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Westerns first published in Great Britain in 1973 by Secker & Warburg for the British Film Institute. Revised edition published 1977. This edition, expanded to include Westerns Revisited, first published in Great Britain in 2005 by Carcanet Press Limited Alliance House Cross Street Manchester M2 7AQ Copyright Philip French 1973, 1974, 1977, 2005 The right of Philip French to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 All rights reserved A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 85754 747 0 The publisher is grateful for the support of Peter Thompson for the publication of this book and other titles in the Carcanet film series. The publisher acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England Typeset by XL Publishing Services, Tiverton Printed and bound in England by SRP Ltd, Exeter
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I think nowadays, while literary men seem to have neglected their epic duties, the epic has been saved for us, strangely enough, by the westerns … has been saved for the world by of all places, Hollywood. Jorge Luis Borges, The Paris Review, 1967 One of the most vapid and infantile forms of art ever conceived by the brain of a Hollywood movie producer. Dwight Macdonald, The Miscellany, 1929 The XXth Congress had taken place, but there wasn’t a line about the speech. It wasn’t in any of the papers either, and by and by I realised that it had not been meant for us. Well: there were newspapers on sale two hundred yards beyond the border, next to wooden booths with all the rubber bands in the world, and tomatoes, and Hollywoood westerns that don’t exist on our side either; the text of the speech was still around. Uwe Johnson, Speculations About Jakob, 1959 The western remains, I suppose, America’s distinctive contribution to the film. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Show, April 1963 What recent films have you found particularly stimulating? ‘The Searchers, Moby Dick, The Red Balloon – and almost every film in which the heroes are white, the villains red and the United States cavalry gets there in time.’ The Rt. Hon. Peter Rawlinson, MP, replying to a questionnaire in Sight and Sound, 1957 Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man. Walker Percy, The Movie-goer, 1961

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Westerns first published in Great Britain in 1973 by Secker & Warburg for the British Film Institute. Revised edition published 1977. This edition, expanded to include Westerns Revisited, first published in Great Britain in 2005 by

Carcanet Press Limited

Alliance House Cross Street Manchester M2 7AQ

Copyright Philip French 1973, 1974, 1977, 2005

The right of Philip French to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of

1988 All rights reserved

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1 85754 747 0

The publisher is grateful for the support of Peter Thompson for the publication of this book and other titles in the Carcanet film series. The publisher acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England

Typeset by XL Publishing Services, Tiverton Printed and bound in England by SRP Ltd, Exeter

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