A great film. The English title is “The Seven Samurai.” Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” is also a brilliant adaption of Shakespeare’s Macbeth…
Oh, that great film epoch…
Rio Bravo is a good solid Western, notable mostly for Dean Martin probably being drunk while playing a drunk.
Completely agreed, my dear Mr. Rising Sun, but for me Mr. Walter Brennan was absolutely magnificent, as one of the finest and most neglected of supporting-role stars. His performance in that film remains as one amongst the greatest ever achieved supporting-role performances on the screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsnPpt4r7mk
Another theme of moral ambiguity is pursued by John Wayne (not my favourite actor by any means) in The Searchers where his conduct and attitudes in trying to find a young woman kidnapped by Indians go beyond the simplistic Western movie.
Yet again, we are on the same wavelenght, my dear Mr. Rising Sun. 
With at least a dozen complete books written on this film, what can one say about it that hasn’t already become a platitude through a years of repetition? Perhaps only that this film for me represents the finest ever arranged Western film, with the best ending scene in the whole history of Hollywood!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woahas_W35A
And although the phrase “strong, quiet he-man” has become something of a cliché used in describing leading men of the Western, actually there were relatively few stars to whom it really applied. Mr. John Wayne was certainly one of them. He was the quiet, reliable type, who carried those he-man characteristics into all his roles, ever ready to stand and sacrifice his own happiness, willing to shoulder the blame for misdeeds that were not his in order to protect the weak, and a man of two-fisted courage when the time finally came to swing into action.
One of his finest performances,however, that one achieved in his last film, “The Shootist”, is somehow neglected, although it certainly represents one of the most memorable film roles ever made, in which an aging legendary gunfighter puts his lifelong ideals in order as he waits out the final seven days of his life.
However, by my personal oppinion his best line originates from the “True Gritt”, where he played the role of a U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn:
“I never shot nobody I didn’t have to!”
For sure, there is something philosophical in it, something basically different and uncorroborated with our modern, supposedly more sophisticated and enlightened times…
Don’t forget “The Magnificent Seven” another Japanese samurai movie adapted into a western? Little quiz: what was the other great western movie made from a Samurai movie?
I enjoyed “Open Range” a great deal…and I don’t like Kevin Kostner that much.
“Angel and the Badman”, everytime it comes on I’ll watch it.
“Red River”, John Wayne should have gotten his Oscar for this one and at least nominated for “The Searchers”.
“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
Does “Lonesome Dove” count?
Just to add to my earlier Josey Wales quotes:
Not a hard man to track. Leaves dead men wherever he goes.
I’d have to agree on all three paragraphs.
I love to watch the old “spaghetti westerns” with him playing in them.
Clint Eastwood is still going at it… http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1205489/
though it’s not a western.
I liked the movie “High Noon” with Gary Cooper also. But never saw the '70’s movie with Lee Majors.
I liked both the old and new versions of the 3:10 to Yuma movies.
Yeah, very good movie. Funny, I just saw it last week on DVD for the first time. I like both Crowe and Bale very much, so I am biased, but indeed, they were great in this one.
Not generally a big fan of westerns, I did enjoy The Culpepper Cattle Co. in that the portrayal of the working cowboys seemed very believable.
Another western I will happily watch again is Cat Ballou.
A very entertaining bio with Lee Mavin giving an outstandingly funny performance, ably aided & abbeted by his horse. Indeed Marvin reckoned that he should have shared the Oscar with his co-star and I’m not talking about Hanoi Jane who played the title rôle.
I, like many, are not terribly keen on the ‘lady’ although it must be admitted that the opening sequence of Barbarella caused a number of them to temporarily suspend their dislike for the daft cow. 
For my money, Pale Rider is a re-make of Shane…or did you say that already?
The stance, adopted by Wayne in the fnal scene, where he grips his forearm as he’s framed by the doorway(see link picture), was typical posture of a late friend of his - whose name escapes me - and the lady in the scene to whom he is saying farewell, was said friend’s widow, so he did it for her - cute.
There are many great westerns, but my top three, or joint top one, are Shane, Big Country and Magnificent Seven.
Of the more rece3nt releases, I have to opt for ‘Open Range’
http://www.criticsrant.com/Images/criticsrant_com/Retro/Open%20Range/OpenRange_thumb.jpg
No, I didn’t, because I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more than brief parts of Shane.
Even if I have, I’ve missed any connection with Pale Rider.
I’ve googled Shane and found that Alan Ladd and Van Heflin were in it, when I mistakenly thought Dan Duryea was in it. But at least I was right in remembering that some whinger was in the lead role.
Sorry to be so harsh, but the three actors I’ve named have to be close to the top of my list of least favourite actors because they usually play what they think are fraught characters which simply annoy me. Although Danny Kaye on his worst day could beat the lot of them combined.
Harsh?..I hadn’t noticed!
Obviously you are familiar with Pale Rider, so I’ll just describe one or two scenes from Shane for you to consider and compare:
Lone rider approaches from the distance observed by young lad.
Just passing through and asks if he can have some water; invited in for supper; decides to dig up old tree stump which the farmer has been struggling with. Both get stuck-in, a bonding moment.
Ranchers trying to drive the ‘sod-busters’ off the range, hire a gunfighter after Shane and his buddy beat the crap out of a the local cowhands.
Stubborn farmer – not the same one – goes to town to buy provisions and ham-it-up act tough, gets killed by gunfighter.
Shane climbs into his ‘Kit Carson’ outfit, rides into town, kills gunfighter (Jack Palance).
Rides off into the sunset with young lad trying to catch up and say goodbye and calling ‘I love you Shane!”
Pale Rider :
Substitute – young girl for young lad, rock for tree stump, miners for ranchers, marshals for gunfighter.
Plot:
Gunman feels he has an opportunity to leave his past life behind and start a new life.
Can’t escape who and what he is - rides off into the sunset.
“Silverado” I think also bears mentioning. I think it was the first big-budget Hollywood Western in the late 1980s when Westerns had been out of favor…
Then there’s “Youngguns,” which seemed to be a pretty silly showcase film for young actors with light substance…
Don’t forget “The Magnificent Seven” another Japanese samurai movie adapted into a western? Little quiz: what was the other great western movie made from a Samurai movie?
Oh, you mean Sergio Leone’s film “A Fistful of Dollars”, my dear Mr. Hawkeye? Yes, it was influenced by Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo”, which introduced the winning formula of a lone gunman with a morally ambiguous characters, who is in pursuit of money to the exclusion of all else. Technically an excellent, visually highly innovative film, which for a long time represented something like a cause célèbre amongst film esthetes, but for me personally it always was somehow… short in genuine, heartwarming human epic, which always represented an obligatory part of a true Western.
That’s why I always will prefer “My Darling Clementine” (if nothing else, John Ford successfully convinced me that the possibilities of the wide outdoor scenes, when handled with care and craftsmanship, always will be able to emphasize that important old-western standby, embedded into the hero’s personal dignity, unshakable even at loss, with real power behind that sentiment. That departure scene with Linda Darnell and Henry Fonda is absolutely flawless – an classicistic work of emotional perfection.
“High Noon” , on the other hand, perhaps is the only film entitled to take its place alongside a sociological study! Is it possible to single out any one western film, and say “This is the greatest?” Frankly, I don’t know. But if I were asked “What Western film is greater than High Noon”, I couldn’t provide an answer…
And how about Otto Preminger’s “River of no return?” Putting aside everything else, it has to be emphasized that Marilyn Monroe in this film achieved some extraordinary expressive sequences. I know many people who have never seen this exciting jewel of a personal shrift, embedded in magnificently demurring gesture, sad glare of an eye and pensively shadowed voice, which rarely was used to suggest that the Old West - like our world today - actually desperately looked for some kindheartedness and tragically missing human shelter.
Those people tend to laugh condescendingly when her name is mentioned, but I think that they just don’t know the true value of those Golden Era movies, in which unforced perspicuity of emotional response of a beautiful woman was able to invoke genuine sentiment of compassion, mainly due to the naturally and openly offered epitome of her life as a determined pursuit of lasting happiness that somehow always eluded her…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX-TA_EndbM&feature=related
After all, that’s why I like this film so much.
My the best are from producer Sergio Leone and acting Clint Eastwood: The God ,the bad and the ugly, Fisthfull of dollars, and For a few dollars more.
Also i like Rio Bravo
Big Jake, Outlaw Josie Whales, The Shootist, High plains Drifter, and Pale Rider. Though the last two are nearly the same movie.And lastly, more for comedic qualities than cinematic, “Duck you Sucker” later retitled “A fistful of Dynamite” Starred James Coburn, and Rod Steiger another Sergio Leone movie.
Quick question: what was the Samurai movie made from a western?
Actually, I think I might have had a different movie in mind as your description brings back some recollections of Shane which differ from the vague impressions I had of ‘the other Shane’.
Doesn’t make me any fonder of Alan Ladd, though.
The Wild Bunch is in my top few.
And Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid isn’t, if only because it had Katharine Ross and a bicycle in it.
A borderline Western, given that it’s set in the 1920s but nonetheless in a setting that is common to many Western movies, and a great film is The Treasure of Sierra Madre.
Extending the time line for Westerns but still a film set in a cowboy town with the requisite stranger coming into town to upset the past and present, and with a WWII component, and another great film is Bad Day at Black Rock.
She suffered from unfair criticism. Contrast her ‘dumb blonde’ performances in Some Like it Hot and Seven Year Itch with Judy Holliday as a ‘dumb blonde’ in Born Yesterday.
They’re both equally pleasant to watch in their respective roles, but nobody bothers to ask if Judy ‘could really act or just had big tits’ etc.