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What Makes a Great Western Movie?

By Henry C. Parke

Key Takeaways

  • Always focus on one particular mission
  • There must be a general understanding of history
  • Why we stop short of saying there are nine ingredients

What are the key ingredients for making a great Western? Horses? Guns? Hats? Sure, you find those in all great Westerns, but you find them in practically all crummy Westerns, too.  Well, which Westerns are great? Stagecoach. The Searchers … Am I saying you need John Wayne and John Ford to make a great Western? No. High Noon is a great Western that John Wayne so disliked that he and Howard Hawks made another great Western, Rio Bravo, as a rebuttal. Does a great Western need to have a Wayne, or a Cooper, or a Scott or McCrea? It can’t hurt, but Unforgiven and Lonesome Dove and Tombstone and Quigley Down Under and The Magnificent 7 are great Westerns without them.

By reverse-engineering some great Westerns, I’ve isolated nearly nine elements that they all share.

1. They focus on someone with a mission. Sometimes that mission is clear from the start, like Matty Ross’ determination in True Grit to bring her father’s killer back for trial. They may develop slowly, like in Shane where they try to keep the small farmers from being crushed. Or they may change completely: Lonesome Dove’s mission at the start is to drive cattle to Montana; by the end it’s about one old Texas Ranger giving another the burial he’d promised. 

2. They are about individuals who make a difference. Great Westerns are not about committees. If there is a committee, it’s a group of farmers/merchants/schoolmarms wanting to hire Henry Fonda, Clint Eastwood or Kurt Russell to bring law and order to town.

3. The danger is real. Easiest to demonstrate with television, Bonanza was a great drama and a good Western, while Gunsmoke was a great Western. There was just too much safety at the Ponderosa, but Dodge City was a dangerous place, and outside of town your life wasn’t worth a nickel.

4. There’s a pioneering spirit and things are not too civilized. Whether it’s an old Wagon Train or 1883, people are either moving West or building their ranch or town. When the towns are too finished, like cities, things get boring fast.

5. Right and wrong are real issues. Even in Spaghetti Westerns, whose fans brag that their heroes are amoral or antiheroes, be it Clint or Lee Van Cleef or Franco Nero, their motives are ultimately to do the right thing, and bring justice.

6. There is a sound general understanding of history. You’ll learn a lot of details that are wrong if you make My Darling Clementine your textbook for the O.K. Corral. But you’ll get a very good understanding of the world the gunfight took place in. And nothing ruins a Western more quickly than presentism—the projecting of modern-day circumstances and attitudes onto history.

7. Beauty of location. Whether it’s Monument Valley, Vasquez Rocks, Lone Pine, or some unfamiliar but breathtaking locale, great Westerns have great scenic beauty. And the characters and cattle and horses have to be in those vistas: cutting in great sunsets or sunrises that might have been filmed anywhere won’t cut it.

8. Humor. And not jokes, per se, but a sense that things happen in real life that make you smile. It’s difficult to find a darker story than The Searchers, but between Vera Miles’ frustration with Jeffrey Hunter, and goofy Hank Warden—“Thank you kindly!”—there is plenty to chuckle at. One of the most consistent weaknesses of recent Westerns is that they are so unrelentingly grim that the viewer gives up caring what happens.

Almost 9. Romance. Men can’t populate anyplace alone, nor will they bother to civilize it for themselves. There’s a reason that Last of the Mohicans and Dances with Wolves are not only great, but also among the most financially successful Westerns of all time. But with all due respect to Maureen O’Hara and Barbara Stanwyck, and admitting how crucial Joanne Dru was to the nearly all-male Red River, I cannot say that The Wild Bunch and The Cowboys aren’t great Westerns because they lack romance. But they are rare exceptions.

That’s why we stop short of saying there are nine definitive ingredients that make a great Western. The other eight, however, have stood the test of time. There is no argument.

About Henry C. Parke  

Henry’s new book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made, and the People Who Made Them, was published by TwoDot in February. The Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based writer has contributed articles to the INSP blog since 2016, been Film Editor for True West since 2015 and has written Henry’s Western Round-up, the online report on Western film production, since 2010. His screenwriting credits include Speedtrap (1977) and Double Cross (1994). He’s the first writer welcomed into the Western Writers of America for his work in electronic media. He’s done audio commentary on over thirty Spaghetti and domestic Westerns.  

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