widmark played a white man raised by Comanches and persecuted by whites, with Felicia Farr and Susan Kohner playing young women forced into leadership roles. Westward the Women (1951) starring Robert Taylor is another example.

Acid Western

Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum refers to a makeshift 1960s and 1970s genre called the acid Western, associated with Dennis Hopper, Jim McBride, and Rudy Wurlitzer, as well as films like Monte Hellman's The Shooting, Alejandro Jodorowsky's bizarre experimental film El Topo (The Mole), and Robert Downey Sr.'s Greaser's Palace. The 1970 film El Topo is an allegorical cult Western and underground film about the eponymous character, a violent black-clad gunfighter, and his quest for enlightenment. The film is filled with bizarre characters and occurrences, use of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy. Some spaghettis also crossed over into the acid genre, such as Enzo G. Castellari's mystical Keoma (released in 1976), a Western reworking of Ingmar Bergman's metaphysical The Seventh Seal.

More recent films include Alex Cox's Walker, and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man. Rosenbaum describes the "acid Western" as "formulating a chilling, savage frontier poetry to justify its hallucinated agenda." Ultimately, the "acid Western" expresses a counterculture sensibility to critique and replace capitalism with alternative forms of exchange.

Contemporary Westerns/Neo-Westerns

Although these films have contemporary American settings, they utilize Old West themes and motifs (a rebellious anti-hero, open plains and desert landscapes, and gunfights). For the most part, they still take place in the American West and reveal the progression of the Old West mentality into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This sub-genre often features Old West-type characters struggling with displacement in a "civilized" world that rejects their outdated brand of justice.

Examples include Hud starring Paul Newman (1963); Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (1972) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974); Simon Wincer's Quigley Down Under; Robert Rodríguez's El Mariachi (1992); John Sayles' Lone Star (1996); Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005); Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005); Wim Wenders' Don't Come Knocking (2005); and the Coen brothers Academy Award–winning No Country For Old Men (2007). Call of Juarez: The Cartel is an example of a Neo-Western video game. The precursor to these was the radio series (1950 - 1952) Tales of the Texas Rangers, a contemporary detective drama set in Texas, featuring many of the characteristics of traditional Westerns.

Science fiction Western

This subgenre places science fiction elements within a traditional terran Western setting. Examples include Wild Wild West, Westworld, its sequel Futureworld, Cowboys & Aliens, and the hybrid film Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. Damnation is a video game example of the science fiction Western.

Space Western

Unlike the science fiction Western, the space Western transposes traditional genre themes onto a space frontier backdrop, updating them with futuristic technologies. Examples include Bravestarr, Outland, and Firefly (as well as the film Serenity based on Firefly).

Curry Western

Westerm films in india was first made in Telugu Mosagaalaku Mosagaadu in 1970. Following with films Ganga and Jakkamma starring Jaishankar in Tamil. But those films were more based on Classic Westerns. Spaghetti Westerns laid the groundwork for Sholay in 1975 after which it was called as curry western . Followed by Khote Sikkay and Rajinikanth film Thai Meethu Sathiyam in Tamil were some notable films of this Genre

In modern age Quick Gun Murugun a 2009 Indian comedy film which is a spoof on Indian western movies. The movie.The movie is based on a character created for television promos at the time of the launch of the music network Channel in 1994 which had cult following. In 2010 Irumbukkottai Murattu Singam "Western adventure comedy film" based on Cowboy movies and paying homages to the John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Jaishankar.

Horror Western

A developing sub-genre, with roots in films such as Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966), which depicts the legendary outlaw Billy the Kid fighting against the notorious vampire. The Ghoul Goes West was an unproduced Edward D. Wood, Jr. film to star Bela Lugosi as Dracula in the Old West.

The 2008 film The Burrowers is a recent example of the genre: a posse sets out to look for a band of Indians believed to have abducted several white women, only to discover that what they are hunting may not be human and that they in fact may be the prey. The Red Dead Redemption downloadable content "Undead Nightmare" is an example of a Horror Western video game. The movie Tremors 4: The Legend Begins is also an example.

Weird Western

This subgenre blends elements of a classic Western with other elements. The Wild Wild West and its later film adaptation blends the Western with steampunk and Jonah Hex blends the Western with superhero elements. This subgenre can encompass others, such as the Horror Western and the science fiction Western, e.g. Firefly (see above).

Western satire

This subgenre in its current usage is imitative in its style to mock, comment on, or trivialise the genre's established traits, subjects, auteurs' styles or some other target by means of humorous,satiric or ironic imitation. Such titles include Blazing Saddles, The Hallelujah Trail, The Scalphunters, Rustlers' Rhapsody, and Maverick.