-A Few Words Before Reading-
I will not tolerate any insulting and threatening comments. So once again, please be polite 🙂
-Introduction-
This blog entry regarding my top 10 favorite westerns of all-time was long in the making, but I finally got it done 🙂 I am very proud of it as westerns are another one of my many favorite genres of all time 🙂 My first ten choices are not my only favorite westerns, they just happen to be my top 10. If this list could go up to 100, you could expect to see multiple entries by not only some films from the directors I chose, but also entries from Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone. Leaving them off this list was a very tough decision. Anyway, I would like to dedicate this blog entry to all of my dear readers, but especially jcalberta (My Favorite Westerns), Colin McGuigan (RIDING THE HIGH COUNTRY), Bill White (Decay and Decline), Paul S (Pfeiffer Pfilms and Meg Movies), Steve (click here to view his Youtube channel) and Pam (All Things Thriller) as they have talked frequently about the genre. If you feel that I am being unfair, let me know and I will explicitly add your name to my dedication 🙂 Now without further ado, I would love to present to you dear readers:
-My Top 10 Favorite Westerns of All-Time-
10.) The Big Sky (1952)
Dir: Howard Hawks
Country: United States
Color: Black and White
When it comes to masterful westerns directed by Howard Hawks, I always single out 1959’s Rio Bravo and this one, which is 1952’s The Big Sky as his twin achievements given that they were both initially released during the 1950’s. Based on A.B. Guthrie’s 1947 novel of the same name, The Big Sky centers on a group of trappers journeying through the wilderness to make a trade with the Blackfeet Native American tribe. Along with Rio Bravo (or any other Hawks film for that matter), The Big Sky emphasizes camaraderie among it’s characters. Like Red River before it, Russell Harland’s black and white cinematography gives The Big Sky a touch of poetry akin to a John Ford western. For me, as a Howard Hawks western, The Big Sky represents the best of both worlds.
Click here to view the film’s original theatrical trailer
Click here to watch Ben Mankiewicz’s 2015 TCM intro and click here to watch his outro for the film
09.) Forty Guns (1957)
Dir: Samuel Fuller
Country: United States
Color: Black and White
Hard-boiled director/writer Samuel Fuller has dabbled in the western genre quite a few times in his career. During the 1950’s, Fuller gave us not one, but two great westerns released in the same year. In the case of Run of the Arrow and Forty Guns, that would be 1957. Out of the two films, Forty Guns stands out as my personal favorite of Fuller’s westerns. Shot in CinemaScope, Fuller takes the aforementioned widescreen format of this black-and-white western and uses it to create a stylized mise-en-scene. Set in the 1880’s, the plot centers on the battle between tough-as-nails landowner Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) and a team of U.S. Marshalls headed by former gunslinger Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan). Replete with double entendres, Forty Guns is as much a Women’s empowerment western as it is a melodramatic romance and tragedy.
Click here to watch the film’s original theatrical trailer
Click here to watch Ben Mankiewicz 2025 TCM intro as part of The Defining Frontier series
Click here to watch celebrated American filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s 2024 TCM intro to it as part of the network’s Two for One series
08.) Canyon Passage (1946)
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Country: United States
Color: Color
Perhaps the highest compliment I can give to Canyon Passage is that it may be the most fascinating western to come from the Classical Hollywood era. Adapted from a 1945 Saturday Evening Post novelette written by Ernest Pascal and Ernest Haycox, Canyon Passage is a picturesque western emphasizing a nuanced depiction of the American frontier. Famed for his Val Lewton productions (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man), director Jacques Tourneur took the expressive touches he mastered with those aforementioned horror films and similarly applied it to his westerns. Here, the moral ambiguities of it’s characters stand in contrast to the film’s idyllic scenery courtesy of Edward Cronjager’s gorgeous Technicolor cinematography. In other words, Canyon Passage blends elements belonging to the western with that of film noir. The result is a forerunner to the dark psychological westerns (think those of Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher among others) that would come to characterize the genre during the following decade of the 1950’s.
Click here to watch a black-and-white trailer for the film. I am not sure why the trailer is in black-and-white and the finished film was shot in color though.
Click here to watch Jacques Tourneur scholar Chris Fujiwara talking about the film
Click here to watch a Sag Harbor Q&A with Bob Rudin on the film
07.) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Dir: John Ford
Country: United States
Color: Black and White
Along with Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country from that same year (and released only a few months later), esteemed director John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance serves as an elegy for the Classical Hollywood western. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the central theme is the fall of the Old West and the rise of civilization. At the same time, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance works tremendously as a timeless political drama. This is evident by the film’s most memorable line of when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Metaphorically, Ford utilizes the film’s scathing treatment of journalism (as well as the aforementioned quote) to hold himself culpable for his part (big or small) in popularizing the myths that have shaped the western genre from the very beginning. Perhaps the most significant aspect of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance lies in it’s overall cynical tone. If anything else, it foreshadows the American revisionist westerns that would come to revive the genre by the end of the 1960’s.
Click here to watch the film’s original trailer
Click here to watch Robert Osborne’s 2014 intro and here for his outro to the film
Click here to watch Ben Mankiewicz 2025 intro to the film as part of the network’s The Defining Frontier series
06.) Ride Lonesome (1959)
Dir: Budd Boetticher
Country: United States
Color: Color
Like Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher was another director who transcended the western during the 1950’s. Along with Mann, Boetticher achieved this by emphasizing the more psychological aspects of the drama, which is inevitably complemented by a nuanced depiction of it’s heroes and villains. Unlike Mann’s collaborations with lead actor James Stewart, Boetticher’s collaborative efforts with Randolph Scott were B-westerns. Five of them were produced by Ranown Productions, which consisted of the first three letters in Scott’s first name with and the last three in the last name of it’s executive producer/producer Harry Joe Brown. For this viewer, it is Ride Lonesome that stands as my personal favorite of the Ranown cycle. This was also Boetticher’s first film to be shot in Cinemascope. Similarly, Boetticher makes excellent use of the widescreen format via the relationship between it’s morally ambiguous characters and the environment surrounding them. The climactic sequence features quite possibly the most iconic image ever depicted in a B-Western.
Click here to watch the film’s original theatrical trailer
Click here to watch celebrated American filmmaker and cinephile Martin Scorsese’s commentary on the film
Click here to watch Robert Osborne’s 2015 TCM intro and here for his outro to the film as part of the network’s 50’s Westerns series
Click here to watch Ben Mankiewicz 2025 TCM intro to the film as part of the network’s The Defining Frontier series.
05.) The Shooting (1966)
Dir: Monte Hellman
Country: United States
Color: Color
Produced during the counterculture era, The Shooting is often cited as the very first Acid Western. As the (more or less) straightforward revenge plot progresses, The Shooting suddenly turns into something dreamlike and existential. Conceptually, one way of looking at it is as a western helmed by Michelangelo Antonioni. The film’s low-budget production values coincide perfectly with the film’s sparseness as well as overall tone. As much as I love Ride in the Whirlwind (also directed by Monte Hellman and shot back-to-back with this one), The Shooting is still my favorite of the two and for my money, the number one greatest western of the 1960’s.
Click here to watch the film’s original theatrical trailer
Click here to watch actor Keith Carradine’s 2016 TCM intro to the film as part of the network’s Great Westerns series
Click here to watch Ben Mankiewicz TCM intro to the film as part of the network’s Roger Corman theme
Click here to watch British filmmaker John Boorman’s 1987 BBC Film Club intro to the film
04.) Johnny Guitar (1954)
Dir: Nicholas Ray
Country: United States
Color: Color
Championed in its time by the French critics of Cahiers du Cinema, Johnny Guitar serves as a perfect demonstration as to why (in the immortal words of Jean-Luc Godard) the cinema is Nicholas Ray. As with a lot of Ray’s work, Johnny Guitar is a film where theatricality shapes form and content. In the case of Johnny Guitar, we get a gender bending western where the males take a backseat to the females, who inhabit the genre’s archetypes. The anti-heroine is represented by Joan Crawford’s two-fisted Saloon owner Vienna, while Mercedes McCambridge’s Emma Small represents the villainess. Sterling Hayden plays Vienna’s love interest; a former gunslinger who now plays the guitar, hence the title character. This is far from the only area where Ray subverts our expectations though. Unlike other westerns of its day, Johnny Guitar is stylized in every single way imaginable. From Ray’s trademark staging to bold use of color (here courtesy of Trucolor) to intentional overheated melodrama and finally, to social comment, Johnny Guitar emerges as the quintessential anti-western. Last, but not least, French New Wave director Francois Truffaut said it best when he hailed Johnny Guitar as the Beauty and the Beast of Westerns.
Click here to watch the film’s original theatrical trailer
Click here to watch celebrated American filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s intro to the film
Click here to watch Robert Osborne’s 2013 TCM intro and here for his outro to the film
03.) Dead Man (1995)
Dir: Jim Jarmusch
Country: United States
Color: Black and White
When it comes to Acid Westerns, former Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum cited the absurdist and hallucinatory Dead Man as a much-delayed fulfillment. I could not have stated what he said any more eloquently. If Monte Hellman’s The Shooting served as the breakthrough Acid Western, then director Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man serves as the culmination of the aforementioned subgenre. The film’s existential drama and deadpan humor coincide perfectly with its depiction of an industrial American West as a wasteland and Robby Mueller’s black-and-white cinematography is as poetic as Neil Young’s inspired guitar score. For me, Dead Man is not only the number one greatest western of the 1990’s, but it also ranks as one of my top 10 favorite films of that decade.
Click here, here, here and here to watch a few of the film’s original theatrical trailers
Click here to listen to famed singer Neil Young’s poetic guitar score
02.) Track of the Cat (1954)
Dir: William A. Wellman
Country: United States
Color: Color
Along with Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar from that same year, William A. Wellman’s Track of the Cat may be the most unconventional American western produced by Hollywood during the 1950’s. The first half is rooted in director William A. Wellman’s vision for Track of the Cat, which in his own words resembles a black-and-white film in color and one amplified by CinemaScope. Quite fitting considering that the stylized Track of the Cat is a winter western. This is evident in the film’s atmospheric and expressive snowy mountain scenery and interiors. The other half stems from its brooding psychological drama centering on a dysfunctional family stuck inside their home during a blizzard. In addition, the film’s unseen title panther symbolizes the family’s deeply troubled state. Combined together, Track of the Cat emerges as the quintessential experimental Classical Hollywood era western. On the surface, Track of the Cat may be an official Hollywood western, but in the center, it operates more as a European art house film.
Click here to watch the film’s original theatrical trailer
Click here to watch Robert Osborne’s 1995 intro to the film
01.) The Naked Spur (1953)
Dir: Anthony Mann
Country: United States
Color: Color
By the dawn of the 1950’s, leading man James Stewart largely ditched his onscreen nice guy image by embracing his darker side in many films throughout that decade. Five of these were psychological westerns directed by Anthony Mann, which includes Winchester ’73, Bend of the River, The Far Country, The Man from Laramie and this one from 1953 entitled The Naked Spur. Out of those five masterful westerns, The Naked Spur simultaneously stands out as my number one favorite Mann film and western of all time. Every Mann western trademark that Winchester ’73 and Bend of the River respectfully introduced, cemented and expanded on is perfected in The Naked Spur. This one is quite possibly the purest expression of Mann’s signature depiction of the metaphorical relationship between the characters and the environment surrounding them. Aside from a Blackfoot ambush sequence, The Naked Spur operates more as a chamber drama in that it only features five characters. Not unlike Mann’s other westerns, The Naked Spur’s landscape (a Rocky Mountain area in this case) becomes a spiritual character to not only James Stewart’s lead antihero, but the four other characters as well. Mann’s use of wide-open spaces fittingly captures their isolation and moral ambiguity. Simultaneously, for me, all of these aforementioned aspects are what makes The Naked Spur the number one greatest western ever made.
Click here to watch the film’s original theatrical trailer
Click here to watch Thomas Jane’s brilliant 2025 video essay on the film
Click here to watch Ben Mankiewicz 2014 TCM intro and here for his outro of the film as part of the network’s Summer Under the Stars series celebrating James Stewart
Click here to watch Robert Osborne’s 2014 TCM intro and here for his outro of the film as part of the network’s Star of the Month series celebrating Janet Leigh
Let me conclude this blog entry with two questions for my dear readers below:
What are your top 10 favorite westerns of all time?
What links (video or otherwise) interested you the most?
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