Despite my troubles with a lecturer who didn't take to me (in his defence I have to say that I reciprocated) I enjoyed the Film Studies module I took as part of my second degree. Within that module I enjoyed the theory of genres in film and my topic today (are you sitting comfortably?) is a sub-genre, the Revisionist Western.
I have hinted at this recently with my rating of Shane and I am brought back to the subject by contemplation of The Man from Laramie (1955), directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart. We mustn't get carried away by the attraction of the topic - this is not remotely as eminent a movie as Shane although it shares some of its cinematic grandeur. It is however a very good one and (this is where the sub-genre bit comes in) it subverts the philosophy of your bog-standard western. The classic western is driven unquestioningly by the assumed beneficial operation of Manifest Destiny, itself the engine of the American project. The Man from Laramie has goodies and baddies (and some characters who float realistically between the extremes) but not a one is a Native American.
Manifest Destiny is the impulse that feeds the wretched warped morality of MAGA, so expertly coralled by the odious Trump and the chilling Vance. Like Shane the Mann/Stewart film posits that bullies must be confronted. The Man from Laramie, 70/100.
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