Western Specials

To many wide-eyed young boys (myself included), the Western was what we initially associated with Hollywood. The numerous archetypes of the Western – the Lone Ranger, man versus nature in a hostile environment, Natives pitted against the Settlers, the power to possess anything if you were fast with a gun, the showdowns between good and bad – drew and captivated moviegoers. The classic elements of the Western found resonance halfway across the globe in the Japanese samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, where the weary but extremely skilled samurai fought against both the evils in the society and the demons inside him. 

It would be unwise to straitjacket Westerns as the place to go for music (raucous piano playing), women (in brothels), gambling, drinking, brawling and shooting. Numerous film-makers found expressive ways to paint the Old West with uncharacteristic colours. Leone’s ‘Dollars trilogy’ introduced the opportunistic, reward-driven hero bound by his own private code (many a time ambiguous and ever-changing) – an extension of the same moody stranger with quicksilver gun-fighting skills, but now, you could not rely upon him to always take the side of the ‘sodbusters’, the wronged, innocent townspeople or the exploited prostitute. The genre of the Western beyond the gun and the gunner, has manifested itself in surprising anti-Westerns like ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’, ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’, ‘Kelly’s Heroes’, ‘Blood Diamond’, the ‘Star Wars’ series – far removed from the typical Western in space and time, but all have incorporated the essential elements which make the Western what it has become today. In many ways, the history of the Western has mirrored the transition of society and cinema.