THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF THE WESTERN CINEMA

THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF THE WESTERN CINEMA

The western movies are film genre where the scene generally takes place in North America during the American conquest of the West in the last decades of the nineteenth century. This genre appears since the invention of the cinema in 1985 finding its inspiration from literature and painting arts of the American Wild West. This genre reached its first success in the mid-twentieth century during the golden age of Hollywood studios, before it had being reinvented by European filmmakers in the 1960s.

The term Western has since been attributed to other visual arts such as literature, painting, television, cartoon, and now refers to all artistic production influenced by the atmosphere and the clichés of cinematic representation of the Far West.

It is common to define the western decor and setting (the American territory and landscape; The Monument Valley been the most symbolic place of the western) and the period it represents, which extends from the end of the Civil War to the disappearance of the Savage Frontier (1865 - 1890). Nevertheless, this genre can’t be strictly defined by these two characteristics, the action of Misfits, which can be categorized as western takes place in the twentieth century. Other films like those representing the War of Independence against the English, or those taking place during the Seven Years' War (The Last of the Mohicans) are also put in the same western category.

The western finds its deep root in the history of United State. It symbolizes the birth of the American nation. The rough conquest of the West, the bloody Civil War and the Indian Wars that took place in the nineteenth century testify to the pain and the huge price that was needed to build th...

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...s"twilight" emerged. directors like Clint Eastwood and Sam Peckinpah are some of the producers. Just like in the Spaghetti Western, the classic heroic cowboy is no longer the model, instead ambivalent characters who doesn’t see the fine line between good and evil, are now at the true heroes. The cowboy of the 1940s has become an antihero (high Plain Drifter, produced by Clint Estwood in 1973). The Twilight Western showcased an even more exalted violence than Spaghetti Western where the blood is omni present (the Wild Bunch, produced by Sam Peckinpah in 1969).

The last major successes of the western genre, such “Ruthless” produced by Clint Eastwood in 1992, or “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” produced by Andrew Dominik in 2007, paradoxically raised the question whether the Western genre is facing another failure and deadlock again or not.