Western films: These 13 classics are a must-see

Howdy, stranger! For the second time, we're turning our attention to the most American of all genres in our film lists. The Western hasn't just enjoyed a run recently in Taylor Sheridan's series ("Yellowstone," "1883," "1923"), it's also back in theaters ("Horizon," "Rust"), and is sometimes set—see Mads Mikkelsen in "King's Land"—on the heathland of Jutland. Most often, though, the Western reflects America's history. The following recommendations aren't just a Western dump; you absolutely should get to know these 13 films.

Director : Robert Altman

What it's about : Robert Altman takes the audience to the American Northwest 130 years ago. In an ugly mining town with crooked cottages, McCabe (Warren Beatty) opens a new brothel with the young madam, Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie). He becomes a wealthy man, falls unhappily in love with his business partner, and only recognizes new power relations when they inevitably mean his death. Altman creates a realistic Western world that seems both new and rotten at once, officially civilized by democracy, but still filled with wilderness inside. And Leonard Cohen sings along.

Where I can watch it: on DVD; on Prime Video, Apple TV (for a fee)

Director: Henry Hathaway

What it's about: At the end, Henry Hathaway simply rips off the story of "Nevada Smith" (1965). After Steve McQueen shoots Karl Malden, the last of the parricides, through his hands and knees, he lets him live, bleed, maybe even drown in the river. In any case, this leaden "The End" concludes the odyssey of half-breed Max Sand. Revenge has once again proven to be blood sausage, that's enough.

Before that, we traveled through magnificent landscapes with McQueen and witnessed Max's transformation from a greenhorn to a true Westerner. A thrilling film, extremely violent by the standards of 1960s cinema, and not least for that reason, still playable today. The problem: McQueen, already over 30 at the time, was clearly miscast as the angry Wild West teen.

Where I can watch it: on DVD; on Magenta TV (flat rate), on Prime Video, Sky Store, Apple TV (for a fee)

Director: John Huston

What it's about: A Western era with John Huston. Burt Lancaster lugs an old piano to the Zachary Ranch, and the discrepancy between the instrument and its surroundings promises unusual entertainment, as does a sinister soldier who roams the land like the undead. "The Unforgiven," the story of an indigenous girl (Audrey Hepburn) raised by white people, was a box office hit in 1960: vibrant Technicolor, gorgeous Panavision.

Huston likely emphasized the white settlers' racism toward the Kiowa so strongly for reasons of authenticity. However, the fact that the hero (Lancaster) also shares this sentiment makes the film difficult—especially since Hollywood had already achieved a more nuanced portrayal of indigenous people in Westerns. Lancaster, in turn, contributed enormously to this as the uprooted Apache in Robert Aldrich's "Massai" (1954).

Where I can watch it: on DVD and Blu-ray; on MGM+ - Prime Video Channels (flat rate), Arte (free), Prime Video and Apple TV (for a fee)

Director: Howard Hawks

What it's about: Real-life characters. No flashbacks. No camera tricks: "The Sky" is one of the most beautiful Westerns ever, a pathos-free male friendship between Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin – featuring Dimitri Tiomkin's best Western music after "High Noon." Two idlers accompany French fur traders to the upper reaches of the Missouri River, struggle with competition and the indigenous people, and both fall in love with a beautiful chief's daughter. All without sentimentality, but with Arthur Hunnicutt as the trapper of all trappers.

Where I can watch it: on DVD; on Plex (free)

Director: Henry Hathaway

What it's about: The Old West is moving toward more civilized times in Henry Hathaway's "True Grit" (1969). In the inns, people already eat from china, the walls are finely wallpapered, and at executions, children swing in the background, chestnut vendors move through the aisles, and onlookers sing "Amazing Grace" for the souls of those to be hanged. In this world, Marshal Rooster Cogburn searches for a young girl's father's murderer. The role earned John Wayne a long-awaited Oscar in 1969.

Where I can watch it: on DVD; on Joyn (flat rate), on Prime Video, Apple TV, Sky Store (for a fee)

Director: Sam Peckinpah

What it's about: Sam Peckinpah's West was still free—in a different, less pathetic way, admittedly, than in the John Wayne universe. And someone like Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson), who fights against the enclosure of this land, who opposes the rights of ranchers and money with his own, is his hero. Peckinpah, of course, doesn't tell the true story of the notorious outlaw and his murderer. Garrett (James Coburn) and the Kid represent two Americas for him—the old, unadulterated, masculine one, and the new, civilized, and in every way presumptuous one.

The melancholy of a sinking world is perfectly matched by Bob Dylan's whiny voice, which adorns the images with his songs. At the end, he sings "Knocking on Heaven's Door" – full of pain.

Where I can watch it: on DVD; on Prime Video, Magenta TV, freenet Video, Maxdome, Apple TV (for a fee)

Director: William Wyler

What it's about: This American Civil War epic begins with a tongue-in-cheek twist, featuring Samantha, the rabid fighter goose, and a carriage race to the church and the prayer house. In "The Temptation of the Gods" (1956), William Wyler tells the story of how the war between Yankees and rebels destroyed an idyllic setting. The humorous tone, the caricatural exaggeration of the Quaker community, and a Gary Cooper who, beneath the stiff wardrobe of the strict pacifist Jesse Bloomer, is always the coolest Westerner of all, keep the film fresh almost 70 years after its release. The transition from comedy to drama is seamless, and only Dimitri Tiomkin's music is occasionally flooded with overly lush angelic choirs.

Nouvelle Vague master Jean-Luc Godard considered Cooper's face to belong to the realm of mineralogy. Anthony Perkins still plays the shy young hero here, but at times his awkward smile is reminiscent of the Hitchcock killer Norman Bates that would emerge from him four years later.

Where I can watch it: on DVD; on Prime Video, Apple TV, maxdome, freenet Video (for a fee)

Director: Howard Hawks

What it's about: Howard Hawks remade his own classic film, Rio Bravo, in 1966 – this time as a buddy movie. "El Dorado" was one of the last significant Westerns starring John Wayne. A sheriff, a gunslinger, a greenhorn with a knife instinct, and an old codger who constantly emphasizes his role in the Indian Wars help a small-time rancher against an unscrupulous cattle baron.

John Wayne shows that he can ride backward, and actor Robert Mitchum shows that he has a sense of humor. Both are a delight, only the young James Caan is annoying with his incessant reciting of equestrian poems. A few dramatic weaknesses and the abrupt ending place the sleek remake behind the more brittle original in terms of quality.

Where I can watch it: on VHS, DVD & BluRay; on Prime Video, Apple TV, Magenta TV, Sky Store, YouTube Store, Microsoft (for a fee)

Director: Martin Ritt

What it's about: A story of progress that doesn't create a new human order, but instead overwhelms the already underprivileged. White Henry Russell (Paul Newman), who was captured by Apaches as a child and later stayed with them, earns his living by selling tamed mustangs to stagecoach companies. But the era of the railroad has arrived, the mail has found a faster and safer route, and Russell takes the last stagecoach out of the small town of Sweetmary.

On the way, she is ambushed by bandits stealing money embezzled by Sweetmary's Native American agent. The ambush turns into a siege, with Russell taking the lead on the side of the besieged and fighting relentlessly to ensure the money goes to the betrayed Apaches, even if it costs the lives of the hostages. This is one of the great "Paul Newman dies at the end" films (the others are "The Unbreakable" and "The Two Bandits"), taking the side of the Native Americans. Twenty-seven years earlier, in John Ford's "Ringo/Stagecoach," they were still faceless hordes of horsemen robbing stagecoaches.

Where I can see it: on VHS, DVD & BluRay

Director: Kevin Costner

What it's about : John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) almost lost a leg, experienced the carnage of the American Civil War, recklessly decided a battle for the North, and now prefers to turn his back on the white world. In this remote world, he is confronted by a Sioux tribe whose respect he struggles to win. He witnesses how the original cultures of America are being suppressed and eliminated, how an era ends and a continent is transformed. He first tries to stop this new era, then disappears into the old one and covers all traces.

A wolf, who becomes his neighbor and with whom he "dances" in one of the film's most moving scenes, becomes a symbol of the world subjugated in a wrong, ruthless way. Costner's best film as a director and actor has much to offer us today, who have turned nature against us in a suicidal way. We should learn to dance with the wolf.

Where I can see it: on VHS, DVD & BluRay

Director: Clint Eastwood

What it's about: A man rides into Lago, the lakeside town. His eyes are narrowed and his lips are a snarl that immediately tells everyone: "I'm not a good man!" In the saloon, he's mocked by three gunslingers, whose deaths he takes with just three seconds and three bullets. The small town is on edge, awaiting the return of three bandits from prison. They once guarded the local illegal gold mine, then robbed it and whipped the sheriff to death.

Like the nest in Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon" (1952), the setting of Clint Eastwood's "The Stranger" (1973) is a home to cowards. They seek a representative who will take the blame for their peace and prosperity. But unlike Gary Cooper, the stranger is no moral figurehead—he rapes a woman and, in his "assistance," brings the residents to the brink of ruin and nervous breakdown, only to abandon them in the final showdown.

Thus, "The Stranger" appears as a counter-film to "High Noon" (a noble character left to his own devices), Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo" (community heroes unite), and John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven" (outside heroes save a village). Influenced by the Spaghetti Westerns that launched his career in Europe, Eastwood presents a thoroughly depraved Western in his second directorial effort.

Where I can watch it: on DVD and Blu-ray; on Netflix and Wow (flat rate), on Prime Video, Apple TV, maxdome, freenet Video (for a fee)

Director: Sergio Leone

What it's about: His face was like stone, his instrument was the harmonica, which, too, was characterized by strict minimalism; it produced three notes. They sounded exactly like the film's title: "Once Upon a Time in the West." When Charles Bronson, as the harmonica, with his eyes almost closed, can't take his eyes off the film's real villain, Henry Fonda, it's clear who will die in Sergio Leone's cult western. Pokerface Bronson, certainly not. His star rose with this account of the end of an era.

The Wild West, before civilization shot it in the back—a bad, old, manly time. An unscrupulous railroad owner kills a family and summons two desperados with a heart. In Sergio Leone's undisputed masterpiece, one gets a sense of the vastness of America, and it seems as if screaming demons are dancing within this vastness, driving into people. The Westerners certainly look different than in the old films with John Wayne and James Stewart. The film is elegiac, drawn-out, and beguiling, an epitaph, the sum total of all Westerns, in which the legends of the coming days move in a symphony of horror, a dance of death.

Where I can watch it: on DVD and Blu-ray; on Filmlegenden – Prime Video Channels (flat rate), on Prime Video, Apple TV, Sky Store (for a fee)

Director: George Roy Hill

What it's about: Death suited him. In his best films (see above: "They Called Him Hombre"), Paul Newman died last. Butch Cassidy is surrounded, with no chance of staying on earth even ten minutes longer. So it's better to become a myth – out into the hail of bullets with guns flying, side by side with the Sundance Kid, played by Robert Redford. Two for one tear and one wink.

Flickering between romance and irony, George Roy Hill had turned a Western into a box office hit at a time when the Western genre was up to people's knees in frustration. The era of John Wayne, Jeff Chandler, and Gary Cooper was over by 1969. But Newman and Redford as sexy thieves – audiences were fine with that. Critics, however, were peevish: Irritated by the huge box office take of "The Bandits," they slammed George Roy Hill as a Hollywood craftsman fishing in the shallows, while Hollywood itself viewed the man from Minneapolis more as a director-auteur who took risks – often successfully – in his films.

Where I can watch it: on Blu-ray; on Disney+ (flat rate), on Prime Video, Apple TV, Sky Store, Magenta TV, freenet Video, maxdome, YouTube Store, Microsoft, Rakuten TV (for a fee)