Jason Morgan2 said:Look, nobody is actually out there claiming that *McCabe & Mrs.* just popped out of thin air, you know? But honestly, it didn't exactly evolve in one smooth, continuous line like some people try to make it sound. If you look at it closely, there was definitely this kind of "quantum leap" happening right there.
Honestly, the only movie I can wrap my head around right now that even remotely captures that same vibe is Unforgiven.
Honestly, I feel like the whole thing was way more continuous than you’re giving it credit for. If we're looking at the timeline, we really kicked things off with Ford. His whole "deconstruction" vibe starts as early as The Searchers back in '58 and basically hits its peak with Liberty Valance in '64. You might even want to throw Walsh's Pursued into the mix—if I remember my history right, that was the late '40s. Some people actually call that one the first psychoanalytical western. I wouldn't really drag Hawks into this specific conversation, though, because he’s definitely more of a traditionalist. On the flip side, you could argue Red River from '48 leans a little bit toward the revisionist side. But if we're talking about where things really shift, I’d point directly to High Noon. You've got that whole motif of the coward sheriff, plus that thick, almost Chaplinesque stupidity and small-town conformity; it’s obviously such a perfect metaphor for the fear gripping the country during the McCarthy madness. It’s that "Communist Western" that Hawks himself pointed out. After that, you really have to look at those B-Westerns from the '50s, especially those seven or eight gems directed by Budd Boetticher. And let's be real, Leone (and even Jarmusch) had seen all of this plenty of times before he finally decided to make For a Few Dollars More. The Tall T from '57 and Ride Lonesome from '59 are absolute, stone-cold classics. The whole concept of the West and what makes a hero was clearly shifting under our feet. Oh, and I can't forget Johnny Guitar from '54 by Nicholas Ray. Some folks call it total camp, while others see it as a feminist reading of the Western myth. Honestly, it’s probably both. Maybe also take a look at Delmer Daves' 3:10 to Yuma—it's like a "social" western centered around a pretty human outlaw.
People usually point to Arthur Penn's *The Left Handed Gun* from '58 as the first "official" anti-western—you know, that first real crack in the myth of Billy the Kid, played by Paul Newman. Honestly, the guy was clearly dealing with some serious sexual frustration, though maybe not quite as overtly as Warren Beatty and Clyde were in Penn's *Bonnie and Clyde* a decade later. Then you’ve got Leone stepping in, and of course, we have to talk about Peckinpah's masterpiece, *Ride the High Country*. That’s really when the 60s start to feel real—with JFK, Vietnam, the whole acid trip, the hippies... all that chaos. Some of the key "anti" westerns from that era include Monte Hellman's *The Shooting* and *Ride in the Whirlwind*, along with William Fraker's *Monte Walsh*, and obviously *The Wild Bunch* (which is great, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it hits quite as hard as some of Peckinpah's other stuff). Then there's Eastwood's *Hang 'Em High*, and Leone doing his trilogy run between '64 and '66, plus that wild Henry Fonda performance in *Once Upon a Time in the West*. I'd bet my life savings that Altman watched Hellman's and Fraker's films at least ten times before he ever sat down to make his own western. And by the way, looking at *McCabe & Mrs.*... compared to those other movies, it feels like a total positive utopia. It's practically a romance.
The sixties wrap up for me with Penn's Little Big Man—which, honestly, feels like such an ambitious masterpiece in my eyes, and clearly served as a lifelong source of inspiration for Jarmusch—and then there's my own personal Top 10 The Ballad of Cable Hogue by Sam Peckinpah.
So, we hit the 70s, and suddenly this whole "New Hollywood" crowd starts competing to see who can tear down Western myths the most effectively. Of course, the smartest ones among them realized that just smashing a myth using whatever trendy postmodern method was in vogue at the time—psychoanalysis being the big darling back then—wasn't enough. They figured you had to simultaneously build a new "myth" in its place, but this time, you had to ground it in actual historical reality. The absolute best of this bunch has to be Phil Kaufman (which honestly makes sense, given he actually studied history at Harvard), especially with *The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid*. In that flick, he basically breaks the legend of Jesse James down into subatomic particles; Duvall plays him as this totally impotent, dim-witted, frustrated, cold-blooded maniac. Meanwhile, Cole Younger, played by Cliff Robertson, is this sharp, cheerful, Dionysian type who’s actually embracing the 20th century and understands what you might call "progress." Then you've got that brilliant metaphor for America in Vietnam with Robert Aldrich's *Ulzana's Raid*, the hippie Western vibe following *Easy Rider*, Peter Fonda's *Hired Hand*, and that underrated gem from Dick Richards, *The Cullpepper Cattle Company*—I mean, cowboys on strike?! Then there's that wild portrayal of Billy the Kid in *Little Billy* by Stan Dragoti (if I remember the old legendary local translation right, they used to say Billy the Kid was just a total punk), which leaves absolutely nothing left of the Billy the Kid mythos, not to mention Eastwood's *High Plains Drifter*. All these films are popping up right around the same time as Altman's work, and personally, I think almost all of them are better than his stuff. And don't even get me started on *Unforgiven*—to me, that movie is a total miss. It feels way too forced, overly bombastic, heavy-handed, and just one of those "films with a message" that tries way too hard.
Pouka: Look, if you want to actually become a better person, just dive into Westerns—everything from the absolute classics to those gritty "anti-westerns." It really does work.