Film Genres

1
Film Genres

• Introduction to Film Studies

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The Western

• Western film is a genre telling stories set
  primarily in the later half of the 19th century
  in the American Old West.
• Western films existed already in the earliest
  days of cinema
• Edwin S. Porter, Great Train Robbery (1903) gtr

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The Western

• The height of the Westerns popularity from the
  late 1930s to the 1950s
• The life styles in the American West had long
  disappeared at the arrival of Modern age and its
  traditional values replaced by modern ones.
• In reproducing and recreating the actions and
  attitudes from the past on a wide screen, the
  Western genre created mythical reality.

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The Western

• The Western depicts a world of precarious balance
  in which the forces of civilization and savagery
  struggle for supremacy
• The West anywhere beyond the Alleghenies
  Mountains and the Mississippi River
• The landmark Arizonas Monument Valley

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John Wayne and the Monument Valley the most
frequently used setting for the Western
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The Western

• The opening scene in Searchers (1956) the view
  from inside civilization towards outside
  wilderness and savagery (of the Monument Valley
• West versus East social order versus anarchy,
  town versus wilderness cowboy versus Indian

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Stagecoach

• John Fords Stagecoach (1939) a road story
  about nine people travelling from Tonto to
  Lordburg in the face of possible Apache attack.
• It revived the tradition and popularity of the
  Western and reestablished the genre.

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Stagecoach

• Visual motifs wilderness dotted with oases
  (frontier towns, cavalry posts, campsites) which
  were linked with the civilized East by the
  railroad, the stagecoach, the telegraph

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Stagecoach

• Apart from the civilization and wilderness con-
  frontation, Stagecoach presents other narrative
  themes.
• Moral and social conflicts in the Western
  community in the frontier age to distinguish it
  from earlier Westerns.

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Stagecoach

• Ringo Kid an accused murder and moral man of
  the earth who takes upon himself the task of
  righting the moral and social shortcomings.
• Doc Boon an alcoholic doctor and loser with
  something of nobility and purpose
• People on the margin

11
Stagecoach

• Dallas a prostitute and social outcast. Strong
  but sympathetic, noble, and virtuous character
  who makes the audience to reevaluate their own
  social prejudice.

12
Stagecoach and The Shootist

• the marvelous thing about Westerns is that
  theyre all the same movie. This gives a
  director unlimited freedom.
• Don Siegels The Shootist (1976) about the
  legendary gunfighter, J.B. Books who is dying and
  spends his last days with dignity

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Stagecoach and The Shootist

• Books enters a community, seeks out three of its
  most corrupt citizens, and eliminates the them.
• Books played by John Wayne who played Ringo in
  Stagecoach.
• Both films follow a plot a redeemer enters a
  community and eliminates a threat to it.

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Stagecoach and The Shootist

• Books is shot at back by a bartender after
  killing the three villains
• Film is set in 1901 and the town is more
  modernized than that in Stagecoach
• No optimism and demise of the Western

15
Young Initiate Hero

• A narrative device filtering the genres
  conflicts through the perceptions of a young
  initiate-hero
• Red River (1948), Shane (1952), The Tin Star
  (1957), Rio Bravo (1958), The Magnificient Seven
  (1960), Ride the High Country (1962), El Drado
  (1967) Little Big Man (1970)

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Shane

• George Stevens Shane about a mysterious gunman
  who helps a mother-and-son family in the rancher
  and homesteader conflicts seen through the eyes
  of a young boy
• Thematic oppositions home and wandering,
  domestication and isolation, social law and
  primitive law, communal and independent

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Shane

• A larger than life stoic hero helps out those who
  need help and protection
• Shane rides into the pastoral valley where
  ranchers and homesteaders are feuding. He helps
  homesteaders and leaves after the conflict has
  resolved.

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Narrative and Visual Formula

• Arrival of a stranger a male hero rugged but
  with strong sense of justice confront danger
  and eliminate evil on his own with his excellent
  physical skills and ingenuity face existential
  choice between staying and leaving in the
  community
• Visual keys wilderness, small township, tavern,
  cattle farm, horses, cowboy gear, hat, gun, gun
  belt

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Narrative and Visual Formula

• The narrative and visual formula of the Western
  can be employed in the films of other genre or
  made outside USA
• Unexpected use of such formula in Juzo Itamis
  Tampopo (1985)

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Narrative and Visual Formula

• Goro is a truck driver (carrying milk) and walks
  into a run-down ramen restaurant with his
  sidekick, Gun, where they see its widowed owner
  being harassed by a bully. Goro gets rid of all
  villains and helps Tampopo make her ramen shop a
  lot more popular.
• Ramen Western from Spaghetti Western

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Narrative and Visual Formula

• Kurosawa heavily influenced by the Western and
  employed its narrative and visual formula in his
  samurai films.
• Yojinbo a masterless samurai walks into a town
  which is torn by the feud between the two rival
  families.

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Narrative and Visual Formula

• Kurosawa reinterpreted and redefined the Western
  formulae
• His formulae further influenced Western films
• The narrative and settings in Seven Samurai was
  transferred back to the American frontier and
  made into The Magnificent Seven and those in
  Yojimbo reused in A Fistful of Dollars FoD