Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man is an undeniably mysterious film. The protagonist, accountant William Blake, is mistaken for the other famous William Blake, the mystic/visionary English Romantic poet. Some of you may be familiar with Blake from the literature courses you’ve taken, but he may be an unknown to others. As you ponder the film for class tomorrow, I’d suggest reading up on him a bit.

Here are three short resources that start to characterize Blake’s importance to the film.

Mann and Boetticher each made a group of films in the 1950s that set the standard for what critics have called the “psychological” western – a turn toward dark, gloomy, and tormented protagonists and bleak plots that certainly influenced the work of directors like John Ford and helped pave the way for even darker revisionist westerns of the 1960s and 1970s. Here are lists of their films. While Boetticher worked exclusively with Randolph Scott in his “Ranown Cycle,” Mann primarily used James Stewart, but also directed other actors associated with the genre.

Anthony Mann

Winchester ’73 (1950, James Stewart)

The Furies (1950, Barbara Stanwick)

Devil’s Doorway (1950, Robert Taylor)

Bend of the River (1952, James Stewart)

The Naked Spur (1953, James Stewart)

The Far Country (1954, James Stewart)

The Man from Laramie (1955, James Stewart)

The Last Frontier (1955, Victor Mature)

The Tin Star (1957, Henry Fonda)

Man of the West (1958, Gary Cooper)

Budd Boetticher

Seven Men from Now (1956)

The Tall T (1957)

Decision at Sundown (1957)

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)

Westbound (1958)

Ride Lonesome (1959)

Comanche Station (1960)

Promotional poster for Deadwood, Season One.

The votes are in and, although it was relatively close, our final Wednesday night screening will consist of two episodes from the first season of the HBO series Deadwood. Depending on how our semester is going at that point, I might use some in class time to talk about – and possibly screen – clips or episodes from some earlier TV westerns.

The final vote was: Deadwood – 12, Meek’s Cutoff – 9, Sukiyaki Western Django – 6. Both Meek’s Cutoff and Sukiyaki Western Django are now possibilities for Short Essay #2.

John Ford is the director most associated with the western, and some call him the best director in the history of American cinema. In his biography of Ford, Joseph McBride writes, “At the famous meeting in October 1950 when the Screen Director’s Guild was torn apart of the issue of the Hollywood blacklist, the leading figure in the guild, who had been sitting in enigmatic silence throughout the evening, finally rose to address his colleagues. ‘My name is John Ford,’ he said. ‘I am a director of Westerns'” (416). Although he directed a number of silent, feature-length westerns, I know of only four that survive in complete or near-complete prints: Straight Shooting (Universal, 1917), Bucking Broadway (Universal, 1917), The Iron Horse (Fox, 1924), and 3 Bad Men (Fox, 1926). During the sound era, however, he produced a number of important films in the genre, including three we are watching in class. His entire western output during this period is below:

Stagecoach (Walter Wanger /United Artists, 1939)

Drums Along the Mohawk (Fox, 1939) – “Pennsylvania Western”

My Darling Clementine (Fox, 1946)

Fort Apache (Argosy/RKO, 1948)

3 Godfathers (Argosy/MGM, 1948)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Argosy/RKO, 1949)

Wagon Master (Argosy/RKO, 1950)

Rio Grande (Argosy/Republic, 1950)

The Searchers (Warner Bros., 1956)

The Horse Soldiers (Mirish/United Artists, 1959)

Sergeant Rutledge (Warner Bros., 1960)

Two Rode Together (Columbia, 1961)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Paramount, 1962)

Cheyenne Autumn (Warner Bros., 1964)

Here is a list of the volumes in the University of California Press’s History of American Cinema series, along with links to their records in the JMU library catalog. With off-campus library access, you can read these as eBooks.

• Vol 1: Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907
• Vol 2: Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915 
• Vol 3: Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Pictures, 1915-1928
• Vol 4: Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926-1931
• Vol 5: Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 
• Vol 6: Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s
• Vol 7: Peter Lev, Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959
• Vol 8: Paul Monaco, The Sixties, 1960-1969
• Vol 9: David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979
• Vol 10: Stephen Prince, A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electric Rainbow, 1980-1989

Overland Stage Raiders (Sherman, 1938), trailer:

[youtube wAIx0XefUbw 604 364]

Riders of Destiny (Bradbury, 1933), with John Wayne as “Singin’ Sandy Sanders.” Wayne croons at the opening of the film:

[youtube pcMAXuVNX8 604 364]

Here are links to the films we watched in class today:

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Annie Oakley (Edison, 1894), Buffalo Dance (Edison, 1894), Bucking Broncho (Edison, 1894)

Cripple Creek Bar-Room Scene (Edison, 1899)

The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903)