The MoFo Top 100 Westerns: Countdown

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I see that there was a Criterion release of Samuel Fullers first films which has:
I Shot Jesse James 1949
The Baron of Arizona 1950
The Steel Helmet 1951

He also did two more westerns for a total of four.
Forty Guns (1957)
Run of the Arrow (1957)

Outside chance that Forty Guns makes the countdown. The rest won't.
Saw it and posted a "mini-review" HERE
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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage



To be fair, it was a discussion about a western. I mean, we’re going to discuss some inclusions so I don’t see it as derailing the thread any. Otherwise, what’s the point?
I think it got a little drawn out and repetitive and while it didn’t turn into complete hate and bashing it got a bit sour towards the end. But overall sure... at least there’s a discussion actually related to one of the entries in this countdown.




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The Gunfighter utilizes some of what even by 1950 would have been clichés in its story about infamous quick draw gunman Jimmy Ringo who’s reputation is bigger than he is, meaning every yokle with a bit of gumption wants to make their name by killing him. But Henry King and Gregory Peck, who also teamed for The Bravados (#81), tell this familiar story so very, very well that fresh or not it is engaging every step of the way. The Gunfighter was on ten ballots, half of them top ten votes with a ninth, two eighth, a fifth, and one MoFo’s first place vote.

Little Big Man actually has a condensed variation on The Gunfighter in it, during Jack Crabb’s “Gunfighter Period” where he meets up with Wild Bill Hickok. Before Forrest Gump and Zelig Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde, The Miracle Worker) adapted Thomas Berger’s novel for the big screen following the journey of Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn. After his wagon train is attacked by Pawnee the ten-year-old Jack is taken in by the Cheyenne who raise him as one of their own including Chief Lodgeskins (Chief Dan George). As a teen during a fight with the U.S. Cavalry he is “rescued” and sent to live with a Reverend and his wife (Faye Dunaway) and from there Jack bounces back and forth between both worlds, of the whites and of the Cheyenne. He spends time as a snake oil salesman, a drunkard, a gunslinger, a shop owner a homesteader, a muleskinner, and a scout for General George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan), witnessing both the massacre of the Cheyenne by the U.S. at the Washita River and of the U.S. by the Cheyenne at Little Big Horn. This sprawling, funny, heartfelt satire was on only eight ballots but it is the first film on the countdown with a pair first place votes (also a third, a fifth, and a sixth).






Little Big Man was way up at number five on my list. It is one of my favorite movies, Western or otherwise, and this is surely something other than an ordinary Western. It is hysterical and weird and quite a fun ride, but it resonates beyond all of that for its revisionist look at the Injun. Native Americans had been treated more sympathetically incrementally in American cinema, but the overwhelming majority of what you got was a one-sided cartoon. At best you sometimes see the “noble savage” angle for a pinch before they went back to being simple antagonists. Not only are the Cheyenne depicted heroically but the Cavalry are most certainly the villains. The center of the film is the contrast between Crabb’s two biggest influences in Chief Lodgeskins (Chief Dan George), who he calls Grandfather, and General Custer (Richard Mulligan). There are so many wonderful episodes and actors, including Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, and Jeff Corey but it is really about Grandfather and Custer. Dan George is warm and funny and introspective and kind as Grandfather while Mulligan is a vain, dumb, and cruel Custer. This is not the Custer of They Died with Their Boots On (1941) where Errol Flynn was a handsome, charming hero, nor even Robert Shaw’s slightly more conflicted General in Custer of the West (1969) who is still heroic. Mulligan’s Custer is flat out hysterical and nearly inept, but the satirical edge showing the monstrosity of the United States’ actions toward the Native American is what makes it brilliant. And so high on my list.

That makes nine of mine.

HOLDEN PIKE'S LIST
5. Little Big Man (#38)
7. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (#83)
10. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (#52)
13. My Name is Nobody (#79)
14. The Grey Fox (#66)
16. Hombre (#88)
18. Pursued (#73)
23. The Professionals (#45)
25. Support Your Local Sheriff! (#89)



My Darling Clementine was my number 2. One in a handful of films that I find pretty interchangeable when it comes to deciding which film is Ford's best. It was another of his that whilst I liked it when I originally saw it, it wasn't until I watched it again that I truly fell in love. Like most of Ford's films, there are so many moments where you could pause the film, take a photo of the frame, and hang it up on your wall. His cinematography is so beautiful and striking. Henry Fonda is great, and I love him in Young Mr. Lincoln too. He's very different from John Wayne, less masculine perhaps but he manages to also embody a spirit of sorts which seems complex in a very American way. To me, a lot of the best Westerns are these films that tackle these large moral themes of good versus evil, justice, law and order, community, family. In both of these films, Fonda manages to capture so much with his performance, and Ford captures so much with his imagery.

Shane I think is a good film but it didn't make my list.

The Quick and the Dead I haven't seen, although I'm no longer getting shocked by these placements

Rango was my number 10. I actually watched this again the other week, it's probably my favourite animated film of all time. I did a very long review of it once here.

One of the reasons that I love it so much is because it's packed full of Western references, it feels like it has such a strong love for films. It's such good fun and I'm so happy that it has managed to get so high with a lot of love from MoFos recently
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The Gunfighter was my #15, very happy to see it show up inside the top 50. Didn't get round to Little Big Man, no idea if I've ever seen it tbh.

Seen: 33/62
My list:  

Faildictions (yee-haw version 1.01):
38. Valdez Is Coming
37. Hang 'Em High



I haven't seen Little Big Man, but The Gunfighter was #22 on my ballot. It's one of those films that went in and out of my vote on an almost daily basis (exaggeration, yes, but I hope you know what I mean). It's a cliched story but one that I tend to like. I wasn't a huge fan of Peck and the film could have been a bit more serious and somber, but it's quite OK as it is. Still slightly better than Wayne's The Shootist, in my opinion.

Seen 21(+2)/62

My List  
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Besides Star Wars, Little Big Man is probably the movie that made Dustin Hoffman one of my favorite actors. I watched it, probably, around 15 and remember it feeling so unique. It is also one of the funniest movies. I have watched it twice since, and while it isn't a favorite anymore, it's a great movie, solid 4/5. Which put it on my list. Probably top ten
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Wait, is Dustin Hoffman in Star Wars?
I have to tell that Seinfeld joke everytime I mention Hoffman. I think it's getting dated. Seinfeld isn't in the zeitgeist anymore.



Yahoo! finally another from my list! But which one??? Oh come guys I bet you can guess...


The Gunfighter
was number 5 on my list. I've seen it a couple times and it works perfectly thanks to a quiet performance by Gregory Peck and of course that ending! Now that's the way to end a western!

Little Big Man, I enjoyed this movie, which is unusual as I'm not a fan of Dustin Hoffman's...Hoffman is well suited to the movie and quite good in it, much better than his goofy 20 seconds as an Ewok



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Little Big Man is my #1.

My favorite western involves 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) who relates his adventures, beginning 111 years earlier, to a historian (William Hickey) who hears things which border on the unbelievable. Jack Crabb was adopted by the "Human Beings" (in this case, the Cheyenne) and raised in their culture by Old Lodge Skins (the wonderful Chief Dan George). Eventually, he ends up back in white society where he learns about sex and sin but is comforted by his newly adoptive "mother" (Faye Dunaway). The film covers lots of ground as things eventually lead up to the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Some people might call this an anti-western because it makes the Indians the heroes and the whites the Bad Guys. It basically rewrites some of the history that was taught (or deleted) when I was in school and turns it into what is mostly taught now to my daughter. But at the time, it had some heads shaking. Some people think that it's not really a western at all, but an allegory about the Vietnam War and genocide. Whatever way you take the film, I generally take it as a highly-stylized, hilarious, heartbreaking journey through the history of our nation at a time when the culture clash of the West in the 1870s was coming to a head. I find all the parallels to American life in the late 1960s to be just frosting on the cake, yet it's true that this film probably only would have been made during a relatively small window of time, and thank God it was.

It's also a very episodic film because Jack Crabb went through several "phases"; among those are his religion phase, his gunslinger phase, his Indian fighter phase, his adventures as a snake oil salesman, his attempt to become a legitimate businessman and a married man, his long search for his white wife after she's been kidnapped by the Indians, and his many confrontations with the dangerously psychotic Custer (Richard Mulligan). Sometimes I see Forrest Gump as a film which took its storytelling style from Little Big Man. However, I find this film to have more genuine humor and tragedy to it. For being as fantastically entertaining as it is, it seems almost unreal that it's such a wonderful history lesson too. Whether you think it's real history, movie history, or just a series of tall tales told by that self-proclaimed liar Jack Crabb is up to you.

My List

1. Little Big Man
8. The Professionals
10. Red River
11. Oklahoma!
12. Hud
14. Giant
20. The Ballad of Cable Hogue
22. Support Your Local Sheriff!
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Hey, a twofer for me, as I had both The Gunfighter and Little Big Man on my list. If someone is craving intelligent westerns, you can't go wrong these two.

My List:

6. Little Big Man (#39)
10. The Shootist (#58)
13. The Gunfighter (#40)
15. 3:10 to Yuma (#48)
18. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (#76)
19. The Naked Spur (#86)
20. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (#67)
24. Support Your Local Sheriff! (#89)
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I'm surprised Little Big Man is not more widely loved because I think it's a complete film, and a great one. It also placed high on my 70's list, and I consider that the cream of the countdowns.

I thought very highly of The Gunfighter when I saw it a few years ago. Bad timing.

3. Little Big Man (#39)
7. Shane (#43)
10. My Darling Clementine (#44)
11. The Shootist (#57)
18. Day of the Outlaw (#77)
19. Red River (#56)
21. The Cowboys (#50)
24. The Furies (#84)
25. Winchester 73 (#53)