The Western film genre has been a popular one since the silent film era, hitting its zenith in the 1950s with the help of stars like John Wayne and Gary Cooper. And for legions of viewers, that’s what they think of with Westerns: blockbusters likeHigh NoonandStagecoach, featuring tales of cowboys and Indians, with clear-cut heroes and villainsand damsels in distress. It began as a quintessentially American genre, all about the frontier spirit andManifest Destiny.
Later viewers becamefamiliar with the spaghetti Westernsof the ’60s and ’70s likeThe Good, The Bad, and the Ugly,Fistful of Dollars, andOnce Upon a Time in the West, exporting the genre to Italy and beyond. Since then, numerous countries have given their own take on the Western, with intriguing offerings from South Korea (The Good, The Bad, The Weird), Mexico (El Mariachi), Australia (The Nightingale,True History of the Kelly Gang),a whole slew from India, and beyond. We’re taking a look at some of the more under-the-radar performances across the western genre, those that broke the classic mold with style.
To say that Jim Jarmusch’sDead Manis a different kind of Western is an understatement. Johnny Depp’s William Blake is on the run through a postmodern black and white world to a Neil Young soundtrack, with a Native American companion who calls himself Nobody and a quirky cast including everyone from Crispin Glover to Robert Mitchum. Like in most Jarmusch films, sometimes it is the side characters whose stories you really want to know, and this time it’sBilly Bob Thorntonas a gruff mountain man with concerns about his hair, andIggy Popas a cross-dressing fur trader with a penchant for the Bible who could have (should have?) had their own film.
9Everyone - Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)
Takashi Miike’ssuper-stylized, samurai-inspired Westernis a wild and colorful tale that also takes its cues from classic spaghetti Westerns and more than a dash of Quentin Tarantino (who has a small part in the film). There are swords, arrows, and guns, lone gunmen and vicious clan feuds. Miike made the unusual choice to have his all-Japanese cast speak English, a language they were not necessarily fluent in. It feels a little jarring at first, but with the help of subtitles, it just adds to the kooky, crazy excess audiences have come to expect from Miike’s films. The entire cast throws themselves wholeheartedly into the creation of this singular world, and it’s unsurprising that its crazy kinetic energy was adapted into a manga serial a few years later.
Related:The Best Performances in Westerns, Ranked
8Katharine Ross as Etta Place - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Usually when people talk about thisclassic ’60s Western, there’s little room to discuss anyone other than Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the titular characters. And with good reason, they’re both pretty perfect in their respective roles. ButKatharine Ross’s Etta Place, Sundance’s lover, adds another element to the pair’s jocular, battle-scarred friendship. Etta is quiet and stalwart although not without a sense of humor, putting up with all sorts of shenanigans, even abetting a few bank robberies, but she refuses to stay for the bloody finale. And she may be Sundance’s woman, but the charming bicycle-riding scene with Butch provides a small glimpse into what might have been.
7Guy Pearce as Second Lieutenant John Boyd - Ravenous (1999)
Guy Pearcegives a subtle, conflicted performance as Second Lieutenant John Boyd, a somewhat cowardly Civil War veteran whose great moment in battle only comes because he is hiding in a pile of corpses. Exiled to a remote garrison with other outcasts, Boyd thinks all he will have to wrestle with is his conscience; that is, until Robert Carlyle’s Colonel Ives comes along with a hideous tale of cannibalism. Carlyle takes up a lot of the screen, chewing, swallowing, and spitting out scenery, but Pearce is captivating as his options narrow, forced decide whether to become a cannibal like Carlyle’s mad Colonel Ives (it does have a few perks) or kill Ives and himself before things get even farther out of hand.
6John Hurt as Jellon Lamb - The Proposition (2005)
Written and scored by musician Nick Cave,The Propositionis a stark, brutal Australian Western with as many moments of touching beauty as horrendous violence, starring Guy Pearce as a man who must hunt down one of his brothers to save another.John Hurtonly has a couple of scenes as a drunken, racist bounty hunter, but he’s a throwback to classic Westerns, caked in filth and spouting nonsense that comes out sounding Shakespearean (the man also does an impressive death rattle). It should be noted that the film contains a number of stellar performances, particularly Emily Watson as the out-of-her-depth wife of Ray WInstone’s police captain, David Gulpilil as the Aboriginal tracker, and Richard Wilson as the brother being held as ransom.
Related:Best Neo-Western Movies, Ranked
5Pina Pellicer as Louisa Longworth - One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
It’s hard to get yourself noticed in a film with Marlon Brando and Karl Malden with top billing. Brando’s first and only directorial effort. Brando plays Rio, who is just out of jail, having been betrayed years back by his old partner, Dad Longworth, played by Malden. Rio plans to kill Longworth, now the sheriff, but Rio falls in love, after a fashion, with Longworth’s step-daughter Louisa, played by the small, striking Pina Pellicer. Innocent and naive in the face of Rio’s thuggishness, Louisa stands up to her stepfather against him with a raw vulnerability. Tragically, three years after the film was released, Pellicer committed suicide at the age of 30, just as she was beginning to make a name for herself in TV and movies in both Mexico and the US.
4Ben Foster as Charlie Prince - 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
As stagecoach thief Russell Crowe’s very violent sidekick,Ben Foster’s Charlie Prince has a dead-eyed, calmly sinister, almost Iago-like demeanor. We haven’t been apprised of his backstory, and his evil doesn’t seem to have my impetus behind it other than a real innate desire to be evil. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are obviously riveting, accomplished actors, but whenever Foster isn’t around, you’re just counting the minutes til he’s back. The most intriguing thing is his fierce loyalty to Crowe’s Wade: if he’s such a psychotic villain, why doesn’t he look after his own skin first?
3Chief Dan George as Old Lodge Skins - Little Big Man (1970)
Little Big Manis a wildly ambitious film with a cast of characters including Wild Bill Hickok, General George Custer, and Dustin Hoffman as a 121-year-old white man, Jack Crabb, captured by the Cheyenne as a child. He survives massacres, battles, ambushes, and other tragedies, engaging with a colorful cast of characters (both fictional and historical) along the way. One such fictional character is Old Lodge Skins, the Cheyenne leader who adopts Crabb as his grandson after he survives his first massacre.Chief Dan Georgewas a chief of the Canadian Tsleil-Waututh Nation who got his first acting gig at 60, and he brings a tender, steady presence to Crabb’s life, as well as some unexpected hilarity in their final scene together. A few years later he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in another Western,The Outlaw Josey Wales.
2Patricia Neal as Alma - Hud (1963)
Father and son Homer (Melvyn Douglas) and Hud (Paul Newman) live together in a state of constant tension on the family ranch, witnessed by Hud’s teen nephew and Neal’s Alma, the housekeeper. Hud is a drinker, womanizer, and all-around unsavory character, saved only by that Paul Newman charm; and Alma, burned in the past by similar men, walks a thin line between flirtation and keeping him at arm’s length. Family hostility bubbles over as the men struggle for control of the ranch before catastrophe hits the livestock, and Hud’s attempted sexual assault of Alma seems almost a footnote to the rest of the film.Patricia Nealplays her as a hard-edged woman with a vulnerable core underneath, resigned to the sort of treatment she gets from men like Hud. When she leaves town, it feels almost inevitable that she will end up somewhere much the same.
1Jean-Louis Trintignant as Gordon or Silence - The Great Silence (1968)
You’d better have a knack for being subtle if you’re acting against someone like Klaus Kinski, andJean-Louis Trintignantdoes just that. Add the fact that his character is a mute and the feat of acting he pulls off is even more stunning. Kinski is a bounty killer named Loco who killed Silence’s parents and sliced his vocal cords when he was a child. Grown up now, Silence joins forces with the bandits that Loco hunts through a snowy mountain range, preceded by his reputation for manipulating his enemies into drawing their weapons first, so he technically only kills in self-defense. Perhaps Silence’s sensitivity and vulnerability are automatically assumed by the audience due to his muteness and the loss of his parents, but Trintignant is able to express multitudes through just a flick of the eyes while Kinski’s Loco thrashes about in thiswintry spaghetti Western.
