100 BEST WESTERNS EVER MADE
UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, THE C&I crew adheres to a time-tested adage: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In the case of our “100 Best Westerns Ever Made” list, however, we figured it was way past time for an update. For one thing, the original list first appeared almost 20 years ago — in January 2002, to be precise — and since then, more than a few list-worthy films have been released. Also: We have decided — reluctantly, we admit — to heed many requests that we restrict this list to theatrical features, and provide another rundown for television series, made-for-TV movies, and miniseries (including Lonesome Dove) in a future issue.
Finally: During the pandemic lockdown, we have had time to rewatch and reevaluate scads of classic westerns. As a result, more than a few titles have moved higher on the list — and others are appearing for the first time.
What follows is a roundup based on surveys of C&I staffers and readers, film critics, and actors and filmmakers who have a special affinity for the western genre. And don’t worry: We won’t wait another two decades for an update.
1 STAGECOACH 1939
The disreputable doctor who cracks wise and drinks heavily, but sobers up when the chips are down. The golden-haired shady lady who brightens incandescently when a naive cowpoke calls her “a lady.” The shifty-eyed gambler with a gun at his side and, presumably, an ace up his sleeve. And, of course: The square-jawed, slow-talking gunfighter who’s willing to hang up his shootin’ irons — who’s even agreeable to mending his ways and settling down on a small farm with a good woman — but not before he settles some unfinished business with the varmints who terminated his loved ones. Why? Because, as the gunfighter tersely notes, “There are some things a man can’t run away from.”
These and other familiar figures had already established themselves as archetypes by 1939, that magical movie year in which Stagecoach premiered. Even so, director John Ford’s must-see masterwork arguably is the first significant western of the talking-pictures era, the paradigm that cast the mold, set the rules, and firmly established the dramatis personae for all later movies of its kind. Indeed, it single-handedly revived the genre after a long period of box-office doldrums, elevating the western to a new level of critical and popular acceptance. And, not incidentally, it made John Wayne a full-fledged movie star.
2 THE SEARCHERS 1956
John Wayne gives one of his finest and most complex performances in John Ford’s enduringly popular and influential western as Ethan Edwards, a former Confederate soldier who’s obsessively driven to recover his beloved niece after her family is killed and she is abducted by marauding Comanches. For years, he continues his search, accompanied by Marty (Jeffrey Hunter), a “half-breed” orphan raised to adulthood by Ethan’s brother. And as they continue, however, Marty comes to question Ethan’s fanaticism, and the movie itself offers a darkly powerful counterpoint to the reassuring clichés of standard-issue horse operas. Even after six decades, Ford’s film seems
