From John Ford classics to Sergio Leone gems, these are the best films the genre has to offer, says Graeme Ross. The western is one of the most beloved genres of all. In recent years, it seems to have been making a comeback of sorts. Just a few years back, Chloé Zhao released her standout rodeo film The Rider, while in 2016, western heads had to contend with Antoine Fuqua's remake of The Magnificent Seven. John Sturges’ ever-popular original was itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic, Seven Samurai.
Below is a reminder of some of the greatest entries in the western canon. 20. Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959). The pick of Boetticher and Randolph Scott’s superb seven-film collaboration follows stone-faced loner Scott’s obsessive quest to avenge his wife’s murder. Filmed entirely in breathtaking Sierra Nevada locations and also memorable for the classic Western line: “There are some things a man just can’t ride around.”.
19. Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954). Double and triple crosses aplenty as mercenaries Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper team up in revolutionary Mexico to steal a cache of gold. Pretty much dismissed on its release, Vera Cruz can now be viewed as an exhilarating precursor to the spaghetti Westerns of the sixties.
18. Winchester ’73 (Anthony Mann, 1950). James Stewart showed that he could ride, shoot ‘em up and trade blows with the best of the Western icons in his episodic quest to retrieve his stolen fabled rifle. The great screen villain Dan Duryea almost steals the film as the sneering, sadistic Waco Johnnie Dean.
