Revisionist Western

The Revisionist Western, Modern Western or Anti-Western traces to the mid 1960s and early 1970s as a subgenre of the Western movie.

Some post-WWII Western films began to question the ideals and style of the traditional Western. These films placed the context of the Native Americans and the Cowboys alike in a darker setting. They depicted a morally questionable world where the heroes and villains oftentimes resembled each other more closely than had ever previously been shown. The concept of right and wrong became blurred in a world where actions could no longer be said to be good or bad. Whereas in a majority of the classical western films the ethics were clear and defined in 'black and white', the Revisionist film looked to paint a moral 'grey' area where people had to adapt in order to survive. This led to depictions of outlaws such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where the heroes of the film are outlaw bank robbers.

Most Westerns from the 1960s to the present have revisionist themes. Many were made by emerging major filmmakers who saw the Western as an opportunity to expand their criticism of American society and values into a new genre. The 1952 Supreme Court holding in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, and later, the end of the Production Code in 1968 broadened what Westerns could portray and made the revisionist Western a more viable genre. Films in this category include Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and The Wild Bunch (1969), Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).

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