The Invention of the Western Film
The Invention of the Western Film
A Cultural History of the Genre's First Half Century
£32.00
GBPPaperback
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Hardback
The Invention of the Western Film ranges across literature, visual arts, social history, ideology, and legend to provide, for the first time, an in-depth exploration of the early Western, from short kinetoscopes of the 1890s through 'classic' features of the 1940s. By examining the American Indian's rise and demise during the silent era, B-Westerns of the 1930s, and film noir-influenced Westerns of the 1940s, Scott Simmon's pioneering study silhouettes the genre's evolution against a myriad of cultural forces. This lively, encyclopedic book revitalizes familiar Western icons John Wayne and John Ford, and recovers forgotten masterworks from the Western film's formative years.
- First book to deal with origins of the Western film, particularly film prior to 1930
- Most extensive study of the image of the American Indian in silent film
- Wide-ranging cultural study
Product details
February 2004Paperback
9780521555814
412 pages
225 × 154 × 26 mm
0.558kg
112 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Part I. 'My Friend, the Indian': Landscape and the Extermination of the Native American in the Silent Western:
- 1. Indians to the rescue
- 2. The eastern Western
- 3. Our friends, the Indians
- 4. The death of the Western, 1911
- 5. The far-Western
- 6. Wars on the plains
- 7. The politics of landscape
- 8. Pocahontas meets Custer: The Invaders
- 9. 'No Indians wanted'
- 10. The west of the Mohicans
- 11. Desert places
- Part II. 'It's Time for Your History Lesson, Dear': John Wayne and the Problem of History in the Hollywood Western of the 1930s:
- 12. The Big Trail and the weight of history
- 13. What's the big idea?
- 14. Manifestations of destiny
- 15. Rambling into Surrealism: the B-Western
- 16. 'Don't cry, Pat, it's only a Western': A note on acting
- 17. Time, space, and the Western
- Part III. 'That Sleep of Death': John Ford and the Darkness of the Classic Western in the 1940s:
- 18. My Darling Clementine and the fight with Film Noir
- 19. Out of the past
- 20. 'Shakespeare? In Tombstone?'
- 21. 'Get outa town and stay out'
- 22. 'A lot of nice people around here'
- 23. 'Who do we shoot?'
- 24. The revenge of Film Noir
- 25. The return of the Earps
- 26. Ford, Fonda, and the death of the classic Western.
