Paste's 100 Best Western Movies of All Time
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List published in June 2016
Is the Western the most American of movie genres? You can make an argument for the Western film’s internationality on the names of the directors who have contributed to its iconography: You have your John Fords and your Anthony Manns, your Sam Peckinpahs and your Samuel Fullers, but over in Europe you also have filmmakers like Sergio Leone, Enzo G. Castellari and Sergio Corbucci, among many, many others, as authors of Western offshoots that influence filmmakers even today. (And of course there are those great entries in the Western canon that were lifted wholesale from Akira Kurosawa’s filmography.) Hell, let’s flash from the Western’s glory days to the last decade, where Kim Jee-woon and Takashi Miike have put their individual stamps on its tropes and motifs. For these reasons, there’s certainly an argument to made that the Western is truly “universal.”
But no matter where Western movies are made, no matter what subgenre classifications they are individually accorded, and no matter who makes them, the films always engage with symbols, eras and images that are quintessentially “American.” The Western is the domain of the cowboy, the solitary hero. It’s a place where law and chaos are ever in conflict with one another and where the difference between survival and death usually comes down to who is faster on the draw. It’s a testament to the rich, awesome power of the Western as a narrative mode that filmmakers from around the planet have found stories worth telling within its purview, but even the Italian maestros simply added their own unique (and significant) flourishes to a cinematic tradition that is American in its DNA.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say that they made the Western their own. Spaghetti Westerns are, after all, a cousin to American Westerns in terms of style, content, themes and morality. The Italian Westerns are literally gritty where American Westerns are polished and clean; they deal in ambiguity instead of black and white. The average Spaghetti Western hero looks like a total bastard next to the clean-cut heroes of American Westerns, who uphold all of the best and most commonly accepted standards of heroism as we know them. Who would you rather save the day for you? Will Kane, or the man with no name? There’s a divide separating the Westerns made by Europeans and those shot by Americans, but if you can sort these movies out by their varying approaches, you can’t keep them all from standing under one umbrella. (A better point of debate: Did the Spaghetti Western become a thing in 1958 or 1964?)
Like the wide and sprawling landscapes that are so much a part of the Western’s character as a genre, the Western itself is a big, open canvas for storytelling of all stripes. With that in mind, we here at Paste set about collecting Westerns from all over the map and across the ages to assemble our picks for the 100 best Western films of all time. —Andy Crump
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1 new
The Searchers
1956, in 26 top lists Check -
2 new
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
1973, in 10 top lists Check -
3 new
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1971, in 20 top lists Check -
4 new
Ride the High Country
1962, in 7 top lists Check -
5 new
C'era una volta il West
1968 — a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in the West, in 28 top lists Check -
6 new
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1962, in 16 top lists Check -
7 new
High Noon
1952, in 19 top lists Check -
8 new
La resa dei conti
1967 — a.k.a. The Big Gundown, in 1 top list Check -
9 new
Forty Guns
1957, in 9 top lists Check -
10 new
Rio Bravo
1959, in 20 top lists Check -
11 new
Ulzana's Raid
1972, in 6 top lists Check -
12 new
Stagecoach
1939, in 21 top lists Check -
13 new
Django
1966, in 5 top lists Check -
14 new
Vera Cruz
1954, in 2 top lists Check -
15 new
Unforgiven
1992, in 24 top lists Check -
16 new
Rancho Notorious
1952, in 3 top lists Check -
17 new
Winchester '73
1950, in 6 top lists Check -
18 new
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo
1966 — a.k.a. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in 29 top lists Check -
19 new
Shane
1953, in 18 top lists Check -
20 new
The Wild Bunch
1969, in 25 top lists Check -
21 new
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1969, in 21 top lists Check -
22 new
Per qualche dollaro in più
1965 — a.k.a. For a Few Dollars More, in 11 top lists Check -
23 new
My Darling Clementine
1946, in 20 top lists Check -
24 new
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward...
2007, in 7 top lists Check -
25 new
The Naked Spur
1953, in 10 top lists Check -
26 new
Johnny Guitar
1954, in 22 top lists Check -
27 new
El topo
1970 — a.k.a. El Topo, in 8 top lists Check -
28 new
The Ox-Bow Incident
1943, in 14 top lists Check -
29 new
Red River
1948, in 17 top lists Check -
30 new
True Grit
1969, in 2 top lists Check -
31 new
The Magnificent Seven
1960, in 11 top lists Check -
32 new
Per un pugno di dollari
1964 — a.k.a. A Fistful of Dollars, in 10 top lists Check -
33 new
Day of the Outlaw
1959, in 3 top lists Check -
34 new
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
1949, in 8 top lists Check -
35 new
The Man from Laramie
1955, in 5 top lists Check -
36 new
High Plains Drifter
1973, in 4 top lists Check -
37 new
Quién sabe?
1967 — a.k.a. A Bullet for the General, in 3 top lists Check -
38 new
7 Men from Now
1956, in 2 top lists Check -
39 new
The Professionals
1966, in 2 top lists Check -
40 new
Lonesome Dove
1989, in 1 top list Check -
41 new
Ride in the Whirlwind
1966, in 2 top lists Check -
42 new
Man of the West
1958, in 8 top lists Check -
43 new
The Far Country
1954, in 1 top list Check -
44 new
Meek's Cutoff
2010, in 6 top lists Check -
45 new
The Shootist
1976, in 6 top lists Check -
46 new
3:10 to Yuma
1957, in 7 top lists Check -
47 new
Lonely Are the Brave
1962, in 4 top lists Check -
48 new
The Tall T
1957, in 7 top lists Check -
49 new
Fort Apache
1948, in 5 top lists Check -
50 new
Heaven's Gate
1980, in 8 top lists Check
Last updated on Mar 4, 2017; source