Late Western
Late Western is a sub-genre of the Western , with two different uses of the term:
- A definition that is used in connection with western films is simply based on the production time or the release of the respective film and describes the westerns that were produced after the great era of the western as a cinema genre. Approx. At the beginning of the 1970s, the western was "declared dead", seemed to have been told. In the following, late wests are used to describe films that were produced in the cinema at or after the end of the genre.
- The second definition is not tied to the medium of film and defines the content of the late westerners. Westerns are assigned to him that deviate from the idealizing and moralizing motifs of the classic Western and paint a critical and / or pessimistic picture of the time of the Wild West .
Since many late wisters also meet the criteria of the second definition according to the first definition, there is often no clear distinction between the two meanings, although it would be necessary because on the one hand (content-related) late wests were created at the wedding of the genre and on the other hand (formal) Spätwestern were produced, which in terms of content are pretty "classic" Westerns.
The following explanations explain the content-related meaning of the term:
Origin and motives
The genre emerged in the 1960s . The classic western film had become bogged down in endless repetitions of stereotypical depictions of American heroism. At the same time, the Vietnam War plunged parts of US society into an identity crisis, and a process of critical self-reflection began. During this time, Hollywood westerns emerged, which addressed the decline of a society with a melancholy-pessimistic look. Most of the title characters have no perspective and are unsure of what hit the zeitgeist of the time. Another motive is the loss or the end of the "good old days" and the beginning of industrialization, which leads to the feeling or the bitter realization that they are no longer needed. External processes that cannot be influenced by the individual narrow the scope for decision-making and lead to a loss of freedom. The end of old friendships is also a common theme.
One of the most famous late-west directors is Sam Peckinpah . Although his western Sacramento ( Ride The High Country , 1962), in contrast to his later, genre-defining works such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid still has a conciliatory, if fatal, ending for one of the protagonists, like this together with John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it is considered the beginning of the “demythologizing of the Western”. With Randolph Scott ( Sacramento ), James Stewart and John Wayne ( The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ), protagonists of the “old western” are also subjecting their own earlier roles to a critical revision. In doing so, they not only played the aged and disaffected heroes, but were also in reality aged and drew a critical assessment of their previous film roles. This also includes the late works of Howard Hawks , especially his last film Rio Lobo (1970). John Wayne's final Western The Last Sniper ( The Shootist , 1976) also has autobiographical features. The aged title hero Books has cancer, like Wayne himself.
Richard Brooks made one of the best-known contributions to the establishment of the genre and shaped its political component with the three-time Oscar-nominated late-west Die afchteten Vier ( The Professionals , 1966) . As early as 1956 Brooks had with The Last Hunt ( The Last Hunt created) a highly political Western, which dealt with the racism of whites against Indians. The dreaded four was then one of the first Hollywood productions to express unmistakable criticism of the US involvement in Vietnam. The classic good-bad categorization is finally lost in the film, the trust of the titular heroes to fight on the "right side" is shaken. In the end, they realize that they have been sent on a fatal mission under false pretenses. Films like Martin Ritt's Man called him Hombre and Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) were followed by other socially critical westerns that were positively received by both film critics and audiences.
One of the most successful late wests is the western comedy Two Bandits ( Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , 1969) starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman , which won four Oscars in 1970 .
Similar to the spaghetti western productions of late Western in the left 1970 -Jahren to slow, but never came to a complete standstill. In 1980 Michael Cimino , who had previously been awarded an Oscar for the anti-war film Going Through Hell, tried to continue the tradition of the socially critical Late Western. His ambitious major project Heaven's Gate , however, became one of the biggest flops in cinema history, especially financially, and only received a certain appreciation later.
In particular, Clint Eastwood's late western Merciless ( Unforgiven ), which was released in 1992 and won an Oscar , stood out clearly from newer productions. Like several western stars before him, Clint Eastwood reflected on earlier roles and unmasked not only the classic westerns, but also the further developed sub-genres, some of which fell back into old idealizations and romanticizations, even if no longer based on a classic good-bad categorization. With Open Range (2003), Death Train to Yuma (2007) and True Grit (2010), the late western arrived in the new millennium.
Related subgenres
The thematic limits to others, also in the 1960 Western subgenres incurred -Jahren like Europe's spaghetti westerns and films, commonly referred to as anti-Western apply were, and are fluid. What they all have in common is the detachment from old western stereotypes. The German film critic Georg Seeßlen attempted a thematic differentiation as follows: “The Italo-Western tells of the destroyed West , the late-Western tells of the destruction of the West . That is why the Spaghetti Western is the genre of large images of destruction, the American Late Western the genre of small, painful details. "
What both genres have in common, however, is their further development and flexibility, as they also influenced each other. Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western classic Two Glorious Scoundrels ( Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo , 1966), for example, addressed the American Civil War with a pronounced anti-war statement and a melancholy swan song at times about the Wild West, Sam Peckinpah's no less popular US American late-western The Wild Bunch (1969) ended in an excess of violence that overshadowed many European productions despite their characteristic brutality.
literature
- Thomas Weber: From the Western to the Late Western: Aspects of the Change in a Film Genre in the 1960s . Hamburg 1986.
- Georg Seeßlen: Western: History and mythology of western films . Marburg 1995.
- Bernd Kiefer, Norbert Grob, Marcus Stiglegger: Western . Reclam-Verlag, Ditzingen 2003.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.film-lexikon.de/Western_(Genre)
- ↑ http://www.film-lexikon.de/Western_(Genre)
- ↑ http://filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de/index.php?action=lexikon&tag=det&id=2904
- ↑ http://www.film-lexikon.de/Western_(Genre)
- ↑ "Peckinpah's second film demythologizes the Western and, together with John Ford's The Man Who Liberty Valance shot the Late Western in 1961. The heroes of "Sacramento" are tired, they need glasses and can no longer get into the saddle alone; Cars and even camels are faster than horses. "( Lexicon of international films )
- ↑ The good wade in blood . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 2003 ( online ).
- ↑ Bernd Kiefer, Norbert Grob, Marcus Stiglegger: Western . Reclam-Verlag, Ditzingen 2003, p. 38.
- ↑ Open Range - Wide Country in the Lexicon of International Films
- ↑ Georg Seeßlen: Western: History and Mythology of Western Films . Marburg 1995, p. 164.
- ↑ film-zeit.de ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ kino.de
