Addresses the perennial appeal of the Western, exploring its 19th century popular culture, and its relationship to the economic structure of Hollywood. This work considers the defining features of the Western and traces its main cycles, from the epic Westerns of the 1920s and singing cowboys of the 1930s to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Edward Buscombe is the editor of The BFI Companion to Western and has written on Stagecoach, The Searchers and The Unforgiven in the BFI Film Classics series. His most recent book is Cinema Today, published by Phaidon.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Useful But Not Essential Guide For Western Fans,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: 100 Westerns (BFI Screen Guides) (Paperback)
Buscombe has selected "100 Westerns" for this British Film Institute compilation of westerns from the silent era to those of today (few that there may now be). Each of the 100 entries includes a brief synopsis, the major film credits, and his personal comments on the film's historical or cultural significance and/or its influence on the genre. As a long time fan of the American West and of the Western, I read the volume with interest and while I wouldn't disagree much on Buscombe's commentaries which I found mainly congruent with most of the film critiques out there, I would disagree with his choice of the 100.
To be fair, the author points out that he tried to include a broad representaion of the Western genre including foreign, silent, and at least one from every decade since movies began. And in all honesty, any two western critics would never replicate one another's list precisely. That being said, I question the inclusion of "Oh, Susanna!", "Go West", "Lonesome Cowboys", "Calamity Jane" and "Support Your Local Sheriff" while excluding the acknowledged contributions of "The Virginian", "Tombstone", "Cheyenne Autumn", "The Ox-Bow Incident", "Jesse James",and "Lonesome Dove". There are insightful comments regarding the directorial giants of the Western genre including John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah, Anthony Mann, and Budd Boetticher but too little for my taste. To exclude some of their significant works from his top 100 seems a self defeating scheme to subsitute breadth of the genre for depth of the genre. But this work is recommended to the reader who is either researching the American Western or the casual reader who remembers the fun of going to the movies while growing up to see bigger than life cowboys modeling good versus evil for our impressionable minds--and for those of us, who still revel in those films and those memories.
4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
pretty good guide..........,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: 100 Westerns (BFI Screen Guides) (Paperback)
Discusions of 100 western films is entertaining and a useful reference. If I would have picked 100, I might have included a few not included in this volume, but hey, anything that talks western movies is OK with me.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
