The Western

'Philip French's study 'Westerns' must be the definitive so far on that endlessly productive cinema genre.' Margaret Hinxman, The Sunday Telegrahph. 'Mr French has done a dazzling job...a generally brilliant and enterprising series of shots at rehabilitating and respectabilising the Western.' John Coleman, New Statesman. 'I envy Philip French his erudition - even more, the ease, style and wit with which he sustains it through his new book, 'Westerns'...Reading this book is like panning for gold in a lively current and never failing to come up with nuggets.' Alexander Walker, Evening Standard. '...an entertaining book, written with his customary wit and erudition...He wears his learning lightly and isn't afraid to bring politics and history relevantly in. It is a pleasure to read an expert film book which doesn't seem to have been written by a man who thinks the world stops when the house lights go on again.' Gavin Millar, The Listener. How the West was won George Perry, The Sunday Times, 17th April 2005 They are as old as cinema itself. The first film drama was a western. In 1903, Edwin S Porter's The Great Train Robbery ran 12 minutes and audiences flinched when the kerchiefed bandit leader fired his revolver straight at the camera. Cliches, such as someone made to dance while his feet are shot at, were born. "Bronco Billy" Anderson, the film's star, lived until he was 88, and witnessed the ascendancy of William S Hart, Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Cinema formalised the old west, creating conventions as ritualised as Japanese kabuki. Face-offs on dusty streets between lone gunfighters. Bad men in black hats, always first to draw. Bartenders sliding loaded bottles along the counter, and taking down the mirrors at the first sign of trouble. We've seen it a thousand times. In the days of double bills, the B-picture studios churned "oaters" out on production lines. Further up the ladder, top stars such as James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, Burt Lancaster and, of course, Wayne gave their best to westerns. Certain directors, such as John Ford, Raoul Walsh, John Sturges, Budd Boetticher, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, excelled. Michael Cimino's expensively ambitious Heaven's Gate (1980) is usually blamed for the decline, but as Kevin Costner's Open Range showed last year, the genre is not extinct, just less popular with the money men. Books on the western would fill a library. The British contribution is strong, including two encyclopaedic volumes edited respectively by Phil Hardy and Ed Buscombe, plus excellent overviews by Jim Kitzes, Peter Cowie, Kim Newman, and a study of spaghetti westerns by Christopher Frayling. My own choice of an assimilable, near-comprehensive guide is a small book by Philip French, first published in 1973, and reissued, slightly expanded, in 1977. The book, Westerns, seemed to encapsulate all that one needed to know, at least until then. Now comes a welcome new edition, preserving the original content, but doubling its size and worth with a new section titled 'Westerns Revisited'. French's book is still wonderfully concise and digestible. To cover so much territory, with knowledgeable commentary supported by perceptive, wide-ranging analysis and references to hundreds of films and directors, while adroitly avoiding looking like a laundry list, is a substantial feat. Ideas cascade in torrents, with clear signposts pointing the reader onwards for further enlightenment. The book is unillustrated, although mental images of big skies leap from the page. Perhaps, in this age of the DVD, stills are unnecessary. As French notes, so many great films are now readily available, which was not the case when he started the book when he was in his thirties. His text is stimulating, witty, and occa

Philip French was born in Liverpool in 1933. After serving with the Parachute Regiment in the Middle East he read law at Oxford, where he edited 'The Isis', and studied journalism at Indiana University. He was a senior producer for BBC radio from 1959 to 1990, and has been The Observer's film critic since 1978. He has written regularly for numerous newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, London Magazine, The Times, the New Statesman, The Spectator and Sight & Sound. His books as author or editor include 'Age of Austerity 1945-51' (1963), 'The Movie Moguls' (1969), 'Three Honest Men: Edmund Wilson, F.R. Leavis, Lionel Trilling' (1980), 'Malle on Malle' (1992), 'The Faber Book of Movie Verse' (1993), 'Wild Strawberries' (1995) and 'Cult Movies' (1999). Philip French was a member of the jury at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and a Booker Prize judge in 1988.

Preface Part One: Westerns (1973; 1977) Introduction (1973) 1. Politics, etc. and the Western 2. Heroes and Villains, Women and Children 3. Indians and Blacks 4. Landscape, Violence and Poker 5. The Post-Western. Bibliography. Afterword (1977): The Italian Western Television Cops and Vigilantes Baseball Children New Faces of 1885 Comedies Westworld The Missouri Breaks More Books Part Two: Westerns Revisited (2004) Introduction 1. Waiting for the End 2. Television 3. Comedies 4. The Italian Western 5. Westward the Women 6. Legends Re-examined: The alamo Wild Bill Hickok The James Younger gang Billy the Kid Tombstone and the Earps 7. The Modern West 8. Transpositions and Displacements 9. Native Americans 10. Eastwood Ho! 11. Two New Western Stars 12. Some Left-field Entries Latest Books Filmography Index of Films Index of Names