Originally Posted by Johnzilla2179
Of course, Once Upon a Time in the West is a masterpiece. As is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which is my personal favorite western. But again, we're quoting the exceptions, not the rule. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of spaghetti westerns that are good fun, but separate from Leone the quality of the average spaghetti western falls quite rapidly. And let's not forget, the man only directed eight films, including five westerns. Compare that with John Ford's filmography, for instance, who directed something like 140 films, many of which are masterpieces on the same level as Leone's, they just tend to not translate as well into the modern day. Perhaps datedness lessens the legacy of masterpieces, but I don't like to hold a film's era against it unless it's propagating troubling ideologies.
Which is as good as any segue back to Wayne. Agreed that he was a man of his time, which isn't to excuse his views as much as properly contextualize them, which for some reason is a quality that seems to be falling by the wayside. He was good friends with both Rock Hudson and Roscoe Lee Browne, for instance, though comments that he made about homosexuals and people of color would seem to paint a different picture. All three of his wives were also of hispanic descent. As far as his intellect, he and Browne would apparently recite passages of poetry to one another on the set of The Cowboys to pass time. Unfortunately, the attempt to prop Wayne up as a masculine role model by certain figures and the need to tear him down on the other side has removed almost all nuance from the legacy of an incredibly complicated man. Him being a highly conservative warhawk in his time certainly didn't help anything at all, but that's on him.
I feel like I'm toeing dangerously close to the line of defending comments he made when in reality I'm just trying to say that the man was flawed, as we all are. And that he had more layers than his critics and even he himself portrayed at times.
|