Freedom and The Romance of the Old West

"Where life has no value,

death, sometimes has it's price.

That is why the Bounty Killer Appeared"

For a Few Dollars More, 1965

I was partly raised on the outskirts of Tuscon, Arizona. My childhood home bordered broad swaths of desert and looked up at the Tortolita Mountains. We left that house when I was about 4 years old for a cultivated American Dream neighborhood in the middle of dusty plains and cotton fields. I never liked that second house, all transplanted grass and bulldozed lots. The first one, off Dove Mountain, lives in my dream, along with the desert.

Now I've been in the midwest for almost a decade and still, every winter brings a sense of longing for a life I never had. This year is no different, except I happened to gift my father his favorite film for Christmas, The Dollars Trilogy. Sergio Leon's spaghetti westerns have been a household name for most of my life, so it's kinda weird that I do not remember watching them; this winter break, I locked in. All three films star Clint Eastwood as 'The Man with No Name' or 'Joe' in A Fistful of Dollars, 'Manco' in For a Few Dollars More, and 'Blondie' in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I found that the allure of the Man With No Name (who I will call Manco for simplicity because FAFDM is my favorite of the trilogy) is similar to the romantic view of the Old West, which is the Romance of Freedom.

The Cowboy is free. Free from expectation, polished society, place, past, and self. The old west would have you born anew, with a shiny name your mother wouldn't recognize on a tombstone and a scarred body an old lover would mistake for a stranger. It's the sound of the wilderness as you explore the untouched* lands of the Frontier. This is the Old West in the eyes of film, a Golden Age of America, shining brightly through history and into the mythos. The romance of the Old West cares not about our reality; its only concern is freedom in a way that quells the discontent of the urban blight.

*the land was, in fact, touched and settled long before the Cowboy, but that's part of the romance, tricking yourself into believing this is the first time.

For me, the Western bring back a longing for blazing heat and towering mountains. Tempting me to run back to a long abandoned home and lose my name in the process. From Eastwood's 'Manco' and 'Blondie' to Van Cleef's 'Angel Eyes,' names are different there; they are something for people to describe you by, not something that you are. It is implied that each man has a name that is theirs alone, not for the stranger down the road. The ability to create your own identity is quite alluring to me for many reasons, as it is just another facet of the vast freedom I wish for.

The Character of 'Manco' and the film For a Few Dollars More are my favorites of the trilogy. Firstly, Manco as a character is quite interesting; his name means "One Arm Maimed" or "Left Handed," probably referring to him favoring his left hand for most things except shooting. He's street smart but a bit stubborn, resistant to a partnership with Lee Van Cleef's 'Douglas Mortimer' (more on him in a second) on the principle of being independent.

Van Cleef's 'Colonel Douglas Mortimer,' on the other hand, is strategic but driven by revenge, determined to do almost anything to kill Indio (the antagonist of the film). Mortimer was the character that really sold me on the film; the character dynamics between him and Manco added a layer to the film that I really liked. Back and forth "Boy" and "Old Man" banter and their first confrontation where they shoot each other's hats off in the street reads like a dance, the kind that animals perform as they try to determine if you are a friend or foe.

Though many modern westerns (namely Neo-Westerns, which are technically their own genre but bear with me) are more anxious, dealing with the decline of a Golden Age as urban wastelands start encroaching on the free West. I do think there is an appeal to that less escapist view. The Old Westerns reflect different ideals that seem to be so far away that they are fiction to us, but you still see reflections of want that are not dissimilar to what people want today. Again, that want is the freedom to escape the confines of your current life and spin a new one. In that sense, I think the Western is hopeful, and to me, that is the allure.