r/Westerns • u/BarOld5902 • 1d ago
Who are your favorite Western directors and which decade do you think had the best Westerns?
I knows this is super old but I like John Ford and Henry Hathaway. Also I think the 50s were the best years for Westerns. I know I sound like an old person right now, but 1950s westerns are just nostalgic.
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u/Fluid_Bread_4313 1d ago
Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher directed some excellent 50's Westerns. But don't forget the 40's. Ford's My Darling Clementine, Howard Hawks's Red River, William Wellman's Ox-Bow Incident and Yellow Sky. There's a reason why those 40's Westerns are so beloved and influential. Beautiful filmmaking, great scripts, vivid characters, wonderful acting. I have watched them over and over again since I was a kid, and continue to do so.
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u/passe-miroir78 1d ago
Sergio Leone
A fistful of dollars
For a few dollars more
The bad, the good and the ugly
Once upon a time in the west.
And more and more
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u/derfel_cadern 1d ago
Ford, Mann, Peckinpah, Daves, Boetticher,and Hawks would be my top 6.
No better decade than the 50s! Massive hits every single year.
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u/ApprehensiveEgg7777 10h ago
I congratulate you on your good taste. If you haven’t read horizon’s West you might want to take a look at it. Also, there’s a classic essay called the westerner in a book of essays called the immediate experience by Robert Warshow that is worth reading.
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u/derfel_cadern 9h ago
The Kitses book? I have it! It's incredible. A true necessity for a fan of the genre.
I haven't read that Warshow essay, but I have a copy of it in a book edited by Kitses, the Western Reader. I should get on reading that essay! Thanks.
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u/KurtMcGowan7691 1d ago
I always thought the 60s and 70s were the best decades for the western, as you had Leone, Eastwood and Peckinpah all making their awesome, transformative, modern contributions to the genre.
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u/voivod1989 1d ago
Sergio corbucci and Sam peckinpah.
Late 60s and early 70s have my favourite westerns.
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u/tomandshell 1d ago
As far as I’m concerned, John Ford is the master.
I think an argument could be made for the 50’s or the 60’s as the best decade—I want to choose the 50’s, but that would leave out a lot of great work from Leone and Peckinpah, for example. It’s a tough choice.
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u/Objective_Bar_5420 1d ago
Hard to argue with the 50's. It was the peak for talent and budgets. I love the later Italian ones, but there's no getting around they were small budget productions made during the decline of the genre. The New American Cinema ones... I can't even watch them now. Post-Unforgiven productions tend to be way too grimdark for my tastes.
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u/Enough-Tumbleweed483 1d ago
Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher are among the great Western directors.
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u/DIY14410 1d ago
Off the top of my head (with apologies for the omissions):
Top Tier: Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, John Ford, Budd Boetticher, Sergio Corbucci
Blue Ribbon: Howard Hawks, Clint Eastwood, John Sturges, Anthony Mann
One-off Western: Coen Brothers, Robert Altman
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u/Extreme_Leg8500 1d ago edited 1d ago
Tough to pick an era, I like a lot from the silent era, love the Spanish-Italian productions, and I'm impressed by a lot from the current century. I think I'll go with mid-1930s to Mid-1940s. Early Wayne, Late Harry Carey, Cooper, Republic and Columbia Serials, Ford, Gene & Roy & Tex, Range Busters, Three Mesquiteers, PRC, Johnny Mack Brown, Yakima Canutt, Tim McCoy the list goes on. Directors in no order: Allan Dwan, Leone, Robert G. Springsteen, John English, Mann, Boetticher, Peckinpah
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u/Extreme_Leg8500 1d ago
Those early Wayne films really show the influence of Harry Carey, especially in his movements
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u/Gold-Quit3424 1d ago
I love the early John wayne films from Monogram studios and the others that end up becoming Republic studios. They're entertaining and show him in progress to the actor he became when he did stagecoach.
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u/Gold-Quit3424 1d ago
Favourite directors are John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sergio Leone, John Sturgess and Clint Eastwood. Favourite decade for westerns is the 50s
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u/ApprehensiveEgg7777 10h ago
Let us consider who the greatest directors of westerns were: John Ford, Howard Hawks, Bud Boetticher, Sam Peckinpaugh, and Anthony mann, the greatest westerns of everybody but peckinpaugh appeared in the 1940s in the 1950s
You can read about the themes and styles of these directors in a book called horizons West.
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u/OldResult9597 1d ago
1960’s- The entire Leone Dollars trilogy and Once Upon a Time in the West. Every Sam Peckinpaugh movie from “The Deadly Companions” thru “The Wild Bunch”. “Rio Bravo” was unfortunately a mid 1959 release but “The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallence” was’62 and the excellent “The Professionals” was 1966. Finally if you count “Bonnie and Clyde” as a Western which I do-the technology was the same as “The Wild Bunch” and it takes place about 15 years later. Of course I think “Hell or Highwater” is a Western also-to me it’s a subjective thing and I’m a “Big Tent” proponent. So, yeah the 1960s!
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u/The_Western_Woodcock 1d ago
Leone and Eastwood are my favorite directors. 60s is the best decade.