One thing that became clear to me as I made my Top 130 Movies List was my love for Westerns. I count twelve of them:
7. The Searchers
8. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
14. My Darling Clementine
16. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
40. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
42. Stagecoach
60. Tombstone
68. Rio Bravo
77. The Ox Bow incident
109. The Wild Bunch
127. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
128. 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
I think there are two main reasons for this. First, the stakes are always high for the characters in Westerns; the circumstances are usually about basic survival. When their world is disrupted and they have to battle a powerful antagonist, they are often also battling the environment. The Searchers is the perfect example of this. While Ethan and Martin are searching for Debbie—taken by the powerful Chief nicknamed “Scar”—they are also battling desert sands and snowstorms. They face not only the threat of death by the antagonist, but also exposure. In fact, at one point in the film Ethan is explaining to the Jorgensens that he believes it was his fault that their son Brad was killed on their search.
And Mrs Jorgensen responds, “It just so happens we be Texicans. Texican is nothin’ but a human man way out on a limb, this year and next. Maybe for a hundred more. But I don’t think it’ll be forever. Some day, this country’s gonna be a fine, good place to be. Maybe it needs our bones in the ground before that time can come.”
The second reason is that westerns have, for me, a tactile nature to them. I love the colour palette of westerns: the earthy browns, reds, and yellows. The elements are part of the sensual landscape of these films: log homes, squeaking wood floors, gravel footpaths, and leather satchels combine with the dust, dirt and grime in palms and face. This visual texture along with the sound design combine to form a third sensual experience for me: touch.
Though I experience this mostly in westerns, this tactile nature sometimes shows up elsewhere, too. Here are two tactile moments that stand out to me in more recent films that are high on my list. See if you can identify them:
Okay, I can’t bring to mind the specific moment in the movie, but my intuition says the first one is AMELIE? And you’re right, both images evoke a very tactile sense. I can almost feel those beans, and the dirty tin box, on my hands!
Ron
Yup, Amelie is correct. The second one is a movie from my top 15.
And they are even more tactile when you have the sound design component.