HISTORY 322: THE WEST IN FILM

FINAL COMPARATIVE FILM ESSAY (90 points possible)

DUE JUNE 11 by 11:59pm




Your final assignment is to craft a polished, single-spaced, 4 to 6 page (2000- to 3000-word) interpretative and
comparative film essay. Your essay must incorporate two Western films and scholarly interpretations of the films
(book chapters, journal articles, essays), but can also draw upon research about the directors of the films, the novel/story
upon which a film was based, and/or film reviews. One film and its accompanying readings can be selected from the
course syllabus. One film and at least one reading (if applicable) can be selected from the list below. That said, the
reading list below is not exhaustive and does not include what are arguably the most useful sources: academic
journal articles. You are responsible for locating secondary sources such as journal articles. Use J-STOR,
Academic Search Premier, Historical Abstracts, or the periodical stacks at Pierce Library to locate sources. You are free to
incorporate a film that does not appear on the list below, but you must contact me before doing so. To reiterate, the final
essay is interpretive and comparative; I will not accept a simple summary of two films and two readings. Instead, you will
blend a brief summary of each film (one or two paragraphs per film) with an interpretative and comparative analysis of the
films and the readings, perhaps selecting a theme or themes upon which to base your analysis. You are required to make
an argument in your introduction and support it with evidence from the films and readings in the body of your
essay. Your essay must have a beginning, middle, and an end, and you must incorporate direct quotes. Please
choose a film that has enough critical commentary written about it to make this project viable. I urge you to enhance your
analysis of each film by incorporating film reviews. You cannot submit prior work. Late papers will not be accepted.



RECOMMENDED FILMS
Bold = required for this course

The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903)
The Iron Horse (John Ford, 1924)
The Virginian (Victor Fleming, 1929)
Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles, 1931)
Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
The Ox-Bow Incident (William Wellman, 1943)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946)
Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
Treasure of Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)
Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948)
I Shot Jesse James (Samuel Fuller, 1949)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949)
The Furies (Anthony Mann, 1950)
Winchester 73 (Anthony Mann, 1950)
Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950)
Broken Arrow (Delmer Daves, 1950)
Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952)
High Noon (Fred Zinneman, 1952)
Shane (George Stevens, 1953)
Bend of the River (Anthony Mann, 1952)
Hondo (John Farrow, 1953)
The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 1953)
The Far Country (Anthony Mann, 1954)
Garden of Evil (Henry Hathaway, 1954)
Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954)
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
2
Apache (Robert Aldrich, 1954)
The Man from Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955)
The Fastest Gun Alive (Russell Rouse, 1956)
Seven Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956)
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
The Tall T (Budd Boetticher, 1957)
The Tin Star (Anthony Mann, 1957)
Run of the Arrow (Samuel Fuller, 1957)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (John Sturges, 1957)
3.10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves, 1957)
Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher, 1957)
Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller, 1957)
Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher, 1958)
The Left-Handed Gun (Arthur Penn, 1958)
The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958)
Cowboy (Delmer Daves, 1958)
Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959)
Last Train from Gun Hill (John Sturges, 1959)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
Comanche Station (Budd Boetticher, 1960)
The Unforgiven (John Huston, 1960)
The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960)
The Comancheros (Michael Curtiz, 1961)
One Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando, 1961)
Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
Lonely Are the Brave (David Miller, 1962)
A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964)
For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965)
Cat Ballou (Elliott Silverstein, 1965)
Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966)
Face to Face (Sergio Sollima, 1967)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967)
Hour of the Gun (John Sturges, 1967)
Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman, 1965)
The Shooting (Monte Hellman, 1967)
Django, Kill (Giulio Questi, 1967)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
True Grit (Henry Hathaway, 1969)
The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1969)
Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah, 1970)
Bad Company (Robert Benton, 1972)
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (Philip Kaufman, 1972)
My Name Is Nobody (Tonino Valerii, 1973)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974)
The Shootist (Donald Siegel, 1976)
The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn, 1976)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)
The Long Riders (Walter Hill, 1980)
Silverado (Lawrence Kasdan, 1985)
3
Young Guns (Christopher Cain, 1988)
Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1990)
Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
Tombstone (George P. Cosmatos, 1993)
The Ballad of Little J o (Maggie Greenwald, 1993)
Wyatt Earp (Kevin Costner, 1994)
The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996)
Open Range (Kevin Costner, 2003)
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005)
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2006)
3:10 to Yuma (James Mangold, 2007)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007)
No Country for Old Men (Coen brothers, 2007)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Yves Simoneau, 2007)
Seraphim Falls (David Von Ancken, 2007)
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
Appaloosa (Ed Harris, 2008)
The Only Good Indian (Kevin Willmott, 2009)
True Grit (Coen brothers, 2010)
Meeks Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)



FILM REVIEW SITES

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/
http://www.filmsite.org/allfilms.html


BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
A quick search via Pierce Library (including J-STOR and other article databases), Summit, or WorldCat will reveal more
secondary sources. Pierce Library has some of the books listed below but youll want to Summit/ILL others immediately.

The Western in American Culture Generally:
David Hamilton Murdoch, The American West: The Invention of a Myth (2001)
Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (1996)

The Western Film:
Patrick McGee, From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western (2007)
Peter C. Rollins and John E. OConnor, eds., Hollywoods West (2005)
John H. Lenihan, Showdown: Confronting Modern America in the Western Film (1980)
Will Wright, Sixguns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western (1975)
Jim Kitses and Greg Rickman, eds., The Western Reader (1998)
Janet Walker, Westerns: Films through History (2001)
R. Phillip Loy, Westerns and American Culture, 1930-1955 (2001)
R. Phillip Loy, Westerns in a Changing America, 1955-2000 (2004)

Western Film Directors:
Jim Kitses, Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood (2004)
Howard Hughes, Aim for the Heart: The Films of Clint Eastwood (1993)
Sidney Pearson, Print the Legend: Politics, Culture, and Civic Virtue in the Films of John Ford (2009)
4
Robert B. Pippin, Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for
Political Philosophy (2010)
Lindsay Anderson, About John Ford (1981)
Peter Bogdanovich, John Ford (1978)
Andrew Sarris, The John Ford Movie Mystery (1975)
J. A. Place, The Western Films of John Ford (1974)
Robert C. Cumbow, The Films of Sergio Leone (2008)
Christopher Frayling, Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death (2000)
Neil Fulwood, The Films of Sam Peckinpah (2002)
David Weddle, If They Move . . . Kill Em: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah (1994)
Paul Seydor, Peckinpah: The Western Films: A Reconsideration (2002)

Brief List of Books Related to Individual Films:
*You might choose to examine the novel upon which a film was based. I have included a few here.

Barry Keith Grant, John Fords Stagecoach (2003)
Phillip Drummond, High Noon (1997)
Jack Schaefer, Shane: The Critical Edition, edited by James Work (1984)
Glenn Frankel, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend (2013)
Arthur Eckstein and Peter Lehman, eds., The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Fords Classic Western (2004)
Alan Le May, The Searchers (1954)
Michael Bliss, Doing It Right: The Best Criticism on Sam Peckinpahs The Wild Bunch (1994)
Stephen Prince, ed., Sam Peckinpahs The Wild Bunch (1999)
Tom Weisser, Spaghetti Westerns: The Good, the Bad and the Violent (1992)
Thomas Berger, Little Big Man (1964)
Robert T. Self, Robert Altmans McCabe & Mrs. Miller: Reframing the American West (2007)
Edward Buscombe, Unforgiven (2004)
Alan Le May, The Unforgiven (1957)

Academic Journal Articles:
While I would like you to perform the necessary research here, I will post a number of academic journal articles on our
Canvas page (in PDF form). I have access to databases outside of Pierce Library, so I have tried to track down some
articles.