Conventions of a Western• Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the

19th century • Western films commonly feature as their protagonists stock characters such

as cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, often depicted as semi-nomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and buckskins, use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival, and ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on faithful steeds.

• Westerns usually depict the bad guys in black clothes and the good guys in white clothes.

• Western films often depict conflicts with Native Americans.• Recurring themes of Westerns include Western treks or perilous journeys

(e.g. Stagecoach) or groups of bandits terrorising small towns such as in The Magnificent Seven.

• 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.

Western Films

• Billy The Kid

• The Outlaw

• Oklahoma

• How the West Was Won

• No Country for Old Men

Sub Genre of the Western

• the ‘EPIC’ Western (The Big Country (1958)) • the ‘SINGING COWBOY' Western (films of Gene Autry and Roy

Rogers)• the ‘SPAGHETTI’ Western aka Italo-Western (the "Man With No

Name") • the ‘NOIR’ Western (Pursued (1947)) • the ‘CONTEMPORARY’ Western (Hud - 1963) • the ‘REVISIONISTIC’ Western ( Little Big Man - 1970, Dances

With Wolves - 1990) • the ‘COMEDY’ Western (Cat Ballou - 1965), Blazing Saddles -

1974) • the ‘POST-APOCALYPTIC’ Western (Mad Max 2: The Road

Warrior – 1981/2, The Postman - 1997) • the ‘SCIENCE-FICTION’ or ‘SPACE’ Western (Serenity)

NOTABLE ACTORS

• Clint Eastwood

• John Wayne

• Lee Van Cleef

• Gene Autry

Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed.

In the late 60s and early 70s 'revisionistic' Westerns that questioned the themes and elements of

traditional/classic westerns appeared (such as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), Arthur Penn's Little

Big Man (1970), Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and later Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven

(1992)).