Author: Jim KitsesPublisher: BFI Film Classics (Hardcover)
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
A definitive survey of the most popular and enduring of Hollywood's forms, the Western.
Horizons West
Author: Jim KitsesPublisher: British Film Institute
ISBN: 9781844570195
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
When first published in 1969, Horizons West was immediately recognised as the definitive critical account of the Western film and some of its key directors. This greatly expanded new edition is, like the original, written in a graceful, penetrating and absorbingly readable style.
Horizons West
Author: Jim KitsesPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838716289
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
When first published in 1969, Horizons West was immediately recognised as the definitive critical account of the Western film and some of its key directors. This greatly expanded new edition is, like the original, written in a graceful, penetrating and absorbingly readable style. It provides definitive critical analysis of the six greatest film-makers of the Western genre: John Ford, Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. And it offers illuminating accounts of such classic Westerns as The Searchers, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Once Upon a Time in the West, Shane and many more. Among the completely new material in this edition is Kitses's magisterial account of the work of the greatest of Western directors, John Ford. Kitses also assesses how the Western has been challenged by revisionist historical accounts of the West and the Western, and by movement such as feminism, postmodernism, multiculturalism and psychoanalysis. The product of a lifetime's labour and love, Horizons West is a landmark of scholarship and interpretation devoted to, what is for many, Hollywood's signature genre. It provides a compelling account of the powerful mythology of America's past as forged by Western films and the men who made them.
Stagecoach to Tombstone
Author: Howard HughesPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857730460
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 491
Book Description
The true story of the American West on film, through its shooting stars and the directors who shot them... Howard Hughes explores the Western, running from John Ford's 'Stagecoach' to the revisionary 'Tombstone'. Writing with panache and fresh insight, he explores 27 key films, and draws on production notes, cast and crew biographies, and the films' box-office success, to reveal their place in western history. He shows how through reinvention and resurrection, this genre continually postpones the big adios and avoids ending up in Boot Hill...permanently. Major films covered include the best from genre giants John Ford, Howard Hawks and John Wayne, plus classics 'High Noon', 'Shane', 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'. 'Stagecoach to Tombstone' makes many more stops along the way, examining well-known blockbusters and lowly B-movie oaters alike. It examines comedy westerns, adventures 'south of the border', singing cowboys and the varied depiction of Native Americans on screen. Hughes also engagingly charts the genre's timely renovation by Sam Peckinpah ('Ride the High Country' and 'The Wild Bunch' ), Sergio Leone ('Once Upon a Time in the West') and Clint Eastwood ('The Outlaw Josey Wales' and 'Unforgiven'). Presented too are the best of western trivia, a filmography of essential films - and ten aficionados and critics, including Alex Cox, Christopher Frayling, Philip French and Ed Buscombe, give their verdict on the best in the west.
A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West
Author: Nicolas S. WitschiPublisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118652517
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 582
Book Description
A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West presents a series of essays that explore the historic and contemporary cultural expressions rooted in America's western states. Offers a comprehensive approach to the wide range of cultural expressions originating in the west Focuses on the intersections, complexities, and challenges found within and between the different historical and cultural groups that define the west's various distinctive regions Addresses traditionally familiar icons and ideas about the west (such as cowboys, wide-open spaces, and violence) and their intersections with urbanization and other regional complexities Features essays written by many of the leading scholars in western American cultural studies
Hollywood Divided
Author: Kevin BriantonPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813168945
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
On October 22, 1950, the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) gathered for a meeting at the opulent Beverly Hills Hotel. Among the group's leaders were some of the most powerful men in Hollywood—John Ford, Cecil B. DeMille, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, John Huston, Frank Capra, William Wyler, and Rouben Mamoulian—and the issue on the table was nothing less than a vote to dismiss Mankiewicz as the guild's president after he opposed an anticommunist loyalty oath that could have expanded the blacklist. The dramatic events of that evening have become mythic, and the legend has overshadowed the more complex realities of this crucial moment in Hollywood history. In Hollywood Divided, Kevin Brianton explores the myths associated with the famous meeting and the real events that they often obscure. He analyzes the lead-up to that fateful summit, examining the pressure exerted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Brianton reveals the internal politics of the SDG, its initial hostile response to the HUAC investigations, the conservative reprisal, and the influence of the oath on the guild and the film industry as a whole. Hollywood Divided also assesses the impact of the historical coverage of the meeting on the reputation of the three key players in the drama. Brianton's study is a provocative and revealing revisionist history of the SDG's 1950 meeting and its lasting repercussions on the film industry as well as the careers of those who participated. Hollywood Divided illuminates how both the press's and the public's penchant for the "exciting story" have perpetuated fabrications and inaccurate representations of a turning point for the film industry.
Professionals in Western Film and Fiction
Author: Kenneth E. HallPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476635994
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
In American Westerns, the main characters are most often gunfighters, lawmen, ranchers and dancehall girls. Civil professionals such as doctors, engineers and journalists have been given far less representation, usually appearing as background characters in most films and fiction. In Westerns about the 1910 Mexican Revolution, however, civil professionals also feature prominently in the narrative, often as members of the intelligentsia--an important force in Mexican politics. This book compares the roles of civil professionals in most American Westerns to those in films on the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Included are studies on the Santiago Toole novels by Richard Wheeler, Strange Lady in Town with Greer Garson and La sombra del Caudillo by Martin Luis Guzman.
Film Trilogies
Author: C. PerkinsPublisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230371973
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Drawing on a wide range of examples, this book – the first devoted to the phenomenon of the film trilogy– provides a dynamic investigation of the ways in which the trilogy form engages key issues in contemporary discussions of film remaking, adaptation, sequelization and serialization.
John Wayne’s World
Author: Russell MeeufPublisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292747462
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
In a film career that spanned five decades, John Wayne became a U.S. icon of heroic individualism and rugged masculinity. His widespread popularity, however, was not limited to the United States: he was beloved among moviegoers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. In John Wayne’s World, Russell Meeuf considers the actor’s global popularity and makes the case that Wayne’s depictions of masculinity in his most popular films of the 1950s reflected the turbulent social disruptions of global capitalism and modernization taking place in that decade. John Wayne’s World places Wayne at the center of gender- and nation-based ideologies, opening a dialogue between film history, gender studies, political and economic history, and popular culture. Moving chronologically, Meeuf provides new readings of Fort Apache, Red River, Hondo, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, and The Alamo and connects Wayne’s characters with a modern, transnational masculinity being reimagined after World War II. Considering Wayne’s international productions, such as Legend of the Lost and The Barbarian and the Geisha, Meeuf shows how they resonated with U.S. ideological positions about Africa and Asia. Meeuf concludes that, in his later films, Wayne’s star text shifted to one of grandfatherly nostalgia for the past, as his earlier brand of heroic masculinity became incompatible with the changing world of the 1960s and 1970s. The first academic book-length study of John Wayne in more than twenty years, John Wayne’s World reveals a frequently overlooked history behind one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars.
Myth of the Western
Author: Carter Matthew CarterPublisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474402836
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 381
Book Description
What is the nature of the relationship between the Hollywood Western and American frontier mythology? How have Western films helped develop cultural and historical perceptions, attitudes and beliefs towards the frontier? Is there still a place for the genre in light of revisionist histories of the American West?Myth of the Western re-invigorates the debate surrounding the relationship between the Western and frontier mythology, arguing for the importance of the genre's socio-cultural, historical and political dimensions. Taking a number of critical-theoretical and philosophical approaches, Matthew Carter applies them to prominent forms of frontier historiography. He also considers the historiographic element of the Western by exploring the different ways in which the genre has responded to the issues raised by the frontier. Carter skilfully argues that the genre has - and continues to reveal - the complexities and contradictions at the heart of US society. With its clear analyses of and intellectual challenges to the film scholarship that has developed around the Western over a 65-year period, this book adds new depth to our understanding of specific film texts and of the genre as a whole - a welcome resource for students and scholars in both Film Studies and American Studies.
