Customer Reviews

100 Westerns (BFI Screen Guides)

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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.

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.