Browsing: Revisionist Westerns

Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) is a film that feels like a half-remembered dream, a melancholic poem for…

Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) redefined what a Western could be. Often called the definitive ‘anti-Western,’ the film turned the mythology of the frontier inside out, exposing the human cost of ambition and greed

Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (1970) stands as one of Hollywood’s boldest revisionist Westerns — a film that transformed how America viewed its past. This analysis explores how Penn’s vision shattered the myths of the frontier and reflected the turmoil of the Vietnam era.

In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War and a period of profound social upheaval in America, director Sam…

For decades, the American Western was the bedrock of Hollywood’s national mythology. It was a genre of moral certainty, a…