Historical Dictionary of Westerns in Cinema

摘要

Now is a good time to publish this work, as Westerns continue to fascinate the cinemagoer. In recent months our mainstream cinema chains have offered us a re-make of 3:10 to Yuma and brought us new takes on the old theme such as No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. In his Series Editor's Foreword, Jon Woronoff reminds us that "In the world of cinema, some things remain static and some things change". However, despite changing attitudes towards Native Americans from their previous depiction as Red Indians and other more liberal stances, the Western remains essentially recognisable as the same genre that the earliest film-goers were fascinated by as far back as 1903, when The Great Train Robbery hit the screens with gimmicks such outlaws causing people to duck as they fired their six-shooters directly at the audience.