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The story isn't about the dirt and hair.

Posted by Harmonia (A) on January 5, 2011 at 20:07:54

In Reply to: Short rant about westerns posted by Mike K on January 3, 2011 at 17:38:50:

"Realism", even if achievable, will only take you so far.

The western is the quintessential American myth.

Westerns tell us as much about the times in which they were made as their subject - the myth refracted through contempoarary mores and aesthetics. Any particular western movie is for the age that creates it. They're not created usually created to be a history lessons or archives, these movies are meant to move an audience - and make money, if possible. Super-realism is/was not the goal.

In eras when American heroes (and commercial interests) deemed actors should be cleanshaven with short hair and clean clothes, this is how the actors appeared onscreen. Even sillier looking IMO are the way women appear in many western, with hair and make-up emblematic of their times, even when their is some attempt to have the men look more "authentic". These ladies date a film quite obviously.

Also, lots of lead actors dislike facial hair and don't like to "act through it" - they feel. Actorly vanity famously kept a beard off John Wayne in the first true Grit.

In addition, facial hair - or lack of it - was often visial shorthand for character traits. A typical cinamtic convention was the dirty guys with beards and or mustaches were often the bad guys - the cleancut fella in the white coyboy hat was usually a good guy.

Also, confronted with many hairy bearded guys in a single shot, it can be difficult to tell them apart unless they are dstinctively costumed or have vastly different hair colors/styles (and there are just so many).
;-)

Moreover, if one were to be historically accurate to the point of adding blackened/yellow teeth, pockmarked faces, shabby clothes, dirty skin, long hair and shaggy beards, the result might be so visually distracting as to detract from the actual storytelling. Besides, not everyone was equally clean or dirty - a settler living in a sod house was undoubtedly harder pressed to bathe than a storekeeper in a large western town with a hip bath in the kitchen.

Plus...you know...fashions in hair, clothing (facial & otherwise) changed over the 100 or so years of history in which most westerns take place (mainly circa 1820-1920, that's a vast chunk of time).

By the 70s, revisionist westerns like McCabe & Mrs. Miller and the Leone with his spaghetti westerns were changing the look and introducing the anti-hero to audiences.

Other grungy, hairy or more "realistic" westerns:

True Grit (2010 from the Coens)
The Assasination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
The Proposition
The Ballad Of Little Jo
The Claim
Ride With the Devil...among several others.

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