The Western is a type of story usually set in the American frontier, often called the "Old West" or "Wild West," between the California Gold Rush in 1849 and when the frontier closed in 1890. This type of story is often based on tales from the Western United States, especially the Southwest, as well as parts of Northern Mexico and Western Canada.
The frontier in Western stories is shown as a place with few people that was hard to live in, where cowboys, outlaws, sheriffs, and other gunfighters were common. These stories often focus on efforts to bring order to the lawless American West, using themes like justice, freedom, individual strength, manifest destiny, and the history and identity of the United States. Native American groups were often shown as enemies or as people who lived in a wild way.
The Western genre began from the traditions of vaqueros and Western stories, helping spread the Western way of life, country-western music, and Western clothing around the world. Over time, the genre has had many popular comebacks and has been part of different types of Western stories.
Characteristics
Western movies are stories that show the struggle between the wild, untamed land and the growth of cities and towns. These stories often follow the life of a man who moves from place to place, such as a cowboy or a person who carries a gun. These men usually ride horses and wear wide-brimmed hats, neckerchiefs, vests, and boots with metal parts called spurs. Some wear regular shirts and pants, while others wear clothing made from animal hides or long, loose coats called dusters.
Women in Westerns are often shown as love interests for the main male character or as supporting roles, such as workers in saloons, wives of settlers, or people who help the main character. The wife character may also create conflict between the hero and the villain. Other characters include Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Spanish people, Mexicans, law officers, outlaws, bartenders, merchants, gamblers, soldiers, and settlers like farmers or ranchers.
The music in Westerns usually includes American folk songs, Spanish or Mexican music, Native American songs, and music from New Mexico or ranches. These movies often take place in dry, empty areas like deserts and mountains. The wide, open land is an important part of the story, showing an imaginary picture of the plains and deserts of the American West. Common settings include ranches, small towns, saloons, train tracks, forests, and old forts. Many Westerns follow a common story pattern: a crime happens, the wrongdoer is chased, and the hero gets revenge through a gunfight.
Westerns sometimes show the idea of conquering the wild land and taking it over for cities and towns, often ignoring the rights of Native American people who lived there. These stories often focus on personal justice, like gunfights, instead of laws in cities. The main character is usually a person who moves around without a home, like a cowboy or a gunfighter. A famous scene is a showdown at high noon, where two or more people fight with guns. The movie High Noon is an example of this.
These stories are similar to older tales about knights who traveled and fought villains, following their own rules of honor. Like knights, Western heroes often save women in danger. These characters also share traits with ronin, who are wandering warriors in Japanese stories.
Westerns usually tell simple stories about right and wrong, though some movies, like those by John Ford or Unforgiven, have more complex ideas. These movies often show the harsh, lonely life in the wilderness, with settings like lonely ranches, Native American villages, or small towns. Saloons are common places where people drink, gamble, fight, and listen to music. Some towns have churches or schools, while others, as described by a filmmaker, are places where life has little value.
Author Frank Gruber identified seven basic story patterns for Westerns. He said that good writers use dialogue and story development to turn these patterns into believable stories.
Media
The American Film Institute describes Western films as those "set in the American West that [embody] the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier." These films were originally called "Wild West dramas," a name inspired by Wild West shows like Buffalo Bill Cody's. The term "Western," used to describe a type of movie, first appeared in a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine.
Many features of Western films were already present in 19th-century Western stories, which were popular before movies became common. Western films often include characters like cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters. These characters are usually shown as people who move around a lot, wearing items like Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and buckskin clothing. They use guns or rifles for survival and to settle disputes through frontier justice. These characters ride horses between small towns and ranches.
The first Western films were short, silent movies made in 1894 by Edison Studios. These films were created at their Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey. They featured people who had performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, such as Annie Oakley, who shot guns, and members of the Sioux tribe, who danced.
The earliest known Western story film was Kidnapping by Indians, made in 1899 by Mitchell and Kenyon in Blackburn, England. A famous Western film from 1903, The Great Train Robbery, is often mistakenly called the first Western. However, some experts note that Edison Studios had already made Western films before this one. Still, The Great Train Robbery helped set the pattern for Western films, including crime, chase scenes, and punishment. This film made Broncho Billy Anderson the first Western movie star. He later faced competition from actors like Tom Mix and William S. Hart.
Western films were very popular during the silent film era (1894–1927). When sound movies were introduced in 1927–1928, major Hollywood studios stopped making Westerns, leaving smaller studios to produce many low-budget Western films in the 1930s. One exception was The Big Trail, a 1930 film shot in the American West, including places like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. It starred John Wayne in his first leading role and was directed by Raoul Walsh. However, the film was not successful financially because of the Great Depression.
By the late 1930s, Western films were seen as a less serious genre in Hollywood. However, their popularity grew again in 1939 with major films like Dodge City, Jesse James, Union Pacific, Destry Rides Again, and Stagecoach. Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, became a huge hit and made John Wayne a famous movie star. Western films continued to grow in popularity until the 1950s, when more Westerns were made than any other genre.
The years between 1940 and 1960 are known as the "Golden Age of the Western." During this time, famous directors like John Ford, Robert Aldrich, and Budd Boetticher created many popular Western films, including Apache (1954), Broken Arrow (1950), and My Darling Clementine (1946).
The popularity of Western films influenced global culture. In the 1960s and 1970s, Italian-made Spaghetti Westerns became popular worldwide because of the storytelling style of director Sergio Leone. Western films also saw a revival in the 1990s with movies like Dances with Wolves (1990), Unforgiven (1992), and Geronimo: An American Legend (1993).
When television became popular in the 1940s and 1950s, Western TV shows became very popular. Many Western films were rebroadcast on TV, and actors from these films created their own TV series. New Western stories and stars were introduced, and many long-running Western TV shows became classics. Examples include The Lone Ranger (1949–1957), Gunsmoke (1955–1975), Bonanza (1959–1973), and The Virginian (1962–1971). The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp was the first Western TV show made for adults.
The most popular year for Western TV shows was 1959, with 26 shows airing during prime time. At least six of these shows were connected to the story of Wyatt Earp. However, by the early 1960s, many Western TV shows were replaced by longer, color programs. Traditional Westerns declined in the late 1960s because of changes in TV networks and pressure from groups concerned about children's programming. Later Western shows included elements from other genres, such as crime and mystery. Examples from the 1970s include Kung Fu, Little House on the Prairie, and The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. In the 1990s and 2000s, Western-style TV shows like Lonesome Dove (1989) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman were made. New ideas, like the space Western Firefly (2002), were also added to the Western genre.
Modern Western-style shows include Deadwood (2004–2006), a critically praised series on HBO, and Hell on Wheels (2011–2016), which told the story of building the first transcontinental railroad. Longmire (2012–2017) focused on a sheriff in a fictional Wyoming county.
AMC's Breaking Bad (2008–2013) is a modern version of a Western story. Set in New Mexico, it follows Walter White, a chemistry teacher with lung cancer who cooks and sells illegal drugs to support his family. While the show includes scenes in cities like Albuquerque, much of the action takes place in the desert, where Walter often travels in his RV.
Subgenres
The Western genre includes several types of subgenres. Some subgenres, like spaghetti Westerns, use the same places and stories as traditional Westerns. Others mix Western themes with ideas from other genres, such as neo-Westerns or space Westerns. For a time, Western movies made in countries outside the United States were often named after foods from their cultures, such as spaghetti Westerns (Italy), meat pie Westerns (Australia), ramen Westerns (Asia), and masala Westerns (India).
Influence on other genres
Western and samurai films influenced each other in style and themes over many years. The movie The Magnificent Seven was based on Akira Kurosawa's film Seven Samurai, and A Fistful of Dollars was inspired by Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which itself was based on Red Harvest, a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett. Kurosawa was influenced by American Westerns and admired the genre, especially the work of John Ford.
Despite the Cold War, Western films had a strong impact on movies made in the Eastern Bloc, which created their own version of the genre called the Red Western or Ostern. These films often took two forms: Western-style stories filmed in the Eastern Bloc or action movies set during the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War, or the Basmachi rebellion.
Many space-travel stories borrow ideas from Western films, especially in the space Western subgenre of science fiction. For example, Outland moved the plot of High Noon to Jupiter's moon Io, and the series Firefly used Western themes to describe frontier worlds. Anime shows like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Outlaw Star also mix science fiction with Western elements. The science fiction Western can be considered a type of Western or a type of science fiction. Western-style elements appear in other genres, such as Kelly's Heroes, a war film with action and characters similar to Westerns.
The character played by Humphrey Bogart in noir films like Casablanca and To Have and Have Not—a person guided by a personal code of honor—shares similarities with classic Western heroes. Western films also included elements of noir, as seen in movies like Colorado Territory and Pursued.
In many books by Robert A. Heinlein, the settlement of other planets is described in ways similar to the American settlement of the West. For example, in Tunnel in the Sky, settlers travel to the planet New Canaan using a teleporter across the galaxy, traveling in Conestoga wagons. The leader has a mustache and a small goatee and rides a Palomino horse. Heinlein explained that colonists would need to survive on their own for years, so horses are more useful than machines.
Stephen King's The Dark Tower series combines themes from Westerns, high fantasy, science fiction, and horror. The main character, Roland Deschain, is a gunslinger inspired by the Man with No Name from Sergio Leone's films. The superhero fantasy genre also shares similarities with Westerns, but it places the cowboy hero's traits in an urban setting with superpowers.
Western films have been made fun of in many movies, such as Support Your Local Sheriff!, Cat Ballou, Blazing Saddles, and Rustler's Rhapsody.
George Lucas's Star Wars films use many Western elements. Lucas said he wanted Star Wars to bring back the storytelling traditions once found in Westerns. The Jedi, named after a Japanese film style called Jidaigeki, are modeled after samurai, showing Kurosawa's influence. The character Han Solo dresses like a classic gunslinger, and the Mos Eisley cantina is similar to an Old West saloon.
Films like The Big Lebowski and Midnight Cowboy moved Western themes into modern settings. The Big Lebowski placed actor Sam Elliott in a Los Angeles bowling alley instead of the Old West, while Midnight Cowboy told a story about a Southern boy in New York, referencing the actor Gary Cooper.