Film critics are so often lazy, or pretentious, which is much the same thing. Reviewers and TV previewers are especially guilty. Working to deadlines, I suppose.
You know the sort of thing: an actor who doesn't do a lot of emoting, like Clint or Greg is called 'wooden' as a matter of course, but if he rolls his eyebrows a bit he's called 'hammy'. If he's in a British war film, then the phrase 'stiff uper lip' has to be dragged out of the locker.
You know the sort of thing: an actor who doesn't do a lot of emoting, like Clint or Greg is called 'wooden' as a matter of course, but if he rolls his eyebrows a bit he's called 'hammy'. If he's in a British war film, then the phrase 'stiff uper lip' has to be dragged out of the locker.
If he or she plays the same sort of role most of the time, they are 'type-cast'. Try something different and they are 'miscast'. If they use a different accent, it's always 'dodgy', even if the critic has never heard the accent itself in his life.
Plots tend to be 'derivative' if you don't like them, an 'hommage' if you do. Themes are 'Manichean' or 'post-ironic' or 'innovative' or 'ground-breaking' or, if the hero has to make a decision, 'existentialist'.
But the one I hate most - at the moment - is 'revisionist', when applied to the Western. What is being revised? Some non-existent standard of Western that has to be updated or undermined or improved?
The western has always been 'revising' itself, re-working stock themes and characters from The Squawman onwards. (All right, I haven't seen it, but I've read all about it). But I have seen these:
Stagecoach (1939): whore doesn't pay for her sins but gets the hero.
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943): tragic ending, where the good guys don't get to save the weak.
The Three Godfathers (1948): the Western as religious parable!
Red River (1948): the hero as drunken, cruel, paranoid, vengeful bastard.
Fort Apache (1948): pre-dates The Man who Shot Liberty Valance in its cynicism about 'printing the legend'.
Broken Arrow (1950): the Western as bleeding heart liberal plea for mutual understanding.
The Gunfighter (1950): ageing gunman wants to hang up his guns and retire, but trapped by his past. Ten years later The Magnificent Seven felt the same way, as did Steve Judd, and a few years later Pike Bishop.
The Furies (1950): the Western as Greek tragedy.
High Noon (1952): Communist propaganda - they say. Actually it's about as non-revisionist as you're going to get, apart from Shane.
The Naked Spur (1953) and all the Stewart/Mann films: 'psychological' Westerns, where the hero is seen as fallible, wrong, neurotic. See Red River.
Johnny Guitar (1954): McCarthyism, sexual frustration, weirdness. Final gunfight between women.
The Searchers (1956): the earliest one I've heard called 'revisionist'. It begins a long line of Westerns given that title, from the spaghettis through The Wild Bunch to Unforgiven.
After those the only revisionism you get is more authentic clothing, more moustaches, more foul language, more whores, even nastier Indians, even nastier cavalrymen, more corporate businessmen from 'back East' or 'up North', more bicycles and machine guns.
So are there any models which have been revised? Well, there are all the old B-westerns, which don't count and which are all that Mel Brooks could find to lampoon in Blazing Saddles. Shane was self-consciously 'classic', as were Duel in the Sun, The Big Country and Lawman.
No. If you want true, pure re-tellings of the classic Western myth, watch The Tall T, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station. They don't come much better than that.
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