100 Best Western Films

The Western is a genre of art that may be found in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West.

Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 but most are set between the end of the American Civil War (1865) and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.

There are also a number of films about Western-type characters in contemporary settings, such as Junior Bonner set in the 1970s and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in the 21st century.

Westerns often portray how primitive and obsolete ways of life confronted modern technological or social changes. This may be depicted by showing conflict between natives and settlers or U.S. Cavalry or between cattle ranchers and farmers ("sodbusters"), or by showing ranchers being threatened by the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

American Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s emphasize the values of honor and sacrifice. Westerns from the 1960s and 1970s often have a more pessimistic view, glorifying a rebellious anti-hero and highlighting the cynicism, brutality and inequality of the American West. Despite being tightly associated with a specific time and place in American history, these themes have allowed Westerns to be produced and enjoyed across the world.

100 of the Best Western Films Quiz

1. Magnificent Seven (1960)

2. The Searchers (1956)

3. Red River (1948)

4. High Noon (1952)

5. Shane(1953)

6. Unforgiven(1992)

7. Johnny Guitar

8. Wild Bunch (1969)

9. Bad Day at Black Rock

10. Stagecoach (1939)

11. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

12. No Country for Old Men

13. They Died with Their Boot On

14. Will Penny

15. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

16. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

17. Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

18. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

19. Monte Walsh

20. Broken Arrow (1950)

21. My Darling Clementine

22. Lonely Are The Brave

23. Rancho Notorious

24. John Ford Cavalry Trilogy (Fort Apache,

25. The Gunfighter

26. Rio Bravo (1959)

27. Winchester '73 (1950)

28. Hondo

29. Man From Laramie

30. Ulzana’s Raid

31. Blood On the Moon

32. Major Dundee

33. Once Upon a Time in the West

34. The Naked Spur

35. Sergio Leone Dollars Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the)

36. Bend of the River

37. Tumbleweeds

38. Hombre

39. Hud

40. Don’t Fence Me In

41. Dodge City

42. The Big Sky

43. Ride the High Country

44. Open Range

45. The Westerner

46. Last of the Mohicans

47. The Shootist

48. Destry Rides Again

49. The Professional

50. Tall In the Saddle

51. Ride Lonesome

52. The Plainsman

53. Cat Ballou (1965)

54. The Tall T

55. Jesse James

56. Little Big Man

57. Riders of the Purple Sage

58. The Alamo

59. The Far Country

60. Three Godfathers

61. Appaloosa

62. Forty Guns

63. 3:10 to Yuma

64. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

65. Sergeant Rutledge

66. Little Big Horn

67. Seven Men from Now

68. Santa Fe Trail

69. The Paleface

70. Angel and the Badman

71. Duel in the Sun

72. How the West was Won

73. The Big Trail (1930)

74. Paint Your Wagon

75. Tombstone

76. Hearts of the West

77. Hang’em High

78. Ten Wanted Men

79. The Virginian

80. Lone Star

81. Run of the Arrow

82. The Vanishing American

83. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

84. Jeremiah Johnson

85. Cowboy

86. Barbarosa

87. One Eyed Jacks

88. Bad Company

89. Ramrod

90. The Long Riders

91. The Missing

92. Four Faces West

93. The Ballad of Little Jo

94. The Covered Wagon

95. No Name on the Bullet

96. Brokeback Mountain

97. Western Union

98. Support Your Local Sheriff

99. The Kentuckian

100. Blazing Saddles (1974)