# 1s. Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks, 1959, The Searchers, John Ford, 1956These two films, which, after much deliberation, we've concluded are inseperable atop this list, are marvels of perfect filmmaking, showcasing the prodigious talents of masters Howard Hawks, John Ford, and John Wayne at the absolute height of their respective, immense powers.
#3. The Man From Laramie, Anthony Mann, 1955Mann's film is nothing less than a perfectly pitched rendering of the "stranger comes to town" trope, with perfect being the operative word. In his best film with Stewart, Mann explores the psychology of families of blood and families of necessity with staggering dexterity.
# 4. Red River, Howard Hawks, 1948Hawks' grand epic sets the bar unreachably high for the cattle drive western and offers the stolid presence of John Wayne's Thomas Dunson and his iconic Red River D pitted against the feverish, fiery youth of Montgomery Clift's Matt Garth in one of cinema's great tete-a-tete's.
#5. The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah, 1969Peckinpah's film is, to appropriate the term in its purest from, a punk Western, loud, furious, violent, and necessarily subversive. What's more, the film counts among its cast Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, and Strother Martin, as fine a trio of character actors as have ever stalked the West.
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6. Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Sergio Leone, 1966Leone's wildly popular film is highly stylized, utterly sprawling, and nothing if not indelible. Many of the film's masterstrokes, such as the director's hard cut close ups and Ennio Morricone's unforgettable theme, have become familiar to the point of parody, which says something of the impact and effect of this nearly 3 hour, entirely dubbed masterpiece.
#7. Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood, 1992Eastwood's is a dark and relentless film, with an emphasis on the psychology of heroism, villany, and justice that makes it easily the finest modern western and a pillar of the genre.
#8. The Calvary Trilogy (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande), John Ford, 1948/1949/1950Over the course of these three films, Ford, John Wayne, and a protean stable of stars (Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara) and character actors (Ward Bond, Ben Johnson) established the blueprint for the War-Western, with Wayne's protagonists confronting themes of pride, duty, family, and aging against the striking tableau of Monument Valley.
# 9. Winchester '73, Anthony Mann, 1950It's entirely possible to craft an essential Westerns list comprised solely of Anthony Mann films (and more will indeed appear higher on this list), but this concept driven film nudges onto the list ahead of equally rough hewn Mann films such as
The Far Country (1954),
The Furies (1950), and
Bend of the River (1952) based almost solely on the strength of its epic final shootout, which ranks as the best of the genre and possibly in all of cinema.
# 10. Day of the Outlaw, Andre de Toth, 1959Finally available on DVD courtesy of Criterion, de Toth's film is a tense tour de force, playing striking compositions and a truly masterful final set-piece against the classic "stranger comes to town" motif, with no less a lion than Burl Ives as the stranger.
Vigalondo's is that most unfortunate type of film that prizes ingenuity and structural wit over genuine character development and narrative engagement. The film's neo sci-fi plot incites a framework of infinite regression that quickly commandeers any sense of dramatic tension and dulls the emotional impact of its machinations entirely. In short, this is movie-as-logic-proof filmmaking at its most uninspiring.
