The Classical Hollywood Western Par Excellence

During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that,

Although there were several gold rushes, including one in the south, the one thing which makes the California gold rush stand out from the other is the large amount of writing which was produced by not only the California gold seekers but their wives and family members they left back on the east coast. For many of the men who dreamed of going to California, a lot of the literature pieces around this time offered a way out of the “impasse between respectability and the marketplace” (Roberts, pg. 52). The writings had major effects on the American middle class and people were learning important lessons. Several of the lessons from these writings is that “polite culture had its limitations, and nature, or the West, was a utopian space in which one could escape the stiffness of bourgeois respectability” (Roberts, pg. 60). What this means is that by the 1840's many of the men believed that their bodies were becoming softer due to the acquisition of table manners and parlor etiquette. The marketplace was becoming harsher and it required strength, not manners. The average miner had a family, a mother, a sister, a wife, or a mistress that he wrote to while he was in California. The letters exchanged between the men on the West and the women in the East would

Indeed, throughout the essay, Ehrlich uses cowboys to represent all men. The advertisements responsible for the misconceptions of the cowboy are developed in New York City, where her article was published, and Ehrlich uses this fact to juxtapose the metropolitan origins of these campaigns with the day-to-day realities of the cowboy and the genuine hardships they encounter. Ehrlich reveals many of the less romantic and appealing details about the job: miniscule pay, extremely challenging labor, burdensome emotional torment, and constant care for dangerous animals. Ehrlich starts by stating, “When I’m in New York but feeling lonely for Wyoming…[I’m given a] reminder of the ranchers and cowboys I’ve ridden with for the last eight years” and shows her audience this topic is personal to her (198). She immediately establishes credibility: she lives in New York but grew up in Wyoming--around actual cowboys. She says this with the intent to show she not only knows of the “traditional cowboy” that is depicted in subway ads all around New York, but also is very familiar with the real cowboys of Wyoming. By establishing this credibility, her audience can immediately trust her argument due to her

Ford’s Stagecoach is an epic and revolutionary approach that displays the desert terrain and western inhabitant’s struggles. Stagecoach follows the lives of seven strangers in their attempt to arrive to Lordsburg, New Mexico. Each of these characters reflects the various types of people found in the western world. The film is laced with many American ideals of the time such as xenophobia, chivalry, the conventional standards of women, and much more. Stagecoach defies the conventional western film because it is no longer just men in a desert terrain with rifles.

Glory is a movie about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first official all black units in the United States during the Civil War. It’s an inspirational story of how a young Union soldier, Robert Gould Shaw, is offered the chance to lead an army unit that will change not only his life, but the lives of many other Americans.

Film and realism are connected to one another; it gives the audience an opportunity to interpret the film in their own perspective, in relation to the real world. As someone with a firm opposition to editing and montage, Bazin stated that the mise en scène truly represents “true continuity” in film, reproducing the real world more realistically. (Cardullo, 7) There are two editing systems: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Neorealist Cinema. From their similarities and differences, it can be said that Neorealist Cinema portrays the real world more realistically and effectively than CHC… In order to produce Bazin’s “true continuity” and reproduce situations more realistically, the filmmaker must choose an effective editing system, refrain from interrupting the flow of images, and use minimal editing, proven through the two films Bicycle Thieves (Neorealist Cinema) and Stagecoach (CHC).

Throughout the films I have watched this semester, American Indians have been constructed and represented in many different ways. Throughout this semester, different films in different eras have led to stereotyping American Indians and poorly portraying the construction of Native life. At the beginning of this semester, films portrayed Indians as savages who couldn't kill a cowboy, but at the end of the semester, that stereotype changed into American Indians represented as helpless people who cannot be rescued from the alcoholism and distress found on reservations. The ways the Native Americans are portrayed in these films create an image that America views Indians in today's society. In the first films viewed in class, they created the life

Clint Eastwood’s, Unforgiven, represents a “new” type of Western that defies the formula previously used to create traditional Western films. Unlike Shane, a film with a clear-cut threat to the community, endangering all homesteaders, a lack of defense, creating an unfair advantage to the threat imposed, and a true hero, one who saves the day and must willingly return to where he came from, Unforgiven is a Western that is told through a different formula. Eastwood tackles this revisionist piece and lacks the three basic components to any classic Western film – a threat, lack of defense, and a hero.

Following the Civil War, many Americans chose to settle west of the Mississippi river and shaped a distinct culture in this region. Generations later, this fascinating culture was transformed into the Wild West, a romanticized version of the lifestyle, to entertain the masses. The romanticized perception of the Wild West differs extensively from the reality of western settlement, but in some aspects mirrors the true western lifestyle in the post-Civil War period. Native Americans and cowboys, for instance, are portrayed rather inaccurately in the romanticized adaptations of the West, while the images of towns and settlements are similar in both the mythological Wild West and the reality of the western experience.

The 19th century west was a male society. There is a contrast seen on the frontier; deprivation and hardship as well as nobility and glamor. The imagery is hard to overlook, a rugged crowded saloon filled with “painted ladies” and boisterous clientele. “The environment and the women- both bawdy and rollicking-complemented each other perfectly.” 1 These women were standard fixtures in the image of the west. Just as one would envision the one-dimensional character of a miner or cowboy, there is the dance hall girl. The emergence of their role of importance in the frontier institutional development.

The setting in the beginning of the movie was at Little Bighorn, this is where Custer took his army of a few hundred into the Indian territory that housed 7,000 Indians. As result of this the Indians killed every person that was in Custer's army. Here Ohiye S’a, or later known as Charles Eastman, earned his first feather through battle. Charles’s father then comes to take Charles to live with him and get him proper schooling and to be like the whites. Charles grew up and went to med school, he then helped the senator create the plan for the reservations with the influence of Senator Dawes. Charles then met Elaine his soon to be wife who was a superintendent of the Indian Schools. Elaine writes of the disease coming into the reservations and

In the past, it was called “The Country Club in The Colorado” while others called it a “Hell Hole”, but now it is known as the Yuma Territorial Prison in the city of Yuma, Arizona. The prison first opened its gates to inmates in 1876 until closure in 1909 (Park History 1-24-17).The prison was the first establishment in Yuma to have electricity and plumbing. The prison also a hospital that was very modern at the time, dental care for all of the prisoners, and blowers that blew cold air. The prison also had a library [created by Madora Ingalls, the wife of the prison superintendent] that taught reading, writing, arithmetic, German and Spanish, and music [which lead to the creation of the prison’s own band]. The citizens of Yuma believe that when the prison was shut down, all the books were donated to a building,

The Western film genre is typically set in a secluded village in the middle of the desert, normally in the American West. The setting includes wooden buildings, tumble weed, cacti, trains, horses and carriages. The storyline for western films is usually the same, namely, a hero travels to a remote village, usually on a horse, and brings peace to the warring villagers.

The Classic Western genre is dead. Western films created now are not considered Classic Western, but are instead categorized in the Post-Western form. This happened because the overuse of filmic codes in the Western genre eventually led to predictability in the films. These “genre film cycles” occur because of the overuse of predictability. Film cycles are when a genre and its conventions become overused to the point of death to that specific genre. For example, if the film The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) were shown in a theater today people wonder why they were watching it, because they already knew what to expect from the typical western codes, such as good guys versus bad guys, gunfights, horse chases, Indians, frontier land,

The release of Gordon Hollingshead and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer in 1927 marked the new age of synchronised sound in cinema. The feature film was a huge success at the box office and it ushered in the era David Bordwell describes as ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’; Bordwell and two other film theorists (Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson) conducted a formalist analysis of 100 randomly selected Hollywood films from the years 1917 to 1960 in order to fully define this movement. Their results yielded that most Hollywood made films during that era were centred on, or followed, specific blueprints that formed the finished product. Through this analysis of Hollywood films the theorists were able to establish stylised conventions and modes of