The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
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1y ago
  It’s often said that James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans is a tale many are familiar with, but a novel only few have read. Significantly the script for Michael Mann’s 1992 screen adaptation owes more to the screenplay of the 1936 film adaptation starring Randolph Scott than to the source novel. For those who do not know: The Last of the Mohicans is set during the so-called French and Indian war (1754-1963) when France and Britain battled for the control of the vast North American colonies. Both sides were supported by various native tribes (hence the name ‘Indian war’).&n ..read more
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Nevada Smith (1966)
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1y ago
  In Nevada Smith Steve McQueen is a half-breed, born out of an Indian (sorry: Native American) mother and a white father. Blue-eyed and fair-haired McQueen may seem an odd choice to play a half-breed, but note that we’re in the Sixties when white actors were often asked to impersonate biracial characters: Paul Newman would play one in Hombre (1967), Elvis Presley had played one in Flaming Star (1960). The film tells the background story of a character, Max Sand, created by Harold Robbins in his novel The Carpetbeggers (*1). Sand is a young man who vows revenge ..read more
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Man of the West (1958)
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3y ago
  In 1958 this movie was panned by critics for its melodramatic overtones while fans of the director weren’t happy by Mann’s decision to replace his regular collaborator Jimmy Stewart by Gary Cooper. Today many think this is Anthony Mann’s best western.   Gary Cooper is a seemingly respectable citizen who is stranded in the middle of nowhere after a train robbery, along with two other passengers, a cardsharp and a dance hall girl. He takes them to a ramshackle farmhouse, the only shelter he knows for miles and miles around, but the train robbers have taken the same place as ..read more
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The Homesman (2015)
Westerns on the Blog
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3y ago
A western unlike most others; it is based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, a name that might ring a bell: he also wrote The Shootist, the novel that formed the base of John Wayne's last hurrah. Hilary Swank is Mary Bee, a 31-year old frontierswoman and a spinster; she owns a piece of land, but can't find a husband because she is homely looking - at least she thinks that is the reason (others rather think she's too "bossy"). To take her mind off things, Mary Bee accepts the job of escorting three women who were driven mad by the harsh frontier life to a safe home in the East (This was a job ..read more
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Damsel
Westerns on the Blog
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3y ago
Damsel A low-key, eccentric approach to the western genre, about a damsel, not in distress Damsel is set in the West, anno 1870, and can therefore be called a western, but there are no gunslingers and no shootouts in dusty town streets; there's a damsel, but she's not in distress, and there's even an Indian - sorry: a Native American - but he's different from any other red man you may have met in cinema thus far. Like a few other 'different'  western movies in recent memory (The Homesman, Meek's Cutoff, The Sisters Brothers), Damsel is a movie about a journey. It is undertaken by a yo ..read more
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Silverado
Westerns on the Blog
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3y ago
Along with Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado was supposed to breathe new life into the western genre in the mid-80s. It failed to do so. Reviews were positive, but moviegoers where underwhelmed. It did a lot better when released on videocasette and was one of those movies that drew Hollywood's attention to this new market. The film’s story is classic western stuff: A cowboy named Emmett saves a man called Paden, who was left behind in the desert by bandits who had stolen all his possessions, including his horse and (worst of all) his hat. Emmett and Paden head for the ..read more
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Texas Across the River (1966)
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3y ago
When relatively unknown American actors went to Europe to appear in cheaply made spaghetti westerns (and in some cases became superstars), major European actors took the plane in the opposite direction to appear in lush Hollywood productions. With his appearance in Texas Across the River (1966), French superstar Alain Delon tried to establish his name across the ocean; for the occasion he was cast as a Latin Lover and paired with that other Latin Lover - the one from Hollywood - Dean Martin. Delon is a Spanish nobleman, Don Andrea Baldazar, El Duce de la Casala, who is about to marry a Sou ..read more
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More Dead than Alive
Westerns on the Blog
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3y ago
The title and the poster of the movie may give you the impression that this is a spaghetti western, but no, More Dead than Alive is an American movie. It stars Clint Walker as a former gunslinger - known as 'Killer Cain' - who has spent 18 years in jail and discovers that it's hard to leave his past behind.  The film opens with protracted (and remarkably bloody) sequence of a jailbreak that ends in carnage. Cain refuses to help the jail breakers because he wants to serve his sentence and start a new life, but when he is finally released from jail, the world he once knew has disappered ..read more
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The Undefeated
Westerns on the Blog
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3y ago
A routine western with patriotic overtones that is presented as a homage to John Ford. It was overshadowed by the immensely successful True Grit, released earlier the same year. The story is set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and the movie offers a real plethora of familiar western faces such as Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Dub Taylor and others. And of course it also stars the Duke, for the occasion paired with Rock Hudson. The film opens with a remarkably violent and bloody charge, led by Yankee Colonel John Henry Thomas (John Wayne) against a confederate regiment. Ov ..read more
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The Duel at Silver Creek (1952)
Westerns on the Blog
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3y ago
The Duel at Silver Creek This was Don Siegel's first foray into the western genre. The script combines two archetypes of western stories: the town under terror type and the revenge western. The father of a young man, Luke Cromwell (Murphy) is killed by claim jumpers, bandits stealing the claims of small time minors. While looking for the murderers, Luke becomes a gambler and a gunslinger, but the local sheriff appoints him as his deputy: he's in need of a quick drawing assistant after he has been hit by a bullet and is no longer able to squeeze the trigger. The two fall out when Luke ..read more
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