In the last century, how did the Western evolve and flourish to become one of the defining genres of American cinema? From its grassroots introduction in the first commercially successful Western, The Great Train Robbery (1903) to the Academy Award winning Unforgiven (1992), the Western genre has proved a Hollywood mainstay. The roots of the genre extend back to the 19th century when expansion of the western United States created lasting mythologies that were adapted and structured within film narratives. The myth of the farmer as self-sufficient, individualistic, loyal to the country and forever bonded with the land, soon became a celebration of the values that kept the United States afloat during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In Hollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society (1996), Colin Shindler discusses how the political, social, economic, and psychological climate of the United States in the 1930s shaped the type of movies that were made at that time. The hard-working “common man” was idealized in myth as he pursued the frontier West for new riches. The Western frontier represented opportunity (for discovery and advancement) and individualism (for cultivation and growth). American values and beliefs such as the democratic right of every citizen for the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness were solidified and reinforced in early film narratives. The Western provided the opportunity to exalt the cowboy, frontiersmen, and settlers in film. In other words, the genre had its own “hero” which characterized the Western specifically. “The expansion of the narrative cinema, with its own need for impressive individual heroes, solidified the Western mythology.” (Shindler 1996: 81).

For more details, see The Making of the Western

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