The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West" and depicted in Western media as a hostile, sparsely populated frontier in a state of near-total lawlessness patrolled by outlaws, sheriffs, and numerous other stock "gunslinger" characters. Western narratives often concern the gradual attempts to tame the crime-ridden American West using wider themes of justice, freedom, rugged individualism, Manifest Destiny, and the national history and identity of the United States.
The first films that belong to the Western genre are a series of short single reel silents made in 1894 by Edison Studios at their Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey. These featured veterans of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show exhibiting skills acquired by living in the Old West – they included Annie Oakley (shooting) and members of the Sioux (dancing).[1]
The earliest known Western narrative film is the British short Kidnapping by Indians, made by Mitchell and Kenyon in Blackburn, England, in 1899.[2][3] The Great Train Robbery (1903, based on the earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary), Edwin S. Porter's film starring Broncho Billy Anderson, is often erroneously cited as the first Western, though George N. Fenin and William K. Everson point out (as mentioned above) that the "Edison company had played with Western material for several years prior to The Great Train Robbery". Nonetheless, they concur that Porter's film "set the pattern—of crime, pursuit, and retribution—for the Western film as a genre".[4] The film's popularity opened the door for Anderson to become the screen's first Western star; he made several hundred Western film shorts. So popular was the genre that he soon faced competition from Tom Mix and William S. Hart.[5]
The period from the late 1940s to the 1950s has been called the "Golden Age of the Western".[6] It is epitomized by the work of several prominent directors including:
Stories commonly center on the life of a nomadic, male, white American drifter, cowboy or gunfighter who rides a horse and is armed with a revolver and/or a rifle. The male characters typically wear broad-brimmed and high-crowned Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas, vests, and cowboy boots with spurs. While many wear convention shirts and trousers, alternatives include buckskins and dusters).
Women are generally cast in secondary roles as romantic interest for the male lead; or in supporting roles as saloon girls, prostitutes or as the wives of pioneers and settlers (the wife character often provides a measure of comic relief). Other recurring characters include Native Americans of various tribes, African Americans, Mexicans, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, bartenders, traders, gamblers, soldiers (especially mounted cavalry), pioneers and settlers (farmers, ranchers, and townsfolk).