Western Film Research Paper

What were Edwin S. Porter's significant contributions to the development of early narrative film? In what sense did Porter build upon the innovations of contemporaneous filmmakers, and for what purposes?

Film has revolutionized the world as we know it. In the current day and age film is quite advanced. You can watch movies with special effects and insane resolution there were never thought possible before. But film has not always been this way. Over the decades since around the 1900s when the first film was made there been amazing advances in technology and in acting. An examination of the past hundred or so years will show the amazing advances film has taken to come to what we know of it today.

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.

Rarely has a film impacted an audience and held the test of time as the film Gone with the Wind. I have always been curious if director, Victor Fleming and producer, David O. Selznick and screenplay writer, Sidney Howard knew what they were creating a masterpiece and how this film would have such an enormous impact on audiences for years to come. Interestingly enough there were some who thought the film should not be made, as Irving Thalberg said to Louis B. Meyer in 1936, “Forget it Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel” (Ten Films that Shook the World).

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

From 1864s to the beginning of the 20th century the American economy was transformed from free-market to monopoly and became a typical imperialist country. The economy was quick growing in the new ranges in the nation.This period saw the settlement of Anglo-American in the western fields, which were unlimited unmoving grounds possessed by Indians through The Homestead Act of 1862. The western boondocks had the capacity bring various improvements through commercializing of mining, rail route transport, and cultivating and dairy cattle organizations.

In Matthew Bernstein’s essay, The Classical Hollywood Western Par Excellence, he states that while Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939) “appears to glorify American history, particularly its expansion westward at the expense of Native Americans” (299) it also develops an “acute social observation” of life on the Frontier and it challenges elements of the myth constructed around this history (316). The film Stagecoach depicts not only the struggles faced by pioneers traveling through Indian territory, but the belief among people during this time period that anyone can go to the West to get a “fresh start” and live a completely new life without social prejudice. However, Stagecoach proves this myth to be false for various reasons. One example of this would be when Mr. Hatfield offers Mrs. Mallory water from the water canteen on the stagecoach. Once she accepts his offer, Mr. Hatfield pours it into a silver cup for her and does not offer anyone else in the stage coach water. Ringo then makes a comment to Mr. Hatfield that he should give the other lady in the stagecoach, Dallas, water as well. However, Dallas has a reputation of being a prostitute. So, Mr. Hatfield decides to give her some water but refuses to lend her the silver cup to drink out of, he makes her drink it out of the canteen instead. This example proves that these people were not getting a “fresh start” and only the upper class can share such luxuries as a silver cup with only other upper class people, social

“costume is often coordinated with setting. Since the filmmaker usually wants to emphasize the human figures, setting may provide more or less neutral background, while costume helps pick out the characters. Color design is particularly important here.”

Every since John Ford’s 1939 western Stagecoach, the West has been portrayed in art, entertainment, and literature as a desolate arid landscape of mountains and deserts. The story or movie backdrop was usually set in America’s colonial era and often included small frontier towns with saloons, the local jail, and ranches on the outskirts of town. The main characters were ranchers, handsome gun slinging wayward cowboys donning Stetsons, savage Indians raging havoc against settlers, and outlaw gangs roaming the prairies holding up banks and railroads. Every story pretty much had a similar plot; the pursuit of wrongdoers, lawmen and bounty hunters set on catching that elusive bad guy, guns and gunfights, and the humble settlers protecting his family and land. The heroes that

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.

Previously, editing used to be a challenge for most filmmakers. Often, they relied on manual methods when filming to add effects to the films. Incorporating visual effects to the film was a demanding task that

II. Indian men and women love to wear their traditional clothes and accessories during festivals and occasions which are an integral part of Indian life.

Before going in-depth to the history of the Western genre, it is important to note the film conventions of the genre because they are incredibly influential to the movement of the genre cycle. The structure of the Classic Western is set up with a hero and a villain in a town. Will Wright says, “Each film is the story of a hero who is somehow estranged from his society but on whose ability rests the fate of that society. The villains threatened the society until the hero acts to protect and save it” (Wright, 1975). This is the classical plot for a western, while a vengeance plot in the western is “the vengeance hero leaves the society because of his strength and their weakness and abandons his fight because of these same values (of society)” (Wright, 1975). Some of these conventions can also be seen as cliché because of the myths tied together with the Western. These include opening scenes of vast landscapes or when “a cowboy makes a dramatic entrance through the batwing saloon doors, the man playing the piano abruptly stops” (Varner, 2008) or the more obvious, the hero riding off into the sunset at the end of the film. (Varner, 2008) The Western conventions then evolve over time until the end of the Classic Westerns, in which Spaghetti Westerns, parodies, and Post Westerns can easily point out the conventions and use them to make a new story.

There are many different types of film and film genres. A film can fit into more than one genre, but there are some genres that are more general than others. Some examples of film genre are animated, science fiction, documentary, comedy, and historical fiction. Within each genre, there are also specific characteristics that help support themes and story lines within that genre.

the films genre. The genre is a way for the audience to distinguish types of