Epic Westerns

1
Epic Westerns

• How the West Was Won
• Duel in the Sun

2
Epic Western Form

• Big, Expensive, Long
• Emphasizes Time Place
• Long period, possibly over generations
• Widest historical period, largest geography
• Employs latest technical innovations
• CinemaScope (2.661)
• Cinerama (2.761)
• Technicolor

3
Duel in the Sun

• One of the most expensive Westerns made (and most
  profitable)
• 2 hours 26 minutes long
• Geography is epic El Paso in Mexico, Paradise
  Flats
• Framing narration of Orson Welles
• Action scenes and excessive pictorial settings
• Technicolor

4
Epic Narrative Form

• Exceed conventional narrative frameworks
• Customary individual protagonists at the center
  of a single narrative are replaced by multiple
  protagonists in subplots that weave into a
  complex narrative
• Combines the general and the specific, the public
  and the personal

5
Duel in the Sun

• Senators story as central as Pearls
• The racism and chauvinism that informs his power
  over her and others around her shapes her
  destiny.
• Also part of the same imperial ambition which
  drives McCanles desire to protect the land
  violently acquire by himself.
• Story about the nature of power
• Generational

6
Melodrama and the Epic Western

• Personal stories as representative of wider
  stories
• Epic Western narratives are sympathetic to and
  celebrate characters who lack social power and
  therefore exists on the margins of society

7
American History as Myth

• Duel in the Sun
• Legend of the wild young lovers who found Heaven
  and Hell
• Story of Hubris
• McCales transformation from imperial dictator to
  tragic isolate
• Essentially Greek Journey to self-knowledge
• But still represents wider social and political
  narratives
• I once fought for that flag. Ill not fire on it
  now.
• America the nation
• History appropriated as national myth

8
Foundation Myth

• How the West Was Won
• Suggestive title
• The West was won from nature and primitive man.
  
• There never was empty, virgin, free land just
  there for the taking.
• There are winners and losers among and within the
  Native American, Mexican, and European nations

9
Great Trek West

• Families in wagon trains seeking a homeland in
  the West
• Hazardous (almost always a burial scene)
• Cycle of life Death and Birth
• Religious Mormons

10
Pioneers Immigrants

• America as a spiritual homeland, a refuge from
  political and economic oppression.
• Ownership of land and economic independence The
  frontiers the only land available to poor
  people. Out here, youre beholden to none, not
  living by anothers leave.

11
From Trail to Rail

• Wagon Train and/or Railroad almost always signal
  an epic
• Building of the Central Pacific and the Union
  Pacific
• Almost always generate conflict
• Between and within various cultures settles and
  Native Americans
• Empire Plot
• The Ranch and The Forces of Civilization Who
  Need to Advance Through It.
• National context of land use

12
Visual Legacy

• Before the 50s, Westerns use virtually no
  close-ups
• Isolation of Humanity in and against Nature
• John Fords and Sergio Leones use of monument
  valley
• Back to the Future III

13
Epic Westerners?

• Buffalo Bill
• General Custer
• Jim Bowie, Davy Crocket, Santa Ana
• Jesse James
• Billy the Kid
• Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday