Every few years, movie lovers ask what happened to the Western — the film genre that helped launch America’s film industry at the dawn of the 20th century and constituted up to a quarter of major-studio output during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood.
Actually, Westerns haven’t gone away — a sign that they still resonate with audiences. Their themes and settings have just found expression in streaming series like “Yellowstone,” or in 21st century “Neo-Western” contexts, such as TV shows like “Breaking Bad” or in feature films that, in Western fashion, are set in gorgeous, remote American landscapes and tell stories about outlaws and other rugged individualists. There’s currently a discussion about whether elements of John Ford’s “The Searchers,” starring John Wayne, made their way into Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, “Another Battle After Another.”
To better understand why Westerns still resonate, movie lovers can go to the source, which is where the Stanford Theatre comes in. Some of the most beloved classics of the genre will be featured at a 12-week film series, presented each weekend at the Palo Alto theater. The series starts Friday and continues through Dec. 19.
The series focuses on films made during that so-called Golden Age, which lasted from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Some of these films rank on lists for best movies ever made, not just in the United States but internationally. They were directed by some of America’s master filmmakers — Ford, John Huston, Howard Hawkes, George Stevens and Anthony Mann — and star iconic screen legends.
In addition to “The Searchers” from 1956, which plays Nov. 29 and 30, the series also showcases “The Treasure of Sierra Madre,” starring Humphrey Bogart (showing Oct. 9-12); “High Noon,” featuring an Academy Award winning performance by Gary Cooper; and “Stagecoach,” the 1939 Western by Ford that starred Wayne and is credited with transforming the genre into respectable, Oscar-winning entertainment. “Stagecoach” also screens at Stanford Theatre with “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” Oct 9-12.
The series features several films starring Wayne, as well as James Stewart, another Western stalwart. Henry Fonda and Gregory Peck also turn up in a few, with Fonda playing Wyatt Earp in Ford’s “My Darling Clementine” (1946), which shows Oct. 16 and 17. You can also see other major stars of the era — Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn or Marlon Brando — trying to see if they, too, can get into the Western spirit.
People usually think of Westerns as movies about cowboys and cattle drives, or about American settlers, lawmen, outlaws and the US calvary. The dramas often show these white protagonists fighting Native Americans, who are usually stereotyped as the savage enemy, even though they were righteously trying to protect the land they occupied for thousands of years. Some notable Westerns, such as 1950’s “Broken Arrow,” directed by 1927 Stanford University law graduate Delmer Daves, tried to correct this racist narrative. “Broken Arrow” screens at the festival on Nov. 8 and 9.
What also makes Westerns a defining genre of cinema is that the best of these films are gorgeous to look at, presenting a kind of visual poetry, according to film critic David Thomson, who curated the film series. The landscape of the American West, as it figured into these films, showed “the rest of the world the fabulous appearance of the West, something that was geological, botanical and meteorological, but mythological, too,” Thomson wrote.
Thomson said it should be a treat for film lovers to watch one of Ford’s Westerns on the big screen, in which the legendary director elevated the “operatic” Monument Valley in Arizona, with its famous red rock mesas, into the American imagination. They can also see how director George Stevens used the stunning backdrop of Wyoming’s Grand Tetons in his 1950 film “Shane” to echo the decency and quiet simplicity of a pioneer family and of the hero, Shane.
‘You may love a film a like ‘Shane’ or ‘Stagecoach,’ but the Stanford Theatre lets you see them on the big screen, in their full glory,” Thomson said.
If you go: Tickets costs $7 for adults and $5 for seniors and youth, 18 and under. They can be purchased at the box office on the day of the show. The Stanford Theatre is at 221 University Avenue, Palo Alto, stanfordtheatre.org.