In Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood, author Jim Kitses gives a detailed account of many of the most influential westerns of the sound era, focusing on the work of six film directors strongly associated with the genre.
The profound impact of John Ford, Anthony Mann, Bud Boetticher, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood’s films in the western genre are the subject of a thorough study in which the author delivers a critical analyses of such classic films as Winchester 73, Man of the West, Forte Apache, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers, Seven Man from Now, The Tall T, Ride The High Country, The Wild Bunch, For a fistful of Dollars, Once upon a Time in the West, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgive.
Using a postmodern and psychoanalytical approach, comparing plots, looking for recurring themes, character similarities and a constant visual style, Kitses establishes Ford, Mann, Boetticher, Peckinpah, Leone and Eastwood as the major auteurs of the western canon.
Dedicating lengthy chapters to each of these director’s, Jim Kitses
(Professor of Cinema at The San Francisco State University and author of several books and publications including some by the British Film Institute) analyses all the westerns directed by those influential directors and reasserts their contributions to the evolution of the western genre.
However, it would have been interesting if this work also included essays on the western films of other important directors, like Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, Henry Hathaway, Delmar Daves, and John Sturges, but understandably Jim Kitses focus is attention on those filmmakers he believes to be the key directors of the most American of film genres.
Kitses defence of films that were rarely appreciated by the critics as more than mere entertainment is not only interesting but also illuminating. In fact Kitses was on the front line establishing Bud Boetticher and Anthony Mann as important auteurs of the western genre. The chapter dedicated to the collaboration between Boeticher and B Westerns star Randolph Scott is still the most comprehensive study on the carer of this cult director.
Also important is the chapter dedicated to Anthony Mann’s collaboration with movie actor James Stewart in witch Kitses focus is the family background of the James Stewart neurotic characters.
Chapters on John Ford, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood are also enlightening of these directors styles and themes, but because these directors have benefited from vast critical attention they don’t stand as important as the ones on Boetticher and Mann.
Horizons West is still a major contribution to the study of what French critic Andre Bazin once defined as the most American of film genres.
