Thursday, September 4, 2008

The History of Westerns



All I really knew about Westerns is that I don't usually watch them. I'd take San Francisco jobs before I'd be a cowboy any day. However, since a lot of them were filmed in Utah I decided to learn more about the genre.

  • Most Westerns are set in the late 19th century in the Wild West. The time period is usually between the end of the Civil War & the latest being during the Mexican Revolution.

  • The themes can range between conflict between people to conflict between nature & man. The point is that there is always conflict.

  • Every Western needs a hero, like the knights of old. Humphrey Bogart's character in Casablanca is compared to a western hero because he has his own moral code.

  • There are lots of guns & dynamite in the films. (I didn't have to look that up.)

  • Beautiful shots of American landscape appear. The landscape almost becomes a character.

  • Post apocalyptic films such as The Postman stem from westerns.

No comments: