My Favorite Western Flicks: Tombstone for entertainment; The Searchers/Red River for cinema significance…

December 8, 2022

I have viewed and reviewed  310 WESTERN films (as classified by Letterboxd).   I will list all films in this genre that have my five star stamp of approval by decade.  After that I will list the Top Films that I consider the ones that I would love to watch more often than the others.  I do consider their significance to cinema.  The list of films will continue to grow and this list can and will change as I continue to add to my number of films that are “westerns”.

1930’s

Stagecoach (1939)

Destry Rides Again (1939)

1940’s

My Darling Clementine (1946)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Red River (1948)

1950’s

Winchester 73 (1950)

The Lusty Men (1952)

Shane (1953)

The Searchers (1956)

3:10 To Yuma (1957)

1960’s

The Magnificent Seven  (1960)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Ride the High Country (1962)

Hud (1963)

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

The Shooting (1966)

The Professionals (1966)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Once Upon A Time In the West (1968)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

1970’s

Little Big Man (1970)

McCable and Mrs. Miller (1971)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

1990’s

Tombstone (1993)

2000’s

Open Range (2003)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

2010’s

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Hell or High Water (2016)

2020’s

The Power of the Dog (2021)

My Top Ten for enjoyment (my choice to view for my own personal entertainment if I had to choose)

1. Tombstone

2. Open Range

3. The Professionals

4. Red River

5. Little Big Man

6. The Hateful Eight

7. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

8. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

9. The Wild Bunch

10. Destry Rides Again

My five star films are all wonderful and most are significant to the cinema.  I will say that the actual best made western, in my opinion, is John Ford’s “The Searchers” followed by Howard Hawks “Red River”. Why did I select those two above the other great films?  Because both are open to extreme commentary on what Ford and Hawks  presented on the screen by the film historians and critics the world over.  I think those two films are both the standard of the western in my opinion.  They are very subjective films that fascinate me more than any other in the genre I will add.

I cannot forget the many great “westerns” that were not included as of a half star that I took off in my rating.  Those four and one half star flicks are five star films for many and I do not slight them in the least.  This again is a personal preference list as everyone has their own lists which are as valid and good as the one I have posted here.

https://letterboxd.com/fwpahlke/films/genre/western/