The 50 Essential Western Films

I pick the definitive movies in the genre. Here's the first (of three) installments.

I never expected to write this article.

That’s because—as I’ve explained elsewhere—I’ve never been a fan of cowboy movies. I avoided them even as a youngster and, in later years, never really gave them a chance.

They were filled with tired formulas, repeating the same simple stories over and over. Man shoots man. Man loves woman. Man rides horse. End of story.

Or so I thought.

I now know I was wrong about all that. The best western films are filled with surprising and contradictory tales, much like the myths of ancient times—where deities can act godlike one day, and disrupt everything the next with some unexpected transgression.

The western, when shaped by a visionary filmmaker, is just like that. It’s a wide open playing field with no rules whatsoever. So you can play it all almost any way.

The comparison with myth is relevant. I finally came to embrace movies about the Old West because, I gradually realized, they define the grand American mythos, whether we like it or not. We have inherited these stories, and need to make sense of them—because they tell us things about ourselves that we won’t learn any other way.

At least that’s what I finally decided. And that’s why I recently immersed myself in these films—binge-watching them over the course of several months.

I’ve now emerged from this rich experience with a guide for you. Below is the first installment of my survey of the 50 essential western films.

I chose these films based on their mythic splendor and cinematic excellence, but also with an eye for movies that shook me up—breaking new ground in brash new ways. In aggregate they represent a picture of American life as rich as anything you will find in any other creative idiom.

I’m sharing these in chronological order. So I’m starting with a film from 1903—and we will gradually make our way toward the current day.

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The 50 Essential Western Films

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

Thomas Edison gets credit for lightbulbs and recordings, but he also helped launch the western genre—without ever leaving New Jersey. The Great Train Robbery, released by Edison Films in 1903, lasts just 13 minutes, but that proved sufficient to thrill audiences and establish the commercial viability for films about gun-toting desperadoes in cowboy hats.

The highlight of the movie is a single 20-second scene, disconnected to the plot. It shows an outlaw firing his gun straight into the camera—and has been borrowed and parodied everywhere from Chisum to Tombstone to Goodfellas. The Wild West may have been disappearing in 1903, but the Western film was just starting.