Women of the West at HOME
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
The defining image of the Hollywood Western might always be a gun-toting cowboy, perched atop a horse in the desert, with a Stetson on his head. Recent entries in the genre, including this year’s terrific The Dead Don’t Hurt, have consciously worked to correct the gender imbalance, exploring the resilience and fortitude of women of the old west, who have traditionally been relegated to supporting roles.
But there have always been exceptions and outliers; including a selection of fearsome on-screen women (and actresses) who run saloons and manage ranches, while keeping the cattle, drunkards and cowboys in check, often with revolvers of their own to hand. Curated by HOME and University of Salford’s Andy Willis, HOME’s September film season, Women of the West, brings together five such films – a short, but potent survey of some of the most memorable female characters to grace the big screen.
The season features such ferocious stars as Marlene Dietrich who appears opposite James Stewart as a vampish saloon singer in Destry Rides Again (Sun 1 Sept), and Barbara Stanwyck as the wealthy Arizona landowner with forty men at her command in Sam Fuller’s mighty Forty Guns (Sun 8 Sept). Then there’s the irrepressible Joan Crawford running n frontier gambling den in Nicholas Ray’s soaring masterpiece, Johnny Guitar (Fri 27 Sept).
In between, Doris Day delights in Calamity Jane (Sun 15 Sept), a classic Hollywood musical in which the eponymous hero sets out on an adventure to bring a renowned Chicago singer back to Deadwood, South Dakota. While in 2010’s Meek’s Cutoff (Sun 22 Sept), director Kelly Reichardt takes a patient approach to the genre, with Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan starring as three women struggling with the harshness of the Oregon Trail.
