Director: john ford.

Screenwriter: dudley nichols.

Year: 1939

Westerns are the most distinctive part of Hollywood genre, which has a long history of American early European immigration and future development. /kloc-At the beginning of the 7th century, a large number of Puritan immigrants came to the east coast of the United States by may flower, and with the help of the aborigines, they lived a stable and stable life, which also developed into the custom of Thanksgiving in the future. After the immigrants gradually developed into a larger scale, they set the expansion goal in the west. Immigrants on the east coast, with the aristocratic mentality of the old European civilization, think that their living materials are more advanced than those of the indigenous people in the west, and regard the west as a backward, barbaric and inferior nation, so they conquer, educate and even exterminate their own nation with the cultural and social attitude of "teachers" and even "fundamentalism". Because of the differences in cultural and social backgrounds, the two sides often have friction, struggle and hatred. This historical background and cultural factors have become the opposite influence of "civilization" and "barbarism" in western films in the future, which describes the struggle between the protagonist and his group in opening up the west and the aborigines, while the protagonist often swings between social order and usually plays the role of the lower class, such as Ringo (john wayne, john wayne), the protagonist in The Coach (1939). In addition, long before westerns became a popular film type at that time, folk novels had developed the appearance of their western myths at the end of 19, so the conventional elements of westerns were quickly and completely constructed. Another feature of western films is his "populism" spirit, which emphasizes the establishment of individualism and believes that as long as you work hard, you will have a bright future and unite with the group forces to defeat the evil side. This spirit is not only frank capra's belief, but also reflected in western movies. The hero is a typical individualistic strong personality, full of self-confidence and tenacity, who resists the wild natives in the west and becomes a myth of heroic myth. Because the blueprint of western movies is the aggregation of American history and culture, it has a unique pioneering spirit and self-identity belief, so it can't be found in other countries, unlike musicals, film noir, gangs, etc., which can penetrate with other nation-states with different cultures.

As far as the overall narrative is concerned, the first is the introduction of a group or family. In Post Horse Carriage, a group of people from different social classes gather in the post horse carriage; In The Searcher (1956), the hero is reunited with his family. Then the stable social order will be threatened or even persecuted. In The Searcher, the hero's family is killed by aborigines and his niece is taken away. Here, the white people will rise up and resist, such as the gun battle with the aborigines in the later stage of Post Horse, or the protagonist will appear as a lone ranger. The climax ends with an amazing gun battle between the two sides or the confrontation between the protagonist's enemies and guns. After all the events are solved, the protagonist finally returns to the eastern civilized society or continues to wander at the bottom of the social order. This narrative formulation is similar to the later martial arts type developed in Chinese-speaking areas: the protagonist initially had family background and Jianghu fame, but was defeated in an accident or in the case of being wiped out, resulting in a turning point in the character's heart, then practiced hard under the guise of anonymity, and finally fought a decisive battle with the enemy to push the story to a climax, and retired to the Jianghu alone after victory. & ltbr/>；

"Post Horse" is an important masterpiece in more than 0/00 western films by john ford/KLOC, which is adapted from Boule de suif, a short story by Guy de Mossant, a French realist writer in the 9th century. Describe a group of people from different social classes. They are all in the same destination, Lozburg. Passengers on the bus include: middle-class women (pregnant women), prostitutes, drunken doctors, small wine merchants, bank capitalists, gamblers, prisoners, policemen and drivers. Through the differences of this group of people's identities, we can interpret the director's criticism of human nature and class in their interaction. The scene of a meal is quite touching. When everyone decided to continue to go to Lozburg, everyone sat down to eat, and the prostitute Da Le was left behind by Ringo when she left. The rest of the people, except the wine merchants and doctors, sat far away, showing the class gap and self-sustaining mainstream social morality contempt for the status of prostitutes, leaving Ringo, who also belongs to the lower class, sitting next to her. At the beginning of the film, this image was also displayed by a group of middle-class women's friends, who advised her not to ride with prostitutes. Criticism of capitalism mainly lies in the role of bank capitalists. There is a scene where a pregnant woman needs time to recuperate after giving birth, but the capitalist is selfish. Although no one agreed to start, he roared loudly and tried to persuade everyone to go on the road. Through the interaction of this role, the director reflects on the morality and class problems of the mainstream society.

In western movies, female characters often play the role of stabilizing families and continuing future generations. In this film, middle-class women give birth to a baby girl on the way, and the identity of the baby girl once again symbolizes the continuation of life. This image is a continuation of a very important life value for the pioneering American people. In the film, Ringo's proposal to Dolores represents a stable and structured family organization. In addition, western movies are still a kind of male-centered type, which comes down in one continuous line with film noir and gangster movies. Women are weak, passive and even materialized in it. Martin, the supporting actor in The Searcher, accidentally changed his hat to an Indian woman. We can also see a scene in The Coach, where a woman has just given birth, and a group of men are getting together to discuss whether to keep her for an extra day, while Da Le is called to the kitchen to make coffee for them to enjoy. The status of women here belongs entirely to the role of workers or contributors.

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The conflict with the aborigines is the motif throughout the film. Through the interaction between almost every character in the film, we can see that we are afraid or angry at their cruelty. At the beginning of the film, the Apache people, led by the leader Jerome, burned a lot of things they saw, which echoed what Ringo said when he appeared later: last night, the farm was razed to the ground. The informer is another indigenous summer night person, telling us that there is deep hatred between the two peoples, which shows that these barbarians are divided and do not know how to unite. The Apache invasion also helped to unite the characters. When Ringo was about to escape, he stopped at the door, because he saw the smoke in the distant mountains, which showed the Apache approaching and threatening. His stay shows the sense of morality and justice of the characters in western films, and leads everyone to resist Apache aggression. Later, the sheriff in Fred Zinnemann's "Noon, 1952" film was also a figure with a deep sense of social morality. He even calls his name before shooting at the enemy's back, and he doesn't want to sneak up like a villain. The morality of this role is also the inertia motif of western movies. However, this morality was later broken in Italian western films. In Sergio Leone's The Good Man, the Bad Man and the Ugly Man (1966), the role of the good man is actually a partner liar who colludes with the ugly man.

Finally, the "post-horse carriage" is also moving towards a stable social life. It and the heroine promised to live together on the border farm after being released from prison, leaving a world full of utopian fantasies, which also has the psychological effect of calming people's hearts and easing social emotions.

From the development of westerns to the appearance of audio films in 1930s, especially the birth of a new type of musical, the audience's taste was changed, which did not survive until the westerns re-emerged in the 1940s after World War II. In response to the subsequent appearance of television, they were also made into series and infiltrated into the television circle. This burning craze retreated in the 1970s, mainly because the civil rights movement was advocated in the 1960s, and many demonstrations took to the streets. The content of inter-ethnic struggle in western movies is the object of criticism by civil rights activists. In addition, with the rise of the anti-Vietnam war, pacifists have also distanced themselves from the hot gun battle scenes in the movies. Through these social phenomena, western films are once again going into recession. Later development was mainly based on variations of the opposite type, such as Clint Eastwood's Unforgettable (1992) and Leonie's trilogy "Italian West": a handful of dollars (meaning: per). 1964), "For a few more dollars", "Good people and bad people are ugly, ll buono it brutto, 1966). The fighting scenes in western movies also indirectly affected the gunfight confrontation between police and robbers in the future. Looking at the development of Hollywood genre films, besides the seven categories defined by andre bazan: westerns, musicals, gangster films, comedies, farce chases, melodramas and film noir, science fiction films, horror films and thrillers, many sub-genre and mixed-genre films have been developed. However, in the development of genre hegemony in Hollywood, apart from musicals, westerns are the most mature and influential.