The Invention of the Western Film

7/1/04 to 8/1/04

  • The Big Trail|July 2|

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Wild Bunch

    • Sunday, August 1 7:40 pm

    "If they move, kill 'em": Sam Peckinpah shot the genre through with a Vietnam War–era sense of rage and apocalyptic exhilaration. "Pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle."-Pauline Kael

  • Lonely Are the Brave

    • Sunday, August 1 5:30 pm

    Old-fashioned cowboy Kirk Douglas tangles with technocrat sheriff Walter Matthau in this allegory of the West circa 1962, "a gripping, elegiac movie, imbued with a very real nostalgia for a vanished world."-Time Out

  • Ride Lonesome

    • Friday, July 30 7:30 pm

    Budd Boetticher's characteristically spare, tense film follows aging bounty hunter Randolph Scott trailed by assorted outlaws, including James Coburn and Lee Van Cleef. "A small masterpiece."-Time Out

  • The Searchers

    • Friday, July 30 9:05 pm

    John Wayne's search for a niece kidnapped by Comanches becomes an odyssey into the darker side of the American character in this mythic work, one of John Ford's most complex and visually stunning films. Only the big screen can do it justice.

  • Destry Rides Again

    • Sunday, July 25 5:30 pm

    Milk-drinking deputy Jimmy Stewart ruffles the feathers of Last Chance Saloon chanteuse Marlene Dietrich in this freewheeling comedy replete with role reversals, missing trousers, and wrestling women.

  • Duel in the Sun

    • Sunday, July 25 7:25 pm

    Starring Jennifer Jones as a passionate young "half-breed," this audacious Technicolor spectacular-famously dubbed "Lust in the Dust"-passes through the ridiculous into the sublime.

  • Stagecoach

    • Friday, July 23 7:30pm

    John Ford's first film with John Wayne and his first shot in Monument Valley, this 1939 picture is a pivotal Western, often credited with revitalizing the genre. More important, with a charming array of characters and an irresistible narrative pull, it's still a delight to watch.

  • She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

    • Friday, July 23 9:30 pm

    Wayne is an aging cavalry captain on his last Indian campaign in Ford's elegiac reverie. Oscar-winning cinematography by Winton Hoch paints Monument Valley in autumnal splendor.

  • Thomas Ince and the Origins of the Western

    • Sunday, July 18 5:30pm

    Jon Mirsalis on Piano. Introduced by Scott Simmon. Precious archival prints of early works by Ince and others demonstrate the depth of the genre's roots. Featuring The Invaders, arguably the first great Western, a broken-treaty tale whose power owes much to its Native American actors.

  • Redskin

    • Sunday, July 18 7:20 pm

    Jon Mirsalis on Piano. Introduced by Scott Simmon. This silent is memorable for both its sympathetic treatment of Native American issues and its early Technicolor location shooting in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, and Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico.

  • Forty Guns

    • Friday, July 16 7:30pm

    Introduced by Scott Simmon. Barbara Stanwyck is the self-made matriarch of Tombstone-"a high-ridin' woman with a whip," as described by the theme song-in Sam Fuller's recklessly stylized CinemaScope explosion of violence, sexuality, and power.

  • 3:10 to Yuma

    • Friday, July 16 9:20pm

    Introduced by Scott Simmon. When a struggling farmer agrees to escort an outlaw to jail, the keeper becomes the prisoner. Delmer Daves keeps the psychological tension at a high pitch in this adaptation of an Elmore Leonard story.

  • My Darling Clementine

    • Friday, July 9 7pm

    Introduced by Scott Simmon. Henry Fonda in John Ford's 1946 film that "transformed Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday into indelible icons of the '50s and '60s Western....Ford created powerful moods and deep longings in the relaxed gaps between showdowns [and] revolutionized the climactic fight in the O.K. Corral."-Village Voice

  • Pursued

    • Friday, July 9 9:15 pm

    Introduced by Scott Simmon. Robert Mitchum is brooding and brilliant in Raoul Walsh's noir-Western tale of childhood trauma and adult vengeance. James Wong Howe's cinematography corrals the open spaces of New Mexico in a mood of claustrophobic menace.

  • The Big Trail

    • Friday, July 2 7pm

    Introduction and Booksigning by Scott Simmon. John Wayne had his first starring role as a Missouri-to-Oregon wagon train scout in this breathtakingly scenic 1930 Western, a trailblazing achievement in widescreen cinematography.

  • The Last Outlaw

    • Friday, July 2 9:40pm

    Introduced by Scott Simmon. If you thought the theme of the "end of the West" was a postwar invention, check out this 1936 gem. Harry Carey plays an old-time gunfighter released from prison into the modern West of motorcars and-horror of horrors!-singing-cowboy movies.

  • Trail of the Vigilantes: Free Screening!

    • Thursday, July 1 5:30 pm

    Free tickets available at the PFA Theater starting at 4:30. Introduced by Scott Simmon. Allan Dwan's wonderful, little-known comedy gives the B-Western genre a surreal spin.