A fascinating list of the 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time has gone up at Indiewire assembled by multiple writers and critics. The list charts from 1903-2023, with films representing every single decade in that period along with titles from five continents.
The list spans popular classics, esoteric indies, western-comedies and more. Several names pop up consistently including Sergio Leone, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Anthony Mann, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Corbucci and Clint Eastwood.
The winner is Nicholas Ray’s 1954 film “Johnny Guitar” which was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2008.
Joan Crawford leads the cast of the film as the hard-nosed Vienna, a saloon owner with a sordid past whose bar is frequented by the undesirables of the region including the eponymous former gunslinger and her lover.
When a string of robberies is pulled in town that results in a man’s death, Vienna’s sexually repressed rival Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) rallies the townsfolk in a lynch mob to take revenge on Vienna’s saloon and frame her – even without proof of her wrongdoing.
The film was dismissed by U.S. audiences at launch, but embraced by Europeans and has since been deemed revolutionary – an unconventional, highly stylized, often melodramatic film rich in subtext and ambiguities.
Coming in second is Dark Horizons’ top choice for the best western ever made – Sergio Leone’s 1968 epic “Once Upon a Time in the West” while third is John Ford’s “My Darling Clementine”.
Fourth is for the middle entry in Leone’s ‘Man with No Name’ trilogy – “For a Few Dollars More,” surprising considering they place the more popular “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” at #13 and the more iconic “A Fistful of Dollars” all the way down at #83.
Fifth is Robert Altman’s “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”. Also making the top ten are “Ride Lonesome,” “Stagecoach,” “Jeremiah Johnson,” “The Shooting” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.
Some of the most famous are further down the list including “Rio Bravo” at #12, “Ride the High Country” at #14, “The Searchers” at #16, “Unforgiven”at #18, “High Noon” at #19, “Red River” at #22, “Blazing Saddles” at #27, “Shane” at #33, “No Country for Old Men” at #34, “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” at #36, “Brokeback Mountain” at #42, “The Quick and the Dead” at #43, “The Wild Bunch” at #44, “3:10 to Yuma” at #46, “There Will Be Blood” at #47, “The Magnificent Seven” at #49, “The Rider” at #50.