Like I’ve already said, 1948 was an important year for the Western. This isn’t only because a lot of Westerns came out that year. It’s because, primarily, two Westerns came out that year. These two Westerns are The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Red River. Together, they represent a bridge into a new era of this signature American genre: from the mythic hero-epics of the 1930s and 1940s to the character-focused mythic tragedies of the 1950s and 1960s. Continue reading
Tag Archives: 1948
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
1948 was an important year for the Western. Movies like 3 Godfathers and Fort Apache were contributing to the overwhelming continuation to the genre by the team of John Ford and John Wayne. Movies like Silver River with Erroll Flynn and Yellow Sky with Gregory Peck were headlining other great team-ups with superstar actors and directors (Raoul Walsh directed the former; William Wellman, the latter). The second World War was drifting into the past, but its ripples were still freshly informing the new artistic psyche, and these team-ups were beginning to integrate a far more human arrangement into the Western to supplant what was originally a mythological archetype. Method acting and human dilemma were rising to an important position in the way that Westerns were written. While these aforementioned films, and others, were making their dramatic (or, at times, comedic) impact on what was, before the war, a simple formula, two films really made waves in 1948. These two Westerns were The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Red River. Continue reading