American West Vision

 　　The film "Russian Ark" directed by Alexander Sokolov recreates 300 years of Russia's history in one shot. Another big country in the world, the United States, has a short history, but at least 100 CDs are needed to reproduce the American spirit in the pioneering century of the West. Glory and dreams are woven into a big flower basket.

　　There would be no West without cowboys, and there would be no America without the West. Europeans who immigrated to America have been following the sun—westwards and westwards.

　　Vast grasslands, vast deserts, strange canyons, lonely towns, cowboys riding horses, facing the scorching sun. Shopping in banks, bars and gunmen, American Westerns take you into an unfamiliar world in a unique way.

　　The first American Western DVD I bought was "Slaying the Dragon" starring John Wayne. An old cowboy was already fat and had a big belly, but he didn't have the pride of a cowboy except that he was quick to shoot. It was 2001, and I had just finished editing Ms. Jiechen's book "Secretly Enchanting", which was a book devoted to the fun of Taodi. By the end of 2008, I had over a hundred American Westerns in store. In December 2008, I bought a copy of John Wayne's "The Great Track", black and white, from 1930. Wow! Such a handsome young man, hunting down a murderer who killed a hunter. He uses a very long rifle, which I don't think is suitable for mounted shooting. The "Red Gallbladder Slaying the Dragon" mentioned earlier was Wayne's work in 1959. He also filmed "Flying Off Mountains" and "Red River". Speaking of American Westerns, we can't help but talk about John Wayne, the Oscar winner is a hero in the hearts of Americans, and the officers and soldiers of the West Point Military Academy often regard him as their idol.

　　In an age where modernity is increasingly swallowing nature, we miss the western cowboys with a simple lifestyle even more. With their lives, there will be 100 years of bright western movies, and I don't think there will be any kind of movie that can last a century in the future. More like a documentary, "History of the West" brings together a large number of movie stars to jointly interpret the history of the American West. It is the epitome of the West for a hundred years.

　　For a hundred years, American Western movies have had their own cultural symbols: revolvers, rifles, war horses, leather boots, spurs, log cabin bars, movable wooden doors, playing cards, gold mines, whiskey, banks, trains, police, Prostitutes and cancan dancers. Americans cannot live without the West. The pioneering spirit of the West can best represent Americans’ demands for the world outside themselves. They have gone through hardships to open up the vast wasteland and grassland in the western United States. Of course, they have also ruthlessly destroyed the culture of the Indians, and even race. American immigrants to the west, conflicts and contradictions with Indians have formed a major feature of American westerns. In the later period, this conflict has become fusion. The Oscar-winning film "Dancing With Wolves" is a representative work of American cultural fusion, involving Indians. human survival issues. The Indians are simple and dumb, tough and simple, and the American attack helicopter "Apache" is named after the Indian tribe. The four-wheeled carriage carries the dream of the Americans. Traveling to the west, the expansion of the living space is a contest between man and nature, and the competition between man and man who violated the Indians' right to live, the predatory nature of the white people has become extremely cruel. Colonization soaked the life of the American West with the blood and tears of the natives.

　　A warhorse gallops across the wasteland, with a revolver on his waist and a rifle hanging diagonally from his crotch. Cowboys in the American West like to be alone. They are tough, sexy, and gentle, with an indelible masculine charm. They live in no fixed place, they love and are loved, but they don't have wives. When they get to the town, they never take away the woman who falls in love with him. In the woman's expectation, his galloping horse raised dust all the way. In The Pale Rider, the cowboy eradicates the bully and quietly leaves the town, leaving the woman who fell in love with him. Just like Lei Feng has spurred our generations, the spirit of cowboys has inspired generations of Americans. Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck and other American real men all threw themselves into the West. The ranks of heroes.

　　Cowboys are kind and just, like Robinson in Europe and like our Liangshan heroes. They eradicate violence and save lives. When the people are in crisis, heroes suddenly appear and solve the problem. They quietly disappear, they do not ask for anything in return, This is the character of the hero of the west.

　　Behind every cowboy, there is a woman, or a slut, or a little bird, or a gangster. Women in the west have women who are like water and women who are like juice. Anyway, you feel that women in the West are women. This is also one of the highlights of Western movies.

　　Early American westerns were all male cowboys. Later, sexy cowgirls appeared, which began to subvert westerns and cater to the film market. The most typical films are Sharon Stone and Kim Hackman. In "Deadly Pleasure" co-starring with DiCaprio, I didn't expect the vase-like sister Sha to play a female killer in such a masterful and domineering way. The rhythm of the whole film is tight and the marksmanship is absolutely suffocating. Both Jane Fonda and Nicole Kidman have successfully played the sassy Western woman. Later, two big beauties, Penelope Cruz and Barry Moore, also got their hands on westerns. "The Gunslinger" and "The Incense of a Deadly Woman" were wild, but the films were too bad to be compared with the generation of Sister Sha.

　　American Westerns focus on 4 scenes: Ranch War, Town Removal, Bank Robbery, and Train Pickup.

　　Western film keywords: robbery, chase, duel, gambling, drinking, smoking cigars, picking up girls, panning for gold.

　　The director will arrange the violent disputes in the bar or the street of the small town, which is almost always the case for a hundred years. A typical example is "Noon". The time in the play matches the time of the film. Every minute and every second, you can feel the murderousness of the town streets before the shootout. In the western frontier town where bandits are rampant, tough cowboys also often act as law enforcement in place of the police. Eastwood is a master of this role, and he performed the "Red Dead Redemption" series.

　　Speaking of American Westerns, we can't help but mention the James Young gangster, who has adapted a lot of Westerns with his true stories. The most exciting one is "The Long Journey Gunner", starring 4 groups of film brothers. In the film, the "Younger Gang" was ambushed by the police while robbing a bank. A tragic and well-ordered shootout took place on the streets of the town. Expand. It was September 7, 1876. Gang violence was not subdued until the end of the 19th century.

　　American Westerns have been filmed over and over, and they have become a pattern: "The people of Li and the people suffer, the heroic cowboys solve the crisis, the violence is eliminated and the gangsters are annihilated, and the heroes and beauties are reunited." The story that comes out, however, is that the spirit of the West as the quintessence of American culture is inexhaustible, and it underpins the glorious 100 years of American Westerns. So Americans are still making Westerns today.

　　Later, the Japanese also came to the west. Japanese movie star Toshiro Mifune made westerns about playing with knives. Italians and Australians were not alone and made westerns that belonged to their local culture. But no matter how fancy it is, it can't compare to the United States. The best western movie in China is "The Swordsman in Double Flag Town" starring Sun Haiying. The Chinese, who are better at dancing the sword than the Japanese, performed the magical swordsmanship with the spirit of Lao and Zhuang.

　　There are two most tragic American Westerns: one is "Sunset and Yellow Sand", which depicts several western gangsters being rounded up by the police and finally shot to death, which deduces the perfect violent aesthetics; the other film is called "Blood in the Sun" , the blend of love and hatred for a pair of lovers, and finally both drink bullets.

　　In my collection of American Westerns, I have carefully selected 10 for you: "Flying Off the Mountains", "The Gunman on a Long Journey", "The Searchers", "Noon", "The Tiger and Leopard", "The Impossible" Forgiveness, Blood in the Sun, Dances With Wolves, Disappearance and Deadly Thrill. Of course, the best 10 American Western stars please remember their names: John Wayne, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Clint Eastwood, Sergio ·Lionne, Paul Newman, Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall and Lee Van Cleef were the ones who elevated the American pioneering spirit, a continuation of the "Mayflower". Exploring the maximum living space and quality of life is the reason why Americans and American Westerns never get tired of watching them.

　　In the western United States, northern Australia, Alberta in Canada, and the Pampas in Argentina, there are still the last cowboys on the earth. Passionately embracing everything that nature has given them, and happily enjoying the "noon" time, it is time for them to declare the world cultural heritage.

　　The information about American Western films was published in the 8th issue of "Watching Movies" magazine in 2003. It also listed a list of Western films in the past century, and gave us a feast of American Western films. The film, which is reviewed as a paragraph every 10 years, allows us to see the development of the American western film for a hundred years and the pioneering history of the United States.