Horizons West
Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood
by Jim Kitses
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Book Presentation:
Expanded edition of a key critical account of the western genre and its major figures – from John Ford to Sergio Leone.
When first published in 1969, Horizons West was immediately recognised as the definitive critical account of the western film and some of its key directors. This greatly expanded new edition is, like the original, written in a graceful, penetrating and absorbingly readable style. It provides definitive critical analysis of the six greatest filmmakers of the western genre: John Ford, Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. And it offers illuminating accounts of such classic westerns as The Searchers, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Once Upon a Time in the West, Shane and many, many more.
Among the completely new material in this edition is Kitses's magisterial account of the work of the greatest of western directors John Ford. Kitses also assesses how the western has been challenged by revisionist historical accounts of the West and the Western, and by movements such as feminism, postmodernism, multiculturalism and psychoanalysis.
The product of a lifetime's labour and love, Horizons West is a landmark of scholarship and interpretation devoted to what is for many Hollywood's signature genre. It provides a compelling account of the powerful mythology of America's past as forged by western films and the men who made them.
About the Author:
JIM KITSES is Professor of Cinema, San Francisco State University. He is the author of Gun Crazy (1994) and co-editor of The Western Reader (1998).
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Filming the Legend in the Sound Era
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