History 4120    Spring 2004
Week 15

The West in Film   

From Wikipedia, a rich set of materials on the western movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_movie

A good article about western films: http://www.filmsite.org/westernfilms.html

A Literary History of the American West includes essays about Western films: http://www2.tcu.edu/depts/prs/amwest/contents.html

Watch each of the following films set in the 19th century West--which are part of the myth of the West:

High Noon (1952)

Consider the way this film depicts the major theme of the western: redemption through violence. Who is redeemed? Who is damned? Why?

Shane (1953)

Consider the question in the film: who is the good man? Who is the good "father"? What images of domesticity and community contrast with images of "wildness"? How is the West depicted as a wild place?

You will also view the following films which are set in the West of the 20th Century:

Smoke Signals (1998)

And any one of the following:

My Family (1995) R, Lone Star (1996) R, Chinatown (1974) R, L.A. Confidential (1997) R,  Pow Wow Highway (1989), Milagro Beanfield War (1988) R, Grand Canyon (1992) R, 

In your study of these films consider these issues: What is the significance of place in the films (the place being the West)--could the films have been set in another part of the country and still have "worked"? What are issues of family and friendship in these films? How are people "redeemed" in these films?