While Martin Scorsese is most famous for his critically acclaimed crime films like Goodfellas and The Departed, the director has always been passionate about the Western genre. Something about the simplicity of right versus wrong and the epic scope of the frontier has moved the filmmaker ever since he was a teenager.
Throughout his career, Scorsese has frequently cited Western classics like Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country and Ford’s The Searchers as major influences on his own cinematic storytelling. Praising the latter’s enduring legacy, Scorsese observes, “Only an artist as great as John Ford would dare to end a film on such a note. In its final moment, The Searchers suddenly becomes a ghost story.”
He has even managed to incorporate the genre into his own movies. Most recently, he reaffirmed his love of Westerns with the Academy Award-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon. Based on the non-fiction book, the movie chronicles the true story of a series of murders of Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma after oil was discovered beneath the land.
Scorsese’s dedication to the genre has been evident across decades of discussion and filmmaking. The 10 Westerns on this list are picked from various interviews Scorsese gave or forewords he wrote, where he singled out the talents and visions of certain directors and their ability to capture his imagination or push the boundaries of storytelling in the most remarkable ways.
10 Pursued (1947)
A Western film noir directed by Raoul Walsh, Pursued is told in a series of flashbacks. It follows an abandoned young boy named Jeb Rand, who witnessed his parents killed as a child. Years later, as a man who grew up with the Callums (his foster family), Jeb begins to recall the events from the night through frequent nightmares that traumatize him. As he struggles with his feelings of vengeance, Jeb also experiences newfound affection towards Thor, the Callums’ daughter.
Walsh’s Tale of Vengeance and Love
Walsh is known for playing by his own rules. His ability to marry genres like thrillers, Westerns, romance, and drama shows just how multidimensional a singular genre can be. Pursued, in particular, has a moody cinematography and morally complex narrative to paint a bewildering picture.
Scorsese is naturally drawn toward its Shakespearean exploration of paranoia and desire. While praising the characterization, he wrote, “Walsh’s explosive outcast characters were bigger than life. Their lust for life was insatiable, even as their actions precipitated their tragic destiny. The world was too small for them.” Stream on Tubi.
9 Canyon Passage (1946)
A movie that Scorsese calls “one of the most mysterious and exquisite examples of the Western genre ever made,” Canyon Passage follows store owner Logan Stuart who finds himself in a love triangle with Lucy Overmire, a young woman engaged to Logan’s best friend, and Caroline Marsh, his own girlfriend. As tensions rise in a small Oregon town and things like murder, greed, betrayal, and uprisings collide, Logan fights to protect his way of life.
Captures the Spirit of a Changing Frontier
A breathtaking Western shot against the backdrop of an unspoiled natural landscape, Canyon Passage is director Jacques Tourneur’s esteemed accomplishment. While the movie’s real drama lies in the community dynamics, it features an array of subplots that keeps viewers engaged from start to finish.
In a foreword to a book dedicated to Tourneur, Scorsese writes, “For many directors, an atmosphere is something that is ‘established’, setting the stage for the action to follow. For Tourneur, it is the entire movie,” thus praising it as a microcosm of wilderness and humanity.
8 The Tall T (1957)
Scorsese is also a fan of rewarding, stripped-down, B-movies that were shot on tight schedules with barely-familiar names. A director that comes to mind for such masterpieces is Budd Boetticher. His later 1905s’ classic, The Tall T, is about an independent former ranch foreman, who is devastated after his horse is stolen. He gets a stagecoach ride with a newlywed couple. But when they’re all held for ransom by three ruthless outlaws, the rancher gets into a bloody standoff to free himself and the couple.
Strips the Genre with a Noir Aesthetic
The Tall T stripped back the veneer of most 1950s Westerns by featuring a more hard-boiled affair. The movie, which was filmed against the stark and brutal backdrop of the Wild West, favored tight close-ups and little dialogue in order to ratchet up the tension. Boetticher uses a classic noir aesthetic for the final confrontation, with Randolph Scott’s complex Brennen emerging as a hero. Scorsese, who first saw the movie as a teenager, added it to his documentary about the history of American cinema and praised Boetticher’s work by saying,
“His style was as deceptively simple as his characters. Basic human passions were his forte, and each adventure was like a poker game that always gave precedence to character over action.”
Stream on Starz.
7 Heaven’s Gate (1980)
Despite the numerous setbacks during production and critical backlash after release, Heaven’s Gate emerged as one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Written and directed by Michael Cimino, it takes you to early 20th century Wyoming, where young Harvard graduate James Averill becomes sheriff of Johnson County. As a wealthy land baron plots to illegally drive small cattle farmers off their land, he tries to protect their interests. He confronts Nate, the baron’s hired gun. Tensions between them escalate when they fall for the same woman.
A Flawed Masterpiece Like No Other
Like we mentioned below, Heaven’s Gate was one of cinema’s most infamous failures. Later turned into a seminal classic, Cimino’s layered work was lauded for its meticulous production design as well as the philosophical musings on the subject of corruption and the American dream.
While reflecting on the movie’s failure at the time, Scorsese lamented about how the critical establishment had failed him and the industry, “I knew at the time that something had died. We had the rug pulled out from underneath us.” He also expressed his admiration for the better aspects of Heaven’s Gate by saying, “Talk about detail, authenticity, staging. Just staging people in the frame, in a wide frame! It’s just phenomenal.” Stream on Prime Video.
6 Ride the High Country (1962)
In Ride the High Country, an aging ex-lawman named Steve Judd is hired to transport gold from a high country mining camp to a town in California. The perilous route down the Sierra Nevada had already taken the lives of six miners, but Steve was tough. And with his old friend and partner Gil Westrum enlisted as a security officer on the job, he had little worry about. However, Steve began to see signs of Gil wanting to loot the gold. When Elsa, a young woman on the run, joins their mission, concerns grow.
Peckinpah Celebrates the Beauty of Simpler Times
Director Sam Peckinpah crafts a poignant and disarming Western opera that evolves on a frontier of uncertainty. The gorgeous filming locales in an untouched paradise, the depiction of the High Sierras, and the graceful violence, all suggest an impending loss. Ride the High Country stars Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea as the perfectly weathered men on opposing sides of justice.
In a 2017 conversation with Italian outlet La Civiltà Cattolica, director Martin Scorsese speaks of a particular scene from the film that resonated with him. He says, “There’s a scene where Edgar Buchanan, a drunken minister, is marrying Mariette Hartley’s character to this man, and he says, ‘You’ve got to understand something about marriage – people change.’” In a way, he celebrates its bittersweet and nostalgic portrayal of simpler times. Rent on Apple TV.
5 Giant (1956)
Extremely comparable with Scorsese’s latest, Killers of the Flower Moon, this George Stevens-directed Western from the 1950s is a commanding epic. Set against the backdrop of a sprawling Texas ranch, it follows cattle baron Jordan Benedict Jr., who visits Maryland to buy a horse. After meeting Leslie, he initiates a whirlwind romance with her and the two get married. Upon her return to the male-dominated Texas culture, the free-thinking Leslie tries to forge a future on the threshold of revolution and social change.
Scorsese Finds Giant to be Inspirational
Giant pairs creative titans Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean and weaves an intimate drama. Filmed on a grand scale, the movie examines oil blooms, prejudices, racial discrimination, and shifting ideals across decades. The movie was a huge box-office success, and it maintained a record for the highest number of tickets sold for over a decade and a half before it was surpassed by 1970s Superman.
In a discussion with Paul Thomas Anderson, Scorsese expressed his thoughts on Giant, saying, “I don’t like the obvious romanticism, but there’s more here than people have seen. You see people grow… As far as filmmaking goes, Giant is an inspiring film.” Rent on Apple TV.
4 Forty Guns (1957)
Written and directed by Samuel Fuller, Forty Guns is a noir-tinged black-and-white Western that stars Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan and Gene Barry in the lead roles. It takes place in a remote territory of Tombstone in Arizona during the 1880s. Jessica Drummond rules the territory with an iron fist and has forty hired hands working loyally for her, while Brockie, her drunk and bully brother, spreads terror among the townsfolk. But her reign is cut short when U.S. Marshall Griff Bonnell and his brothers arrive in town and intervene.
Pushes The Genre’s Creative Boundaries
In a foreward of his biography, Martin Scorsese blatantly remarks, “if you don’t like the films of Sam Fuller, then you just don’t like cinema.” Such is the Italian-American director’s praise for Fuller. There is no denying that Forty Guns was a film well ahead of its time. With its widescreen vistas, electrifying performances from a stellar cast, and underlying messages about tyranny and class warfare, the cult hit pushed the genre towards more provocative and artistic directions. The reason Martin Scorsese praises the movie is that it does not try to be something more. In his words,
“
Forty Guns
is not even really a Western. I don’t know what it is. It’s pure emotion…
Forty Guns
doesn’t care. It’s just what it is.”
Stream for free on Tubi.
3 The Hired Hand (1971)
With a screenplay written by Alan Sharp, this Peter Fonda-directed movie is Universal Studios’ attempt to revel in the unexpected success of Easy Rider. The story follows a wandering Harry Collings who spends seven years in the American Southwest with his friend Arch Harris before returning home to his wife and his abandoned family. Rather than confrontation, Harry suggests that Hannah let them stay on their ranch as “hired hands.” Content to admire from afar the life he once had, Harry must soon make a strenuous choice.
A Neo-Western Meditation on Fate
The Hired Hand emerged from the counterculture era. So naturally, it subverted genre tropes and viewers’ expectations. With existential musings on destiny and the enduring wildness within men, the movie also celebrated the Wild West’s romantic iconography.
Scorsese, who overlooked the restoration of this misunderstood classic with Henry Fonda in 1999, mentioned how fascinated he was with the relationship between Harry and Hannah in the movie. He added, “It’s an extraordinarily delicate picture with a very moody, impressionistic tone — like something out of 19th century literature.” Stream on Starz+ with Apple TV.
2 Johnny Guitar (1954)
In a disputable, wind-swept Arizona cattle town, Vienna, a strong-willed salon owner has long been the target of local prejudice. With a former rival, Emma Small, egging on the townsfolk, it gets impossible for Vienna to face them. But she fights regardless, with only a reformed gunslinger named Johnny Guitar to help her. A former lover, Johnny’s aid, only further strokes action, and soon Vienna is accused of crimes she did not commit. Johnny must find a way to defuse the situation.
Subversive Feminist Western
Director Nicholas Ray wanted to make a film that would deal with more psychological themes than straight-up violence. So he injected nuance into oft restrictive western tropes by featuring Joan Crawford as a fiercely independent Vienna, whose light outshone the dangerous charm oozing from Sterling Hayden.
As mentioned by Martin Scorsese in his documentary, A Personal Journey Through American Movies, Johnny Guitar was “an intense, unconventional, stylized picture, full of ambiguities and subtexts that rendered it extremely modern.” According to him, contemporary American audiences “didn’t know what to make of it, so they either ignored it or laughed at it.” Rent on Apple TV.
1 One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
Marlon Brando’s sole directorial effort, One-Eyed Jacks takes place in 1890s California. It centers around Rio, a bandit who is betrayed by his partner and mentor during a heist, convicted and sentenced to death. After five years in prison, Rio escapes and returns to his old ways with one aim of getting revenge on Dad Longworth. Despite reuniting with his gang and formulating a plan, when Rio meets Louisa, Dan’s daughter, he falls in love and vows to go straight, which puts him in conflict with his partners.
Reminds Scorsese of Old Hollywood
Before Brando decided to get behind the camera, Stanley Kubrick was on board to direct One-Eyed Jacks. But after six months of troubled production, Kubrick pulled out of the project. While many Westerns portrayed redemption as impossible, under Brando’s gaze, the movie saw hope for reform within its flawed characters. He himself gave a meditative performance as Rio, showing humanity and rage in equal proportions.
Scorsese expected nothing less from the actor when he watched the film with Steven Spielberg in 4K restoration at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. For him, the movie is criminally underlooked.
“It was kind of a cross between the old style of production and the new styles that were going to come in in the sixties,” he noted. “The essence of it is of the old Hollywood in a way… It’s visually stunning. The intensity and the energy of the actors just burst out of the edges of the screen”
Stream on Prime Video.
