Top 10 Existential Westerns

PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID [1973] Image

“You'll just end up like all the other gringos—drinking tequila, shitting out chili peppers . . . and waiting for nothing.”


DEAD MAN [1995] Image

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is . . . infinite."


THE NAKED SPUR [1953] Image

"Choosing a way to die? What's the difference? Choosin' a way to live—that's the hard part."


LITTLE BIG MAN [1970] Image

"Come out and fight! It is a good day to die! Thank you for making me a Human Being! Thank You for helping me to become a warrior! Thank you for my victories and for my defeats! Thank you for my vision and the blindness in which I saw further! You make all things and direct them in their ways, O Grandfather. And now you have decided the Human Beings will soon walk a road that leads nowhere. I am gonna die now, unless death wants to fight. And I ask you for the last time to grant me my old power to make things happen."


THE WILD BUNCH [1969] Image

"We're not gonna get rid of anybody. We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished. We're finished. All of us."


THE SHOOTING [1967] Image

"It's just a feeling I've got to see through."


UNFORGIVEN [1992] Image

—“I don't deserve this . . . to die like this. I was building a house.”
—“Deserve's got nothing to do with it.”


HIGH NOON [1952] Image

“Kane will be a dead man in half an hour and nobody's gonna do anything about it. And when he dies, this town dies too. I can feel it. I am all alone in the world. I have to make a living. So I'm going someplace else. That's all.”


HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER [1973] Image

—"Be careful. You're a man who makes people afraid, and that's dangerous."
—"It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid."


ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST [1968] Image

“The future don't matter to us. Nothing matters now—not the land, not the money, not the woman.”


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User Comments - Add a Comment

M.M.M. - 2007-12-20 11:00:54
How could you not include "El Topo" to the list, it is the most existential western of all time.

Anonymous - 2008-01-15 12:41:20
If we're talking existential westerns (absurdity of choice, life without design, randomness) then isn't Number 1... The Good, The Bad and The Ugly? Far more than Once Upon a Time in the West.

Estrela SiriuS - 2008-12-14 18:05:17

"FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE" In Agua Caliente after Indio and the gang rob the bank of El Paso, they enter a tavern and Wild sees Coronel Mortimer, who lightened a mach in Wild's hunchback in El Paso before the robber... Wild - "Well, if it isn't the smoker... Well... Remember me amigo?" Coronel Mortimer - "Hum hum" (He shakes head saying NO because he was eating ) Wild - "You remember... El Paso" Cor. Mor - "Small world" Wild - "Yes, and very very bad!" That was great stuff but the rest of the dialogue its great to Wild - "Come on, light another mach" - And he turns the huncback to him. C. M. - "Come again in 10 minutes, I only smoke after eating" Wild - "In 10 minutes you'll be smoking in Hell!!!" Sergio Leone had made the greatest Westerns ever... Once upon a Time in West; For a few Dollars; For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly... All of them have great dialogues... and music to.

J.D. - 2009-04-13 10:39:35

"Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia" = #1