2. Conventions of a Western
• Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the
19th century
• Western films commonly feature as their protagonists stock characters such
as cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, often depicted as semi-
nomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and
buckskins, use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival, and ride
between dusty towns and cattle ranches on faithful steeds.
• Westerns usually depict the bad guys in black clothes and the good guys in
white clothes.
• Western films often depict conflicts with Native Americans.
• Recurring themes of Westerns include Western treks or perilous journeys
(e.g. Stagecoach) or groups of bandits terrorising small towns such as in
The Magnificent Seven.
• The Western film genre has portrayed much about America's past, glorifying
the past-fading values and aspirations of the mythical by-gone age of the
West.

3. Western Films
• Billy The Kid
• The Outlaw
• Oklahoma
• How the West Was Won
• No Country for Old Men

4. Sub Genre of the Western
• the ‘EPIC’ Western (The Big Country (1958))
• the ‘SINGING COWBOY' Western (films of Gene Autry and
Roy Rogers)
• the ‘SPAGHETTI’ Western aka Italo-Western (the "Man With
No Name")
• the ‘NOIR’ Western (Pursued (1947))
• the ‘CONTEMPORARY’ Western (Hud - 1963)
• the ‘REVISIONISTIC’ Western ( Little Big Man - 1970, Dances
With Wolves - 1990)
• the ‘COMEDY’ Western (Cat Ballou - 1965), Blazing Saddles
- 1974)
• the ‘POST-APOCALYPTIC’ Western (Mad Max 2: The Road
Warrior – 1981/2, The Postman - 1997)
• the ‘SCIENCE-FICTION’ or ‘SPACE’ Western (Serenity)

5. NOTABLE ACTORS
• Clint Eastwood
• John Wayne
• Lee Van Cleef
• Gene Autry

6. Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented
and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed.
In the late 60s and early 70s 'revisionistic' Westerns that
questioned the themes and elements of
traditional/classic westerns appeared (such as Sam
Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), Arthur Penn's Little
Big Man (1970), Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs.
Miller (1971), and later Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven
(1992)).