Download or read book The Invention of the Western Film written by Scott Simmon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents

Download or read book The Invention of the Western Film written by Scott Simmon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Invention of the Western Film ranges across literature, visual arts, social history, ideology, and legend to provide, for the first time, an in-depth exploration of the early Western, from short kinetoscopes of the 1890s through "classic" features of the 1940s. By examining the American Indian's rise and demise during the silent era, B- Westerns of the 1930s, and film noir-influenced Westerns of the 1940s, Scott Simmon's pioneering study silhouettes the genre's evolution against a myriad of cultural forces. This lively, encyclopedic book revitalizes familiar Western icons John Wayne and John Ford, and recovers forgotten masterworks from the Western film's formative years.

Download or read book History of Western Movies written by Leonard Matthews and published by Hamlyn. This book was released on 1984 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Western written by David Lusted and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Western introduces the novice to the pleasures and the meanings of the Western film, shares the excitement of the genre with the fan, addresses the suspicions of the cynic and develops the knowledge of the student. The Western is about the changing times of the Western, and about how it has been understood in film criticism. Until the 1980s, more Westerns were made than any other type of film. For fifty of those years, the genre was central to Hollywood's popularity and profitability. The Western explores the reasons for its success and its latter-day decline among film-makers and audiences alike. Part I charts the history of the Western film and its role in film studies. Part II traces the origins of the Western in nineteenth-century America, and in its literary, theatrical and visual imagining. This sets the scene to explore the many evolving forms in successive chapters on early silent Westerns, the series Western, the epic, the romance, the dystopian, the elegiac and, finally, the revisionist Western. The Western concludes with an extensive bibliography, filmography and select further reading. Over 200 Westerns are discussed, among them close accounts of classics such as Duel in the Sun, The Wild Bunch and Unforgiven, formative titles like John Ford's epic The Iron Horse, and early cowboy star William S. Hart's The Silent One together with less familiar titles that deserve wider recognition, including Comanche Station, Pursued and Ulzana's Raid.

Download or read book A History of Western American Literature written by Susan Kollin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West is a complex region that has inspired generations of writers and artists. Often portrayed as a quintessential landscape that symbolizes promise and progress for a developing nation, the American West is also a diverse space that has experienced conflicting and competing hopes and expectations. While it is frequently imagined as a place enabling dreams of new beginnings for settler communities, it is likewise home to long-standing indigenous populations as well as many other ethnic and racial groups who have often produced different visions of the land. This History encompasses the intricacy of Western American literature by exploring myriad genres and cultural movements, from ecocriticism, settler colonial studies and transnational theory, to race, ethnic, gender and sexuality studies. Written by a host of leading historians and literary critics, this book offers readers insight into the West as a site that sustains canonical and emerging authors alike, and as a region that exceeds national boundaries in addressing long-standing global concerns and developments.

Download or read book The Philosophy of the Western written by Jennifer L. McMahon and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great German novelist Thomas Mann implored readers to resist the persistent and growing militarism of the mid-twentieth century. To whom should we turn for guidance during this current era of global violence, political corruption, economic inequality, and environmental degradation? For more than two millennia, the worldÕs great thinkers have held that the ethically Ògood lifeÓ is the highest purpose of human existence. Renowned political philosopher Fred Dallmayr traces the development of this notion, finding surprising connections among Aristotelian ethics, Abrahamic and Eastern religious traditions, German idealism, and postindustrial social criticism. In Search of the Good Life does not offer a blueprint but rather invites readers on a cross-cultural quest. Along the way, the author discusses the teachings of Aristotle, Confucius, Nicolaus of Cusa, Leibniz, and Schiller, in addition invoking more recent writings of Gadamer and Ricoeur, as guideposts and sources of hope during our troubled times. Among contemporary themes Dallmayr discusses are the role of the classics in education, proper and improper ways of spreading democracy globally, the possibility of transnational citizenship, the problem of politicized evil, and the role of religion in our predominantly secular culture. Dallmayr restores the notion of the good life as a hallmark of personal conduct, civic virtue, and political engagement, and as the road map to enduring peace. In Search of the Good Life seeks to arouse complacent and dispirited citizens, guiding them out of the distractions of shallow amusements and perilous resentments in the direction of mutual learning and civic pedagogyÑa direction that will enable them to impose accountability on political leaders who stray from fundamental ethical standards.

Download or read book Celluloid Pueblo written by Jennifer L. Jenkins and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celluloid Pueblo tells the story of Western Ways Features and its role in the invention of the Southwest of the imagination. The story closely follows the boom and bust arc of this region in the mid-twentieth century and the constantly evolving representations of an exotic--but safe and domesticated--frontier and the landscape, regional development, and diverse cultures of Arizona and the Southwest.

Download or read book Hollywood s West written by Peter C. Rollins and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2005-11-11 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner have argued that the West has been the region that most clearly defines American democracy and the national ethos. Throughout the twentieth century, the "frontier thesis" influenced film and television producers who used the West as a backdrop for an array of dramatic explorations of America's history and the evolution of its culture and values. The common themes found in Westerns distinguish the genre as a quintessentially American form of dramatic art. In Hollywood's West, Peter C. Rollins, John E. O'Connor, and the nation's leading film scholars analyze popular conceptions of the frontier as a fundamental element of American history and culture. This volume examines classic Western films and programs that span nearly a century, from Cimarron (1931) to Turner Network Television's recent made-for-TV movies. Many of the films discussed here are considered among the greatest cinematic landmarks of all time. The essays highlight the ways in which Westerns have both shaped and reflected the dominant social and political concerns of their respective eras. While Cimarron challenged audiences with an innovative, complex narrative, other Westerns of the early sound era such as The Great Meadow (1931) frequently presented nostalgic visions of a simpler frontier era as a temporary diversion from the hardships of the Great Depression. Westerns of the 1950s reveal the profound uncertainty cast by the cold war, whereas later Westerns display heightened violence and cynicism, products of a society marred by wars, assassinations, riots, and political scandals. The volume concludes with a comprehensive filmography and an informative bibliography of scholarly writings on the Western genre. This collection will prove useful to film scholars, historians, and both devoted and casual fans of the Western genre. Hollywood's West makes a significant contribution to the understanding of both the historic American frontier and its innumerable popular representations.

Download or read book The Sagebrush Trail written by Richard Aquila and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sagebrush Trail is a history of Western movies but also a history of twentieth-century America. Richard Aquila’s fast-paced narrative covers both the silent and sound eras, and includes classic westerns such as Stagecoach, A Fistful of Dollars, and Unforgiven, as well as B-Westerns that starred film cowboys like Tom Mix, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 traces the birth and growth of Westerns from 1900 through the end of World War II. Part 2 focuses on a transitional period in Western movie history during the two decades following World War II. Finally, part 3 shows how Western movies reflected the rapid political, social, and cultural changes that transformed America in the 1960s and the last decades of the twentieth century. The Sagebrush Trail explains how Westerns evolved throughout the twentieth century in response to changing times, and it provides new evidence and fresh interpretations about both Westerns and American history. These films offer perspectives on the past that historians might otherwise miss. They reveal how Americans reacted to political and social movements, war, and cultural change. The result is the definitive story of Western movies, which contributes to our understanding of not just movie history but also the mythic West and American history. Because of its subject matter and unique approach that blends movies and history, The Sagebrush Trail should appeal to anyone interested in Western movies, pop culture, the American West, and recent American history and culture. The mythic West beckons but eludes. Yet glimpses of its utopian potential can always be found, even if just for a few hours in the realm of Western movies. There on the silver screen, the mythic West continues to ride tall in the saddle along a “sagebrush trail” that reveals valuable clues about American life and thought.

Download or read book Shooting Cowboys and Indians written by Andrew Brodie Smith and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academics have generally dismissed Hollywood's cowboy and Indian movies - one of its defining successful genres - as specious, one-dimensional, and crassly commercial. In Shooting Cowboys and Indians, Andrew Brodie Smith challenges this simplistic characterization of the genre, illustrating the complex and sometimes contentious process by which business interests commercialized images of the West. Tracing the western from its hazy silent-picture origins in the 1890s to the advent of talking pictures in the 1920s, Smith examines the ways in which silent westerns contributed to the overall development of the film industry. Focusing on such early important production companies as Selig Polyscope, New York Motion Picture, and Essanay, Smith revises current thinking about the birth of Hollywood and the establishment of Los Angeles as the nexus of filmmaking in the United States. Smith also reveals the role silent westerns played in the creation of the white male screen hero that dominated American popular culture in the twentieth century. Illustrated with dozens of historic photos and movie stills, this engaging and substantive story will appeal to scholars interested in Western history, film history, and film studies as well as general readers hoping to learn more about this little-known chapter in popular filmmaking.

Download or read book West of Everything written by Jane Tompkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-04-29 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading figure in the debate over the literary canon, Jane Tompkins was one of the first to point to the ongoing relevance of popular women's fiction in the 19th century, long overlooked or scorned by literary critics. Now, in West of Everything, Tompkins shows how popular novels and films of the American west have shaped the emotional lives of people in our time. Into this world full of violence and manly courage, the world of John Wayne and Louis L'Amour, Tompkins takes her readers, letting them feel what the hero feels, endure what he endures. Writing with sympathy, insight, and respect, she probes the main elements of the Western--its preoccupation with death, its barren landscapes, galloping horses, hard-bitten men and marginalized women--revealing the view of reality and code of behavior these features contain. She considers the Western hero's attraction to pain, his fear of women and language, his desire to dominate the environment--and to merge with it. In fact, Tompkins argues, for better or worse Westerns have taught us all--men especially--how to behave. It was as a reaction against popular women's novels and women's invasion of the public sphere that Westerns originated, Tompkins maintains. With Westerns, men were reclaiming cultural territory, countering the inwardness, spirituality, and domesticity of the sentimental writers, with a rough and tumble, secular, man-centered world. Tompkins brings these insights to bear in considering film classics such as Red River and Lonely Are the Brave, and novels such as Louis L'Amour's Last of the Breed and Owen Wister's The Virginian. In one of the most moving chapters (chosen for Best American Essays of 1991), Ttompkins shows how the life of Buffalo Bill Cody, killer of Native Americans and charismatic star of the Wild West show, evokes the contradictory feelings which the Western typically elicits--horror and fascination with violence, but also love and respect for the romantic ideal of the cowboy. Whether interpreting a photograph of John Wayne of meditating on the slaughter of cattle, Jane Tompkins writes with humor, compassion, and a provocative intellect. Her book will appeak to many Americans who read or watch Westerns, and to all those interested in a serious approach to popular culture.

Download or read book Ride Boldly Ride written by Mary Lea Bandy and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is a survey of the movie Western that covers its history from the early silent era to recent spins on the genre in films such as No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, True Grit, and Cowboys & Aliens. The authors provide fresh perspectives on landmark films such Stagecoach, Red River, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Wild Bunch, and they also pay tribute to many underappreciated Westerns including 3 Bad Men, The Wind, The Big Trail, Ruggles of Red Gap, Northwest Passage, The Westerner, The Furies, Jubal, and Comanche Station. The book explores major phases of the Western's development--silent era oaters, A-production classics of the 1930s and early 1940s, and the more psychologically complex presentations of the Westerner that emerged in the post-World War II period.. They examine various forms of genre-revival and genre-revisionism that have recurred over the past half-century, culminating especially in the masterworks of Clint Eastwood. Central themes of the book include the inner life of the Western hero, the importance of the natural landscape, the tension between myth and history, the depiction of the Native American, and the juxtaposing of comedy and tragedy"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative written by N. J. Lowe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-06-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Homer to Hollywood, the western storytelling tradition has canonised a distinctive set of narrative values characterised by tight economy and closure. This book traces the formation of that classical paradigm in the development of ancient storytelling from Homer to Heliodorus. To tell this story, the book sets out to rehabilitate the idea of 'plot', notoriously disconnected from any recognised system of terminology in literary theory. The first part of the book draws on developments in narratology and cognitive science to propose a way of formally describing the way stories are structured and understood. This model is then used to write a history of the emergence of the classical plot type in the four ancient genres that shaped it - Homeric epic, fifth-century tragedy, New Comedy, and the Greek novel - with insights into the fundamental narrative poetics of each.

Download or read book Still in the Saddle written by Andrew Patrick Nelson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the 1960s, the Hollywood West of Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, and even John Wayne was passé—or so the story goes. Many film historians and critics have argued that movies portraying a mythic American West gave way to revisionist films that influential filmmakers such as Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman made as violent critiques of the Western’s “golden years.” Yet rumors surrounding the death of the Western have been greatly exaggerated, says film historian Andrew Patrick Nelson. Even as the Wild Bunch and John McCabe rode forth, John Wayne remained the Western’s number one box office draw. How, then, could there have been a revisionist reckoning at a time when the Duke was still in the saddle? In Still in the Saddle, Nelson offers readers a new history of the Hollywood Western in the 1970s, a time when filmmakers tried to revive the genre by appealing to a diverse audience that included a new generation of socially conscious viewers. Nelson considers a comprehensive filmography of releases from 1969 to 1980 in light of the visual tropes and narratives developed and reworked in the genre from the 1930s to the present. In so doing, he reveals the complexity of what is probably the most interesting period in Western movie history. His incisive reevaluations of such celebrated (or infamous) films as The Wild Bunch and Heaven’s Gate and examinations of dozens of forgotten and neglected Westerns, including the final films of John Wayne, demonstrate that there was more to the 1970s Western than simple revision. Instead, we see not only important connections between canonical and lesser-known films of the period, but also continuities between these and older Westerns. Nelson believes an ongoing, cyclical process of regeneration thus transcends established divisions in the genre’s history. Among the books currently challenging the prevailing “evolutionary” account of the Western, Still in the Saddle thoroughly revises our understanding of this exciting and misunderstood period in the Western’s history and adds innovatively and substantially to our knowledge of the genre as a whole.

Download or read book Why We Fought written by Peter C. Rollins and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-07-25 with total page 877 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “wide-ranging and sophisticated anthology” comparing theaters of war to wars in the movie theater (Dennis Showalter, author of Patton and Rommel). Why We Fought makes a powerful case that film can be as valuable a tool as primary documents for improving our understanding of the causes and consequences of war. A comprehensive look at war films, from depictions of the American Revolution to portrayals of September 11 and its aftermath, this volume contrasts recognized history and historical fiction with the versions appearing on the big screen. The text considers a selection of the pivotal war films of all time, including All Quiet on the Western Front, Sands of Iwo Jima, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Saving Private Ryan—revealing how film depictions of the country’s wars have shaped our values, politics, and culture, and offering a unique lens through which to view American history. Named as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Download or read book Manufacturing the Future written by Stephen B. Adams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-28 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of Contents

Download or read book 100 Greatest Western Movies of All Time written by Philip Armour and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun, opinionated, illustrated look at Westerns—with great photographs from great movies This unique compendium of short essays about, and evocative photos from, the 100 greatest Western movies of all time is the authoritative new resource on the subject—and the ideal illustrated gift book for all cowboy enthusiasts and cinema fans. Beyond being eminently browseable and lavishly illustrated, the book—compiled by the editors of the popular Western magazine American Cowboy—is sure to generate hot debate over its “top 100” list, and it covers plenty of movies that appeal to a wide variety of ages and tastes—from The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon, and Shane to The Wild Bunch, High Plains Drifter, and Unforgiven. Each essay makes the case for why the selected movie belongs in the top 100—and included are five movies you’ve never heard of but should immediately put high on your list. The introduction sets forth the criteria for the selections while also presenting a short history of the genre.