I got the following piece of mail from old friend Rob Mitchell:
Back in MT Void Vol 21, No. 11 (09/13/02, for those keeping score at home), you wrote an interesting column about your top five Westerns As a friendly reminder, those were:
I was watching the AFI special last week about their "10 Top 10" lists, where they took ten genres and listed their top 10 movies in each genre. I note the Westerns they offered did not overlap yours at all, except for one film:
HIGH NOON is of course the only overlap. I realize you only had five films in your list, but out of idle curiosity, I was wondering if any of the AFI films would have been in your next five best.
If you are interested in the other 9 lists (including SF, and Fantasy), as I'm sure you know you can check out: http://www.afi.com/10top10/.
[-rm]
Okay, this is not going to be an essay. I am just going to meander a little.
And the first thing that struck me about Rob's mail is that it was a *great* excuse to put some Western film music on my iPod and write about Westerns again. It is fun to write about Westerns. I don't feel that way about films based on comic books and perhaps not even the current crop of science fiction films. But I find that as I get older I have a real affection for the Western genre. (Maybe part of it is that I have been out west and seen the spectacular scenery that is such an important part of Western films. But it is more than that.)
First, let me directly answer his question. If I had listed my top ten I would have included UNFORGIVEN and SHANE. If I were going through the exercise right now I would also probably include RED RIVER. I might be hard-pressed to come up with the other two. Perhaps I might add ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (though as I said previously I am convinced the latter film is misinterpreted by just about everybody). I guess that makes my ten.
Well, let me address first the unasked question of why there is so little overlap. I tend to find I almost always will disagree with Top Ten lists made up by large numbers of people voting. For such a votership of hundreds to pick a top film it will have had to be seen by a large number of those voters. Films that have not been seen by a lot of people for reasons of distribution or unusual approaches in the storytelling might not be seen by many people but that might be just what makes me like it. I knew that in the AFI's recent list of Top Ten science fiction films, enough people would not have seen films I really admire. For me and for a critic-heavy group of friends GATTACA was the best science fiction film of the 1990s. Yet I knew full well that GATTACA was not going to make the AFI's Top Ten list. Too few people had seen it and only a small number of them will see what we admire in it.
Sidenote: As of this writing I have been unable to get the same group of friends to see what I consider the best (or perhaps second best) science fiction film of this decade, Jerome Bixby's THE MAN FROM EARTH. But this film is not going to make the AFI lists either. Not enough people know about it. The fact is that I just have too many Westerns I like for my own reasons to have a lot of overlap with the AFI's Top Ten Western list. It is less than half even if I add the three overlapping films I have mentioned above. Well, let me comment on some of The AFI top five.
THE SEARCHERS is the only one we have a real disagreement over. I have to admit, I am not sure why I so much disagree with the AFI list on this one. Perhaps it is just too dour for me. In the film over a course of years Ethan Edwards, John Wayne's character, searches for his niece who was kidnapped in an Indian attack. And the search goes on for several years. Ethan was burned out in the Civil War and now the only thing that seems to be keeping him alive is his hatred of Indians. The final scene is very telling because it shows he does not have a lot of feeling for his family and he is not even a welcome member of the family. Who wants to spend two hours with this character? Wayne is nasty enough in RED RIVER, but his character is softened a bit. And there are people around to tell him "You was wrong." In THE SEARCHERS Ethan never realizes what a cold angry man he really has become. There really is no character to like very much.
HIGH NOON I agree is a good film and it is on my list. This is the film in which Marshall Will Kane is left almost alone to stand up to a gang led by a man Kane put in prison and who now seeming has the power to take revenge. Kane has a whole town full of people who like him, but when the chips are down will not join him to defend their own town. (I won't go into the allegory of the government during the Red scare.) HIGH NOON is another misanthropic film, but not as much so as THE SEARCHERS. There are positive people in film for the viewer to latch onto and like. Most of the town is acting in self-interest, but there are people willing to stand up to the Frank Miller gang. And there is Amy, Kane's new wife (Grace Kelly), who has to choose between love and principle. But the most interesting character in the film is Katy Jurado's Helen Ramirez who has strong ideals and is the only person in town who can appreciate what Kane really is.
SHANE is on my top ten list, but a little lower. This is the quintessential film of the gunfighter on the prairie. A very good gunman (Alan Ladd) ambles his way into a battle between sod-busting farmers and a big-money rancher who is chasing them off their own land. In large part the gunfighter is seen through the eyes of a boy much to the regret of the boy's father. The father (Van Heflin) is torn between his need for the gunfighter Shane and wanting to make sure the boy does not make the same choices Shane did. Clint Eastwood paid the film tribute by making an uncredited near-remake, PALE RIDER. But SHANE is better.
Speaking of Clint Eastwood, UNFORGIVEN is an act of contrition on Eastwood's part. For years he made films glorifying violence. Then he made this film to show how bad violence is. Then he resolves the plot in one massive violent event negating the message of the film to that point. It reminds me of the line in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN when Inspector Kemp says "A mob is an ugly thing ... and it's just about time we had one!" But I do like the characters and the style.
RED RIVER is the story of one great cattle drive and the unpleasant so-and-so who organizes it only to find a mutiny on his hands. Nothing is really great, but it sustains a pretty good level for just about the whole length. When it is over you feel you have been on the cattle drive with them. For another really good cattle drive film, see LONESOME DOVE. But it is really not fair to count as a single movie since it really is a TV mini-series well over six hours long.
So I agree fairly much with the top five films on the AFI's list. I just have some particularly good Westerns I rate higher than most of their Top Five. [-mrl]
Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper