The MoFo Top 100 Westerns: Countdown

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I saw The Wild Bunch several times when I was younger. I always thought of it as a great movie but mostly thought of the ending. I wanted to get a fresher idea so it was the last movie I watched for this countdown and I already want to see it again. The finale is deserving of it's praise but the entire movie is fantastic. I wonder if you have to reach a certain age to have full appreciation and I think eventually it will end up being my favorite western.

3. Little Big Man (#39)
4. The Ox-Bow Incident (#19)
5. The Big Country (#27)
6. The Wild Bunch (#9)
7. Shane (#43)
8. McC abe and Mrs. Miller (#17)
9. One-Eyed Jacks (#32)
10. My Darling Clementine (#44)
11. The Shootist (#57)
14. Django Unchained (#12)
16. For a Few Dollars More (#18)
18. Day of the Outlaw (#77)
19. Red River (#56)
21. The Cowboys (#50)
23. Open Range (#36)
24. The Furies (#84)
25. Winchester 73 (#53)



Holden, apologies if this has been addressed previously - just curious, how come Treasure of the Sierra Madre is on your top 10 all-time list but not your westerns list?
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is definitely one of my all-time favorite movies, for sure, and a masterpiece. But while I have absolutely no beef with it being called a Western and I knew it was going to get lots and lots of votes, ultimately I decided it wasn't quite enough of a Western in my eyes to warrant a spot on my ballot. I also knew it wouldn't need my help and rather than take up a high position with it I'd rather make room for movies like Pursued and The Grey Fox. I didn't include There Will Be Blood on my ballot for similar reasons. Great movies, no doubt, but not on my Westerns list.

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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is definitely one of my all-time favorite movies, for sure, and a masterpiece. But while I have absolutely no beef with it being called a Western and I knew it was going to get lots and lots of votes, ultimately I decided it wasn't quite enough of a Western in my eyes to warrant a spot on my ballot. I also knew it wouldn't need my help and rather than take up a high position with it I'd rather make room for movies like Pursued and The Grey Fox. I didn't include There Will Be Blood on my ballot for similar reasons. Great movies, no doubt, but not on my Westerns list.
Yeah, had a feeling it would be something like that. It's been a while since I saw the movie but I certainly don't get too many Western-vibes when I think back on it.



Welcome to the human race...
I had The Wild Bunch at #6. Once again, I find it hard not to think of John Wayne running his mouth about it being too violent (I'm paraphrasing here, but it was something along the lines of how seeing a knight kill a serpent in a fairytale doesn't means you don't need to see the serpent's guts go everywhere), but that's clearly part of what made it leave a mark. What would this film have been like if it has been as bloodless as the likes of, say, El Dorado? I'm sure the film's substance regarding the death of the Wild West and the fading outlaws looking to find their own sort of redemption one way or another while the "respectable" institutions of business and government alike prove even more corrupt and lawless in their attempts to civilise the land would still be enough to carry the film as it is, but to have it marked with such callousness and brutality from the opening minutes hammers that point home. Sometimes, you do need to see the serpent's guts.
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To quote Peckinpah himself, "The point of [The Wild Bunch] is to take this facade of movie violence and open it up. Get people involved in it so they are starting to go in the Hollywood, television, predictable reaction syndrome and then twist it so it's not fun anymore. Just a wave of sickness in the gut."




A system of cells interlinked
The Wild Bunch was my #4.

Even though I told myself that the next batch of Westerns I would be watching would be films from the countdown that I hadn't yet seen, I found myself in front of both McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Wild Bunch last week. Shame on me! Not really. The Wild Bunch is so damned good. Looking at my list now, I think back on the thought process I used to place my Top 5, and at the time, I let nostalgia from my youth dictate the placement of The Outlaw Josey Wales above The Wild Bunch. I adore Josey, and have seen it countless times; it's quotable, fun, has some good humor, and features an iconic performance from Eastwood. I never tire of watching it, and have been a fan since I saw it as a kid. Alas, when I adopt an icy disregard for nostalgia, and look at each film on technical merits alone, The Wild Bunch is clearly the better film, and perhaps they should have been switched. Oh well, it is what it is - nostalgia is a thing.

Glad to see The Wild Bunch place in the Top 10. It certainly deserves it.
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Yeah, The Wild Bunch is the bomb. I had it at #7. Peckinpah was a singular director.

2. There Will Be Blood
4. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
5. Dead Man
6. El Topo
7. The Wild Bunch
8. Blazing Saddles
9. The Great Silence
10. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
11. The Outlaw Josey Wales
12. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
14. My Darling Clementine
17. True Grit (2010)
18. Little Big Man
20. Pale Rider
21. Rango
22. Rio Bravo
25. The Proposition



The Wild Bunch is #23 on my ballot. It took a lot of guts to make this groundbreaking western in '69. It inspired many filmmakers and is an important, influential film for cinema in general.

Seen list 61/92

My ballot 18/25:
  1. - Top 2
  2. - Top 5
  3. - 100%
  4. Jeremiah Johnson 1972
  5. - Top 3
  6. - 100%
  7. One-Eyed Jacks 1961
  8. The Gunfighter 1950
  9. Rio Bravo 1959
  10. The Outlaw Josey Wales 1976
  11. Young Guns 1988
  12. Tombstone 1993
  13. My Name Is Nobody 1973
  14. - 100%
  15. The Big Country 1958
  16. The Ox-Bow Incident 1943
  17. Hell or High Water 2016
  18. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid 1973
  19. The Hateful Eight 2015
  20. McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971
  21. The Mercenary 1968
  22. The Great Silence 1968
  23. The Wild Bunch 1969
  24. Dead Man 1995
  25. - 0%





And for the record, nobody correctly guessed the order of the Top Ten. Thursday Next and Siddon were the only ones who had #10 correct, but they thought The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Dances with Wolves were coming at #9.

Anybody want to try again with guessing the order of the Top Eight?



The Wild Bunch was my #8. Peckinpah's nihilism is just respectable. Not his best film (I'd probably give that title to Cross of Iron) but still very good.

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Top eight guess:
  1. Once Upon a Time in the West
  2. Unforgiven
  3. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  4. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  5. High Noon
  6. The Searchers
  7. Dances with Wolves
  8. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance



My top 8 guess:  

Pretty positive this time that'll be the order
#smashedit



My Guess:

1. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
2. Once Upon a Time In the West
3. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
4. Dances with Wolves
5. Unforgiven
6. The Searchers
7. High Noon
8. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance



The Wild Bunch...seen it only once & years ago. I had meant to rewatch it but opted for watching more of the Duke I'll probably watch this sometime in the near future and then travel back in time and add it to my voting list. I could always bump any of my 10 westerns that didn't make the countdown...now that I know they ain't got a chance, why waste a vote



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Just watched The Proposition. It’s definitely not a movie that I think I could ever truly love, but it’s pretty damn impressive. Shame I didn’t know about it before the deadline. It definitely would’ve made it somewhere on my ballot if I had seen it in time.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I had been considering throwing that one into the General HoF a number of times.
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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I didn't vote for it.
The Wild Bunch is one of Holden's faves, but I'll say that it's a different film now than when I first watched it. Apparently it was cut by Warner Brothers shortly after release in the U.S. although it was untouched in Europe. When I went to the Filmex 50-hour Western Marathon, I was finally able to see the restored film with the Pancho Villa train attack and a few other character scenes restored. It made some of the midsection of the film clearer, but if you've seen the film, the highlight remains the violent finale where oodles of bullets are fired as the old west and western slips away into the dust. I've watched it several times over the years and it's grown in my eyes, especially the story of Jaime Sanchez's Angel.

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Contrast Angel's story in The Wild Bunch with Chico's in The Magnificent Seven. Similar characters but their fates are very, very different and are as good an example as any in delineating between the Hollywood and the Revisionist Western. Just in the casting of these two characters Chico is played by Horst Buchholz, a German, while Angel is played by Jaime Sánchez, a Puerto Rican. Both characters act impetuously but Angel's is a tragic tale and can be seen as a metaphor for what revolutions or any conflicts do to young, idealistic men while Chico's journey is a straight fantasy where he gets the girl and finds a home.

That is the kind of demythologizing Peckinpah was doing that critics and those of us who love it respond to so strongly and that the John Waynes of the world find troubling.



I had both Rio Bravo and The Wild Bunch on my list, with The Wild Bunch at #8. I've got four more showing up.

My List:

3. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (#17)
4. The Outlaw Josey Wales (#13)
5. High Plains Drifter (#31)
6. Little Big Man (#39)
7. Jeremiah Johnson (#37)
8. The Wild Bunch (#9)
9. The Big Country (#27)
10. The Shootist (#58)
11. Rio Bravo (#10)
12. The Ox-Bow Incident (#19)
13. The Gunfighter (#40)
15. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)(#48)
17. The Sisters Brothers (#102)
18. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (#76)
19. The Naked Spur (#86)
20. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (#67)
22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (#33)
24. Support Your Local Sheriff! (#89)
25. Johnny Guitar (#30)
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