List Your Top Westerns ...

I never have made up my mind whether The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is an authentic western – as we usually think of westerns – or not. I have left it off this list of 35 films up to 1969, often considered the (rather arbitrary) end of the Classic Era in film. They are in chronological order.

Riders Of The Purple Sage / Lynn Reynolds (1925)
In Old Arizona / Irving Cummings (1928)
Hell’s Heroes / William Wyler (1929)
Billy The Kid / King Vidor (1930)
The Last Of The Mohicans / George B. Seitz (1936)
The Plainsman / Cecil B. DeMille (1936)
Stagecoach / John Ford (1939)
Zorro’s Fighting Legion / William Witney and John English (1939)
The Mark of Zorro / Rouben Mamoulian (1940)
Dark Command / Raoul Walsh (1940)
They Died With Their Boots On / Raoul Walsh (1941)
Along Came Jones / Stuart Heisler (1945)
My Darling Clementine / John Ford (1946)
Red River / Howard Hawkes (1948)
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon / John Ford (1949)
The Gunfighter / Henry King (1950)
High Noon / Fred Zinneman (1952)
The Naked Spur / Anthony Mann (1953)
Shane / George Stevens (1953)
Johnny Guitar / Nicholas Ray (1954)
Vera Cruz / Robert Aldrich (1954)
The Last Frontier / Anthony Mann (1955)
The Searchers / John Ford (1956)
The Tall T / Budd Boetticher (1957)
Cowboy / Delmer Daves (1958)
Man Of The West / Anthony Mann (1958)
Ride Lonesome / Budd Boetticher (1959)
No Name On The Bullet / Jack Arnold (1959)
Comanche Station / Budd Boetticher (1960)
Posse From Hell / Herbert Coleman (1961)
Ride The High Country / Sam Peckinpah (1962)
Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cativo (The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly) / Sergio Leone (1966)
C’era Una Volta Il West (Once Upon A Time In The West) / Sergio Leone (1968)
True Grit / Henry Hathaway (1969)
The Wild Bunch / Sam Peckinpah (1969)