The Western film genre has been popular since the silent film era, reaching its peak in the 1950s with the help of stars such as John Wayne and Gary Cooper. And for legions of viewers, that’s what westerns think of: blockbusters like Mid-day and Stagecoachwith stories about cowboys and Indians, with clear heroes and villains and damsels in distress. It started as a quintessentially American genre, all about the spirit of the frontier and Manifest destination.
Later viewers became familiar with the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and 1970s The good the bad and the ugly, Handful of dollarsand Once upon a Time in the West, exporting the genre to Italy and beyond. Since then, numerous countries have taken their own take on the West, with intriguing offers from South Korea (The good, the bad, the weird), Mexico (El Mariachi), Australia (The nightingale, True History of the Kelly Gang), a whole bunch from India, and further. We take a look at some of the more under-the-radar performances in the Western genre, breaking the classic mold with style.
10/10 Iggy Pop and Billy Bob Thornton as Sally and Big George – Dead Man (1995)
To say that of Jim Jarmusch Dead man is a different kind of western is an understatement. Johnny Depp’s William Blake is on the run through a postmodern black-and-white world to a Neil Young soundtrack, featuring a Native American companion who calls himself Nobody and a quirky cast that includes everyone from Crispin Glover to Robert Mitchum. As in most Jarmusch movies, sometimes it’s the side characters whose stories you really want to know, and this time it’s Billy Bob Thorton like a gruff mountain man with worries about his hair, and Iggy doll as a cross-dressing fur trader with a penchant for the Bible who could (should?) have his own film.
9/10 Everyone – Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)
Takashi Miike’s super-stylized, samurai-inspired western is a wild and colorful tale that also draws inspiration from classic spaghetti westerns and more than a hint of Quentin Tarantino (who has a small role in the film). There are swords, arrows and guns, lone shooters and vicious clan feuds. Miike made the unusual choice of having his all-Japanese cast speak English, a language they weren’t necessarily fluent in. It feels a bit jarring at first, but using subtitles only adds to the goofy, crazy excess audience. are used to from Miike’s films. The entire cast pours their hearts and souls into the creation of this unique world, and it’s not surprising that its crazy kinetic energy was turned into a manga series a few years later.
8/10 Katharine Ross as Etta Place – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
When people talk about this classic 1960s western, there’s usually little room to discuss anyone other than Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the main characters. And rightly so, they are both pretty perfect in their respective roles. But Catherine RossSundance’s Etta Place lover adds another element to the pair’s funny, battle-ravaged friendship. Quiet and steadfast, though not without a sense of humor, Etta puts up with shenanigans of all kinds, even complicity in a few bank robberies, but she refuses to stay for the bloody finale. And she may be Sundance’s wife, but the charming bike scene with Butch gives a glimpse of what could have been.
7/10 Guy Pearce as Second Lieutenant John Boyd – Ravenous (1999)
Guy Pearce gives a subtle, contradictory performance as Second Lieutenant John Boyd, a somewhat cowardly Civil War veteran whose big moment in battle comes only because he hides in a pile of corpses. Exiled to a remote garrison with other outcasts, Boyd thinks he’ll have to wrestle with his conscience alone; that is, until Robert Carlyle’s Colonel Ives comes along with a ghastly story of cannibalism. Carlyle takes up much of the screen, chewing, swallowing and spitting out landscapes, but Pearce is captivating as his options narrow, forced to decide whether to become a cannibal like Carlyle’s mad Colonel Ives (it does have a few advantages) or Killing Ives and himself before things get even more out of hand.
6/10 John Hurt as Jellon Lamb – The Proposal (2005)
Written and scored by musician Nick Cave, The proposal is a gritty, unforgiving Australian Western with as many moments of touching beauty as it does gruesome violence, starring Guy Pearce as a man who must track down one of his brothers in order to save another. John Hurt only has a few scenes as a drunken, racist bounty hunter, but he’s a throwback to classic westerns, caked in smut and spouting nonsense that sounds Shakespearean (the man also does an impressive death rattle). It should be noted that the film features some great performances, most notably Emily Watson as the out-of-her-depth wife of Ray WInstone’s police chief, David Gulpilil as the Aboriginal tracker and Richard Wilson as the brother who is being held as ransom. .
5/10 Pina Pellicer as Louisa Longworth – One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
It’s hard to stand out in a movie with top billing Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. Brando’s first and only directorial effort. Brando plays Rio, who’s fresh out of prison and betrayed years ago by his old partner, Dad Longworth, played by Malden. Rio plans to kill Longworth, now the sheriff, but Rio somehow falls in love with Longworth’s stepdaughter Louisa, played by the short, striking Pina Pellicer. Innocent and naive in the face of Rio’s thuggishness, Louisa stands up to her stepfather against him with raw vulnerability. Unfortunately, three years after the movie’s release, Pellicer committed suicide at the age of 30, just as she was starting to make a name for herself in TV and movies in both Mexico and the US.
4/10 Ben Foster as Charlie Prince – 3:10 for Yuma (2007)
As the very violent sidekick of stagecoach thief Russell Crowe, Ben Foster‘s Charlie Prince has a dead-eyed, calmly sinister, almost Iago-like demeanor. We haven’t been made aware of his backstory, and his wickedness doesn’t seem to have my motive beyond a genuine innate desire to be wicked. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are obviously compelling, veteran actors, but when Foster isn’t around, you just count the minutes until he’s back. Most intriguing is his fierce loyalty to Crowe’s Wade: if he’s such a psychotic villain, why doesn’t he take care of his own skin first?
3/10 Chief Dan George as Old Lodge Skins – Little Big Man (1970)
Little big man is a hugely ambitious film featuring a cast of characters including Wild Bill Hickok, General George Custer, and Dustin Hoffman as a 121-year-old white man, Jack Crabb, captured by the Cheyenne as a child. He survives massacres, battles, ambushes and other tragedies, engaging with a colorful cast of characters (both fictional and historical) along the way. One such fictional character is Old Lodge Skins, the Cheyenne leader who adopts Crabb as his grandson after surviving his first massacre. Chef Dan George was a leader of Canada’s Tsleil-Waututh Nation who got his first acting gig at age 60, and he brings together a tender, steady presence in Crabb’s life, as well as some unexpected hilarity in their final scene. A few years later, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in another Western, The outlaw Josey Wales.
2/10 Patricia Neal as Alma – Hud (1963)
Father and son Homer (Melvyn Douglas) and Hud (Paul Newman) live together in a state of constant tension on the family farm, as witnessed by Hud’s teenage nephew and Neal’s Alma, the housekeeper. Hud is a drinker, womanizer and ubiquitously distasteful character, saved only by that Paul Newman charm; and Alma, burned by similar men in the past, walks a fine line between flirting and keeping him at a distance. Family animosity bubbles up as the men battle for control of the farm before catastrophe hits the cattle, and Hud’s attempted assault on Alma almost seems like a footnote to the rest of the film. Patricia Nell plays her as a tough woman with a vulnerable core underneath, resigned to the kind of treatment she receives from men like Hud. When she leaves town, it almost feels inevitable that she will end up somewhere much the same.
1/10 Jean-Louis Trintignant as Gordon of Silence – The Great Silence (1968)
You better have a knack for being subtle when you act against someone like Klaus Kinski, and Jean-Louis Trintignant does just that. Add to that the fact that his character is stupid and the acting he puts in is even more amazing. Kinski is a bounty assassin named Loco who killed Silence’s parents and severed his vocal cords when he was a child. Now grown up, Silence joins forces with the outlaws chasing Loco through a snowy mountain range preceded by his reputation for manipulating his enemies into drawing their guns first, so he technically only kills in self-defense. Perhaps Silence’s sensitivity and fragility is automatically adopted by audiences due to his stupidity and the loss of his parents, but Trintignant can express masses in an instant as Kinski’s Loco swings around in this wintry spaghetti western.