Western typically refers to old west America, and There Will Be Blood takes place in the early 20th century. It and No Country do take place in the west but they're hardly "westerns" based on the classical sense of the term.
Ehhh, yeah we already established that, I would think. In fact one of the first things I said was that all three films were different from one another and took the classical Western genre and morphed it to some degree. Say what you want about
No Country but even though it's set in modern times that doesn't make it any less of a western, in my opinion. It has many classical western themes, but it doesn't even matter because westerns are ultimately palettes not strict guidelines.
I've already cited a Wikipedia article that describes it as a sub-genre of western. It's not hard to see why it would qualify because in terms of the other sub-genres it's much closer in spirit to classical westerns than, say, acid westerns like
El Topo.
Blood shares far too many similarities with westerns to not be classified as one. Even the Wikipedia article for the sub-genre Revisionist Western cites
Blood as an example of the sub-genre (along with
Jesse James, I might add).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Western#2000sLet me ask you a question. Would you consider any film from Sergio Leone's Dollars Trology a classical western? And if so, why?
Jesse James may not have the typical big western techniquess but it still qualifies because it's still set in that time period. The other two do not.
Even
Jesse James is atypical in this respect in that it take an art film approach to the subject matter. It has more in common with Bergman or Tarkovsky than it does with Ford.
Jesse James is like poetry unfolding whereas older westerns take a completely different thematic approach and aesthetic sensibility.
Jesse James is far too sophisticated and artistic to be considered a classical western. It adheres to the classical template closer than
No Country and
Blood but that doesn't make much difference, and as I cited above
Jesse James is considered to be in the western sub-genre Revisionist Western.
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13 years ago
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Fishelakh-In-Vaser
13 years ago
Fair enough. What I'm getting at is that Jesse James fits more into the classical western than the other two.
Okay, I can agree with that.
But the Dollars trilogy a classical western? Perhaps.... Do you consider it as such?
I don't. They're Spaghetti Westerns that have very little to do with classical Hollywood westerns. They match the archetype of the western much closer than
Jesse James but Leone has a very distinctive style that is very atypical in classical western iconography. He definitely uses many western conventions though. And casting Eastwood in the starring roles places it firmly in the classical
tradition just by association.
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scotartt
13 years ago
Classical Westerns are movies in which the characters are decidedly unambiguous - white hats and black hats. These are nearly all made in the first decade of the sound film, remembering that Hollywood already had the silent era - in which Westerns were enormously popular - to work out what a 'Western' actually was. They also corresponds with the Classical Hollywood Style.
After that period, typically post-war, you got the 'Revisionist' Western. The characters are far more nuanced, the heroes less pure, the villains motivated by complex psychology. For example, John Ford's post-war work, e.g. The Searchers. But for every new generation the old generation's Westerns become classical and the new generations' are revisionist. So you get a Revision of the Revision. The "theme" of such Westerns is nearly always Man and Civilisation; how some types of men become Civilised (often through the influence of Women and other Respectable Townsfolk), and others, anachronistic hangovers useful only for a brief moment of violence and then, either perish and become mythology or fade into obscurity.
In this category are those movies that try to rewrite the mythology of the western; for example, Unforgiven (one of the best westerns ever made in my opinion). Unforgiven makes this explicit (and curiously, the Women - the 'whores' - are a destabilising influence upon the town, whereas Munny's long dead wife and Ned's Indian wife woman the women who civilised the men). On the hand the civilisation - the town and its lawmaker, Little Bill - are hardly an unqualified good. The women in the town are nothing but the property of the brothelkeeper.
Spaghetti Westerns obviously include Leone's work but I tend to think of them as an attempt by the Italians to make Revisionist Westerns. The Spaghetti Western is also 'classical' in form in that its conventions are often now regarded as the highpoint - the standard definition - of the art form. After Leone you can't stage a gunfight scene without a deep-focus shot from ground level next to the boot of your protagonist; an extreme close up of one or both of the protragonist's or antagonist's eyes; reliance on sparse sound design and long periods of intercut 'silence'; etc. Even Hollywood copied this style (see High Plains Drifter).
So I think all three of these films engage with these conventions in at least some way; but I don't think of any of them as "classic". The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is an attempt to uncover the mythology of the outlaw Jesse James. James is shown as a melancholic anachronism, no longer suited to the increasingly civilised world he finds himself in. Bob Ford an eager young man who has bought the myth and is terrified of the reality. It borrows the wide-open-landscape style of cinematography from the movies of John Ford.
The other two heavily borrow from some conventions of the Western but I'm not entirely sure; No Country For Old Men is a crime thriller set in the modern "West" and some of it's aesthetics seem to be influenced by Westerns but I'm not sure how it fits into the typical genre conventions of the anachronistically flawed hero struggling with encroaching civilisation. Maybe it's 'classical' in that it's hero is really the Sherriff, but he never really solves the crime and catches the black hat.
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Fishelakh-In-Vaser
13 years ago
Sorry for the late reply, but your comments are very much appreciated. Thanks for the detailed response.
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