Western films

Western Films are the major defining genre of the American film industry, a eulogy to the early days of the expansive American frontier. They are one of the oldest, most enduring and flexible genres and one of the most characteristically American genres in their mythic origins - they focus on the West - in North America. Western films have also been called the horse opera, the oater (quickly-made, short western films which became as commonplace as oats for horses), or the cowboy picture. The western film genre has portrayed much about America's past, glorifying the past-fading values and aspirations of the mythical by-gone age of the West. Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed.

The roots of the film western are found in folk music of the colonial period, James Fenimore Cooper's novels such as The Last of the Mohicans (1826) (re-made as a feature film at least three times - 1920, 1936, and most recently as a popular film starring Daniel Day Lewis as a white scout named Hawkeye raised as a Mohican in The Last of the Mohicans (1992)), Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail (1849), Samuel Clemens' (Mark Twain) Roughing It (1872), Bret Harte's short stories, and other mythologies (tales of Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Jim Bowie, Gen. George A Custer, Calamity Jane, and outlaws such as the James Brothers, the original Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Billy the Kid).

Westerns are often set on the American frontier during the last part of the 19th century (1865-1900) following the Civil War, in a geographically western (trans-Mississippi) setting with romantic, sweeping frontier landscapes or rugged rural terrain. However, Westerns may extend back to the time of America's colonial period or forward to the mid-20th century, or as far geographically as Mexico. The western film genre often portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature, in the name of civilization, or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original inhabitants of the frontier. Specific settings include lonely isolated forts, ranch houses, the isolated homestead, the saloon, the jail, the small-town main street, or small frontier towns that are forming at the edges of civilization.

Usually, the central plot of the western film is the classic, simple goal of maintaining law and order on the frontier in a fast-paced action story. It is normally rooted in conflict - good vs. bad, virtue vs. evil, white hat vs. black hat, man vs. man, new arrivals vs. Native Americans (inhumanely portrayed as savage Indians), cowboys vs. Indians, human vs. nature, civilization vs. wilderness, schoolteachers vs. saloon dancehall girls, villain vs. hero, lawman vs. gunslinger, social law and order vs. anarchy, the rugged individualist vs. the community, East vs. West, settler vs. nomad, and farmer vs. industrialist to name a few. Often the hero of a western meets his opposite "double," a mirror of his own evil side that he has to destroy.

Typical elements in westerns include hostile elements, guns and gun fights (sometimes on horseback), violence and human massacres, horses, trains (and train robberies), bank robberies, stagecoachs, shoot-outs and showdowns, outlaws and sheriffs, cattle drives and cattle rustling, posses and pursuit or 'search and destroy' plots, breathtaking settings, and distinctive western clothing.

Western heroes are often local law enforcement officers, territorial marshals, or a skilled, fast-draw gunfighter. They are normally persons of integrity and principle - courageous, moral, tough, solid and self-sufficient characters (often with trusty sidekicks), possessing an independent and honorable attitude. The Western hero can usually stand alone and face danger on his own.

The western was among the first film genres, growing in status alongside the development of Hollywood's studio production system. There were only a few great silent westerns, although the best ones established some of the archetypes that are part of the genre even today. The earliest westerns (silent films without the sound of gunfire, horse's hoofbeats, and the cattle trail) are gems of American history. The first cowboy film was titled Cripple Creek Bar Room (1898), but the 'first real movie' or commercially narrative film that gave birth to the genre was The Great Train Robbery (1903) - it was a one-reel, 10-minute long film, shot on the East Coast (New Jersey and Delaware) rather than the Western setting of Wyoming. It was directed by former Thomas Edison cameraman Edwin S. Porter. Almost all the essential elements of westerns were included: good guys, bad guys, a robbery or wrong-doing, a chase or pursuit, and a final showdown, all in a natural setting. The film ended (or began) with a stunning close-up (the first!) of a gunman (George Barnes) firing directly into the camera - and audience.

D. W. Griffith dabbled in silent westerns, producing such pictures as Last Drop of Water (1911), with the western's first characteristic scenes of a wagon train siege and a cavalry rescue, the innovatively-filmed Fighting Blood (1911) about conflict between white settlers and Sioux Indians in the Dakota territory of 1899, and The Battle of Elderbrush Gulch (1913), a pre-cursor to his most (in)famous film, Birth of a Nation (1915). Cecil B. DeMille's first motion picture was The Squaw Man (1913), supposedly the first feature filmed entirely in Hollywood. Even in the early days of the film industry, some real-life cowboys and legendary western figures appeared in films: Wyatt Earp in The Half-Breed (1919), and Buffalo Bill Cody in The Adventures of Buffalo Bill (1917).

Thomas Ince was the first studio executive who embraced the western in the teen years, producing detailed scripts with new situations and characters for a vast number of classic westerns. Ince was responsible for discovering and bringing western actor/director William S. Hart to stardom - Hart emerged as one of the greatest Western heroes of all time until the release of his last film, Tumbleweeds (1925).

Notably, the first big-scale epic film of the silent era was also a western, James Cruze's landmark and highly successful The Covered Wagon (1923), an effort which cost $800,000 yet brought $4 million at the box-office. This feature-length western was the historical drama of a wagon train in the mid-1800s moving westward, encountering harsh environmental and weather conditions and, of course, hostile Indians. Its success led to another epic, western tale of the building of the American empire - John Ford's silent railroad classic The Iron Horse (1924). (It would be another fifteen years before Ford's next western classic.) Hollywood was encouraged to produce many more westerns in subsequent years. Warner Baxter won a Best Actor Academy Award as the Cisco Kid in director Raoul Walsh's western In Old Arizona (1928/9). The Best Picture Academy Award winner in the 1930/31 ceremony was Wesley Ruggles' Cimarron (1931), an epic tale based on Edna Ferber's tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush, notable for also being the first western incorporating sound.

Westerns were among the slowest of the film genres to mature although with the coming of sound, they achieved fuller development. From the early 1920s however, many westerns were unsophisticated, inexpensively-made, low quality, action-packed B-pictures filled with familiar stock footage, often the bottom half of a double bill in feature-length and Saturday-matinee serial formats, although some of the earliest were A-budget films. Early westerns provided theater owners with second features and steady work for a countless stable of actors. During the earliest, pre-sound period of the westerns (the teens and the 20s), the major western stars (or silent screen cowboys) of the primitive B films were Hoot Gibson, accomplished rodeo horseman/cowboy Tom Mix (a prototype western action hero), "Broncho Billy" Anderson, Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, and William S. Hart - the first cowboy superstar.

Later as the genre developed into the 30s, some of the films and their stars included Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, William 'Hopalong Cassidy' Boyd (who appeared in almost seventy films between 1935 and 1952), Sunset Carson, Rex Allen, Tim Holt, Randolph Scott and others. During this time period, shorter, light-hearted, low-budget, non-violent Westerns, called singing cowboy films, highlighted the musical and singing talents of its stars in addition to gunslinging. Stars including Tex Ritter, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers often played themselves and became cultural icons, in such forgettable films as Song of the Gringo (1936). Gene Autry was the top moneymaker of the cowboy stars of the late 1930s and early 1940s, and Roy Rogers became known as 'The King of the Cowboys' during the 1940s. The Wild West serial - that featured the heroic Cisco and his sidekick Pancho - was memoralized in the TV series The Cisco Kid, with co-stars Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo.

In 1930s and 40s westerns, many well-known acting stars got their start. Gary Cooper starred in an early talkie - Paramount's first sound western by director Victor Fleming titled The Virginian (1929), known for its famous western phrase: "When you call me that, smile." John Wayne gained his acting experience during the 1930s in dozens of B westerns. "John Wayne" (first known as Marion Michael Morrison) was discovered by director Raoul Walsh and appeared in his first starring role in one of the earliest epic westerns about a wagon trail - The Big Trail (1930), filmed in both 35mm and in a wide-screen 70 mm process called Grandeur. Other stars in westerns were Wallace Beery who memorably portrayed a Mexican revolutionary in Viva Villa! (1934), Barbara Stanwyck as the famous gunslinger in Annie Oakley (1935) and Randolph Scott in an early large-scale version of the French and Indian War (during America's colonial period) in the film adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1936).

Cecil B. De Mille's stylish but historically imaginative The Plainsman (1937) starred Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane respectively, attracting a wider audience. Two years later, DeMille filmed a spectacular version of the building of the transcontinental railroad, Union Pacific (1939). King Vidor's great adventure saga of colonial America titled Northwest Passage (1940) starred Spencer Tracy as the leader of Roger's Rangers, battling Indians for territory - an anti-Native American picture. Two films about famous outlaw Jesse James were Zanuck's fictionalized big budget Jesse James (1939), and its superior sequel by Fritz Lang, The Return of Frank James (1940).

Swashbuckler star Errol Flynn starred in a few big-scale adventure westerns of the late 30s and early 40s, displaying his athleticism and romantic appeal as cavalry officer Jeb Stuart chasing abolitionist John Brown in Santa Fe Trail (1938), or as a post-Civil War Texas cattleman in Dodge City (1939), or as the flamboyant General Custer in an historically inaccurate biography from director Raoul Walsh titled They Died With Their Boots On (1941). In all three films, his romantic interest was played by Olivia de Havilland.

The 1940s and 50s were the heyday of the classic film western - and director John Ford was considered the major craftsman of the western genre during the sound era. At the end of the 30s, his landmark classic Stagecoach (1939) marked a turning point - he created a new kind of western film with standard B-picture action, epic scope, and an intelligent emphasis on character and mood - the mythic film transformed the western into A-film status. With John Wayne as Ringo Kid, a vengeful gunslinger, Ford helped to make him a full-fledged charismatic, western star. [Wayne also appeared in another historical western adventure in the same year called Allegheny Uprising (1939).] Stagecoach had a formative and regenerative influence on all future westerns, raising the stature of Westerns for years to come. It was skillfully composed of traditional action/chase sequences, the introduction of the beautiful, sweeping expanses of Monument Valley, and polarized, intelligent dialogue among clashing characters/personalities (a Grand Hotel-like assemblage including a sheriff and cowardly driver, with their passengers: a drunken doctor, a whiskey drummer, an unscrupulous bank executive, a prostitute with a heart of gold, a pregnant, Eastern-bred lady and a genteel gambler).

Ford also offered up other films in 1939 with emphasis on action and character: Young Mr. Lincoln with Henry Fonda in the title role, and Drums Along the Mohawk, a film about upstate New York settlers (Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert) facing the trials of living on the frontier during the Revolutionary War period. There were many other westerns in 1939 and 1940, including: Jesse James (1939), Dodge City (1939) with swashbuckler Errol Flynn, DeMille's epic Union Pacific (1939), Michael Curtiz' Santa Fe Trail (1940), William Wyler's The Westerner (1940), and Fritz Lang's The Return of Frank James (1940), a sequel to Jesse James featuring the film debut of Gene Tierney.

Other grade A-westerns with strong character emphasis were also well-received, including the entertaining saga The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Gary Cooper; the somber, thought-provoking indictment of mob rule in William A. Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) - starring Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan as drifters who attempt to prevent the lynching of three innocent men; and Howard Hawks' epic in the genre - the beautifully photographed Red River (1948) regarding the first cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail, with all the elements of classic westerns: Indian attacks, scenic grandeur, stampedes, a battle of wills with John Wayne in an unsympathetic role, and romance.

After World War II, John Ford returned to the western icons of his beloved Monument Valley and filmed his version of the OK Corral shootout (between the Earps and Clantons) in My Darling Clementine (1946), another western film milestone. In the late 1940s, John Ford also explored other possibilities for westerns and created a famous trilogy of western cavalry films, noted for their glorious landscapes of Arizona's Monument Valley and their militaristic perspective on the winning of the West: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950).

Director Howard Hawks also worked with John Wayne in four films, the best of which was the realistic classic Red River (1948), an historic cattle drive drama (the Western equivalent of Mutiny on the Bounty) in which Wayne played an obsessive, tough and irrational cattle baron battling his foster son Montgomery Clift. The other magnificent westerns Hawks and Wayne made together include the humorous, action-filled western Rio Bravo (1959) with John Wayne as a tough-guy sheriff, El Dorado (1967), and Rio Lobo (1970).

Elements of the darkish film noir genre found their way into westerns during the post-war period of the late 1940s and 1950s. Two genuine noir westerns, both starring noir actor Robert Mitchum, were Raoul Walsh's bleak, stylish and intriguing Pursued (1947) and Blood on the Moon (1948). The most prominent examples of 50s noir Westerns were the series of eight films that teamed actor James Stewart with director Anthony Mann in some of the darkest adult "psychological westerns" ever made. (Stewart had appeared in only one other western before this time as a peace-loving sheriff in the town of Bottleneck - it was a light, appreciative, humorous spoof of B-grade westerns titled Destry Rides Again (1939) featuring a comeback role for Marlene Dietrich.)

In Mann's films, the director focused on chilling tales of revenge and the paranoia of a lone, confused, tortured, vengeful western figure played by Stewart. The first in the series of classic westerns in the 50s was Winchester '73 (1950) - a tale of the relentless pursuit of a gun; Bend of the River (1952) was the stark and compelling story of the Oregon Trail journey across the country; the sophisticated and excellent The Naked Spur (1952) was a study of compulsive greed for reward money by a bounty hunter inspired by the goal of re-purchasing farm land lost during the Civil War; The Far Country (1955) was another story of deceit and revenge; and The Man From Laramie (1955) featured suspenseful, savage rough action. Director Delmer Daves directed the adult western drama 3:10 to Yuma (1957), a variation of High Noon about a suspenseful wait for the arrival of the train to Yuma prison for a poor rancher holding a notorious gunman. In the same year, Budd Boetticher's cult classic The Tall T (1957) told the story of stagecoach passengers held by outlaws. Randolph Scott also appeared in Boetticher's excellent "B" western Ride Lonesome (1959) as a lawman/bounty hunter who was competing with others searching for an outlaw/killer.

Other directors incorporated noirish or cultish elements into their 1950s 'non-Western' westerns. German director Fritz Lang made three exceptional westerns: Rancho Notorious (1952) was the last of three westerns he made and featured Marlene Dietrich and Mel Ferrer in a quirky, dreamlike revenge western. Lang's first two westerns were The Return of Jesse James (1940) and Western Union (1941), a film which detailed the construction of telegraph lines to the Wild West between Omaha and Salt Lake City. Nicholas Ray's astonishing one-of-a-kind camp cult classic Johnny Guitar (1954) starred Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge who shoot it out in the film's bloody finale. Samuel Fuller's cult-western Forty Guns (1957) featured a whip-wielding Barbara Stanwyck and imaginative camerawork.

More excellent adult westerns of the late 1940s and 1950s with classic character studies include John Huston's adventure tale of greed The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and The Gunfighter (1950), the story of a notorious world-weary gunman played by Gregory Peck. One of the best was the landmark classic, dramatic morality tale of an abandoned lawman, carefully filmed in "real-time" - director Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952). In the script written by Carl Foreman (who was blacklisted during the 50s' anti-Communist hearings), Gary Cooper played the part of just-married small-town Marshal Kane who heroically stood up to vengeful, gunslinging killers - paralleling the historical incident of the early 50s' House Committee on Un-American Activities' witch-hunt for Communists in Hollywood, and indicting those who deserted their friends. The traditional, quintessential story of good vs. bad was highlighted in George Stevens' first Western titled Shane (1953). Actor Alan Ladd portrayed a mysterious, gunslinger/drifter who joined the struggle of homesteaders against the cattlemen. Even a conventional drama such as John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) used a classic Western setting and plot-line and updated them to modern-day circumstances.

Hollywood would often mix fact with fiction and prejudicial bias in its westerns. Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow (1950), however, was considered the first Hollywood picture to take the side of the Indians (Native-Americans) and emphasize peaceful co-existence, with a sympathetic portrayal of Apache chief Cochise (by Jeff Chandler). Pony Express (1953) was a quasi-historical account of the extension of the mail route with western legends Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. Another Charlton Heston western, titled Arrowhead (1953) expressed a biased view of Indians and starred Jack Palance as an Apache chief. Two 40s westerns were infamous sex-westerns. Howard Hughes's B-grade The Outlaw (1943) was notorious for leering camera views of Jane Russell's cleavage. And the ambitious David O. Selznick production, a "Gone With The Wind"- type western titled Duel in the Sun (1946) was a saga of sexual longing critically renamed "Lust in the Dust."

When television took its toll on western screen entertainment in the late 50s, the B-pictures transferred themselves to the small screen throughout much of the 60s and 70s. The TV Western resembled the second film features in theatre palaces in the 1930s and 1940s. Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger (played by Clayton Moore with Jay Silverheels as faithful, full-blooded Mohawk sidekick Tonto), Hopalong Cassidy (with Topper), and Roy Rogers (with Trigger) and Dale Evans (with Buttermilk) had their own popular television shows. [Clayton Moore's first film with a mask - a full one - was in the film The Ghost of Zorro (1949), a feature version of the Republic Films serial. Moore's casting led to his subsequent participation in the long-running TV series.] The black-masked man, with a hearty "Hi-yo Silver" and silver bullets, appeared with horse Silver (and Tonto with horse Scout) in almost 170 episodes of The Lone Ranger for television - and in two feature films. Because of the popularity of the TV show and its "return to the thrilling days of yesteryear," The Lone Ranger (1956), a full-length, color feature film was released by Warner Bros, with Moore and Silverheels reprising their TV roles. Their other feature film came out two years later, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958). Their popular programs were later joined by such long-lasting series as: Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Virginian, and Wyatt Earp.

To combat the decline of the film western, wide-screen frontier epics in the 50s and early 60s appeared, emphasizing the western frontier and expansion. Representative films included Howard Hawks' sprawling keelboat expedition adventure The Big Sky (1952), William Wyler's big-budget, star-studded The Big Country (1958), John Wayne as Davy Crockett in the action-epic The Alamo (1960), and the tremendous, three-generation story of pioneers in the widescreen Cinerama film How The West Was Won (1963). The popular film, The Magnificent Seven (1970) rewrote the Japanese classic by Akira Kurosaw titled The Seven Samurai (1954) as a Western and starred Yul Brynner and six other gun-slinging companions. One of the most exciting action-adventure westerns of all time was The Professionals (1966), with Burt Lancaster leading a group of mercenaries into Mexico on a dangerous mission to rescue a wealthy industrialist's wife from kidnappers.

John Wayne was the most popular and durable of the major western film stars, embodying the great American hero and forever closely identified with the genre. Nine years after his first western, Wayne further developed his western persona in Stagecoach (1939), and then performed in a series of action-packed WWII pictures in the early to mid-40s. He reappeared in the epic of a mutinous cattle drive titled Red River (1948) and in John Ford's cavalry trilogy (see above). Wayne also starred in his best Western (anti-hero) role in probably the best Western ever made - John Ford's The Searchers (1956), one of the few westerns which has consistently won praise as a work of art. The film portrayed Wayne as a racist, hate-driven man relentlessly searching over a period of years for his Indian-kidnapped niece (played by a young Natalie Wood).

John Ford memorably united two major stars of the genre, John Wayne and James Stewart, in an excellent adult western titled The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). In later years, Wayne's character aged and matured in such "autumnal" films as Howard Hawks' El Dorado (1967), Henry Hathaway's True Grit (1969) in which he finally won a Best Actor Oscar as Rooster Cogburn, a boozy marshal engaged in a track-down and its sequel, Rooster Cogburn (1975), with Wayne in an African Queen-like role opposite Katharine Hepburn. Two of Wayne's last-day films were Mark Rydell's The Cowboys (1972) and Don Siegel's The Shootist (1976), in which Wayne played a famous gunfighter seeking peace while dying of cancer.

Targeted marketing strategies have succeeded in highlighting certain special features or sub-genres of western films. In the 1960s, two very different filmmakers refashioned the western in new ways - Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. In only his second feature film, director Sam Peckinpah brought together two long-time western stars, Randolph Scott (in his last movie) and Joel McCrea in Ride the High Country (1962), an evocative film about the passing of the old West. Peckinpah made his biggest impact on the evolution of the Western with his Hollywood production of The Wild Bunch (1969), an end-of-the-frontier western film set in Mexico - it featured bloody, slow-motion, ultra-violent choreographed ballets of death. The film was a precursor to urban crime thrillers and inner-city gunfighting of the 1970s and later, and was often interpreted as an allegory about the Vietnam War. Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) starred James Coburn as sheriff Garrett who tracked down and killed ex-partner/outlaw Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson).

Italian director Sergio Leone brought two profound changes with his trio of "spaghetti" western films made in Europe: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), its sequel For a Few Dollars More (1965), and the best of the three, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) - the story of a quest for a cache of hidden Confederate gold by three uneasily allied, gritty characters: Clint Eastwood (the good), Lee Van Cleef (the bad), and Eli Wallach (the ugly). The changes were a new European style, a harsher, more violent depiction of frontier life, and the popularity of actor Clint Eastwood as the mysterious 'The Man With No Name,' resulting in a revival of the genre in the mid 1960s. The director's true epic masterpiece was Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), a western which starred American icon-actor Henry Fonda as its black, villainous murderer, and brought together all the themes, characterizations, and experimental visuals from his previous three films.

During John Wayne's closing years, his popularity in westerns was matched only by Clint Eastwood, who had graduated from Italian "spaghetti" westerns (filmed in Spain) and was brought to Hollywood to star in American westerns, first as an actor and then as director (or actor/director). Eastwood developed and broadened his range with films such as High Plains Drifter (1973), reprising his "man with no name" character from the "spaghetti" Western sub-genre. He also directed and starred in the excellent The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), one of his best films. Although it was thought that Westerns were experiencing their swan song in the late 1970s and 1980s, Eastwood's award-winning and compelling film Unforgiven (1992) became the third western ever to win the Best Picture award. Starring in his 10th western, Eastwood played the part of William Munny - a retired, once-ruthless outlaw forced to return to harsh violence in a bounty hunt against a corrupt sheriff in the town of Big Whiskey.

Western parodies and comedies that mocked the genre include Cat Ballou (1965) and Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles (1974). James Garner (of TV's Maverick fame) starred in two western-spoofs in the period: Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and its lesser sequel Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971). Sexual frankness brought audiences to Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Title roles for big box-office stars in westerns that rewrote the genre were among the greatest box-office successes. Paul Newman starred in Hud (1963) and Hombre (1967) and with Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) as two light-hearted bank robbers. And Dustin Hoffman portrayed Jack Crabb - the sole, white 121 year-old survivor of Custer's Last Stand and the Battle of Little Big Horn in Arthur Penn's fable of the Old West from an adaptation of Thomas Berger's novel titled Little Big Man (1970). Paralleling the Vietnam tragedy, the film demythologized the past and revealed the genocidal atrocities visited upon ethnic Indians by US forces. One of the few attempts to portray Native-American life in a more sympathetic light was found in the realistic depiction of Sioux Indians in the Dakotas in A Man Called Horse (1970). The British-financed western Hannie Caulder (1971), starring Raquel Welch and Robert Culp, was both a rape-vengeance Western and a comedy.

In the early 1980s, westerns began to seriously decline and disappear from cinema screens with changes in public taste and as memories of the trail-blazing past receded. The tiring, familiar presence of westerns on television and the recognition that the way of life of native Americans was practically annihilated in our past caused the downturn. Michael Cimino's multi-million dollar failure, a detailed and epic western titled Heaven's Gate (1980), contributed to the genre's weakening. However, in the mid 1980s and into the 90s, western films experienced something of a comeback, due in part to the boost and the recognition received by two Best Picture westerns (Dances with Wolves (1990) with twelve nominations and seven awards and Unforgiven (1992) with nine nominations and four awards). Producer/actor Kevin Costner's box-office and critical success Dances with Wolves (1990), his directorial debut, was noted as one of the few westerns that cast Indians in acting roles, used Lakota Sioux sub-titles, and viewed Native Americans in a sympathetic way and not as blood-thirsty savages. Although the film was officially sanctioned by the Sioux, not all Native American groups were sympathetic to its portrayals.

A variety of other westerns re-fashioned western themes, such as Lawrence Kasdan's big-budget Silverado (1985), the contemporary western Young Guns (1988), Tombstone (1993) (with Kurt Russell), and Wyatt Earp (1994) (with Kevin Costner in the title role). [The exploits of Earp have appeared in many previous Hollywood films including Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) (with Henry Fonda) and John Sturges' Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) (with Burt Lancaster).]

Other revisionist westerns in the mid-90s featured the West from a feminist or African-American perspective such as The Ballad of Little Jo (1993) about an ostracized Eastern woman (Suzy Amis) who moved west and disguised herself as a man, Bad Girls (1994) about four saloon prostitutes (Madeleine Stowe, Andie MacDowell, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Drew Barrymore) who bonded together as gunslingers, and director Sam Raimi's 'spaghetti' western The Quick and the Dead (1995) that starred Sharon Stone as a vengeful lady gunslinger - a female Clint Eastwood. Mario Van Peebles' exploitative, exciting adventure-western Posse (1993) featured black cowboys and revisionist, politically-correct western history.

Westerns from a science-fiction point of view included a western-style Back to the Future, Part III (1990) and Barry Sonnenfeld's The Wild Wild West (1999) - a spin-off from the popular mid-60's TV spy show with Men in Black's Will Smith as James T. West and Kevin Kline as Artemus Gordon. The low-budget Grim Prairie Tales (1990) was a supernatural horror-western - an anthology of four scary, unbelievable tales told around an open prairie campfire. Jim Jarmusch's metaphoric, unique, mystical black and white western titled Dead Man (1996) starred Johnny Depp as an 1875 western wanderer (the ghost of poet William Blake?) pursued by bounty-hunters. A big-screen, commercially-successful comedy-western titled Maverick (1994), a spin-off from a late 50s and early 60s TV series, starred Mel Gibson in the title role as card sharp Bret Maverick. Another comedy - City Slickers (1991) followed a group of middle-aged buddies embarking on a two-week western cattle drive led by a tough trail cowpoke named Curly (Jack Palance won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role).

The superb television miniseries from Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel titled Lonesome Dove (1989) was a classic western saga that starred Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, two aging ex-Texas Rangers who engaged in an adventurous cattle drive over the 2,500 miles from Texas to Montana.