The director Clint Eastwood spoke about a Western from 1943, which he believes is the best of the genre. Today, many genre fans would consider his film “Unforgiven” to be the best.
The nearly 94-year-old director Clint Eastwood is known for many really good films. And even if one hardly deals with the genre of Westerns, some of his works come to mind when thinking of Eastwood.
With “Unforgiven,” he created a Western film in 1992, in which he not only delivered an outstanding performance but is still considered by many viewers to be the best film of the genre. He himself, however, raves about a Western from his childhood and calls it the best Western film.
Which film is he talking about? “Ride the Ox-Bow” is a Western from 1943 that Clint Eastwood saw in his childhood. A film with Henry Fonda, which not many people know, and which was somewhat dismissed by the then 20th Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck.
In the film, an angry group sets out after a murder in a small town in Nevada to hunt down the culprit. At first, they suspect two wanderers of being the guilty ones, but after the misunderstandings are cleared up, the wanderers join the group to search for the real murderers.
By the way, the black-and-white film is currently not available on any streaming service. However, you can watch the original version for free on YouTube.
What does Eastwood say about the film? On the 60th anniversary of its release, there was a small tribute from Eastwood for Ride the Ox-Bow in 2003. He already saw the film as a child, and even though there were other Westerns that impressed him, none did so like this film.
“The first Western film that surprised me,” Eastwood says in his speech and then discusses how at that time a certain level of action and entertainment was expected when watching a Western. Ride the Ox-Bow, in the way it was made, was something special in his opinion. “It wasn’t the usual fights you saw in Westerns,” Eastwood explained.
I thought there would be another shootout. I had the image of Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews with cowboy hats in my mind and wanted to go in that direction. It was from the early 40s, and I thought it was going to be great. I watched it, and it’s a pretty depressing story that had a big impact on me. It reflected certain moral values about lynch mob violence and had a bit of everything, from racism to pseudo-macho to the father-son relationship. There were so many well-thought-out things that I appreciated a lot even as a child. It stuck in my mind, and I watched it two or three times over the years.
Clint Eastwood via YouTube
How much this film ultimately influenced and shaped his own films, especially Westerns, everyone must decide for themselves. The director Steven Spielberg, by the way, has a fixed ritual for creating his masterpieces: Steven Spielberg reveals his essential film ritual before starting to shoot: “I have to do it every time”
