Welcome to another Western Wednesdays. Today is the very special installment that I promised last week in which I would reveal my favorite Western, the one that not even The Searchers can dethrone. Yes, my love belongs unreservedly to The Outlaw Josey Wales.
As popular legend goes, Clint Eastwood wasn’t respected as a director until Unforgiven. A hard look at his directorial credits through the 1970s and 1980s can speak as to why. But I believe The Outlaw Josey Wales was a really notable moment of his career, and it’s perplexing why he didn’t enjoy the kind of watershed approval he did in 1993.
I imagine it’s because he promptly went and made The Gauntlet. Sadly, Josey Wales kicked off a very dark period of his career that it’s polite to ignore, and if you know your tabloid romances, you know why. But would it have happened if his career had been reversed, and he won all his Oscar gold for Josey Wales? Would he have taken himself a little more seriously and avoided Pink Cadillac? I’d like to think so.
Of course, that lament implies Josey Wales was a failure, which it wasn’t. But it didn’t receive any Oscar nominations beyond one for its soundtrack. Roger Ebert even recognized it as an unusual and revisionist Western, but I don’t think that critical consensus or popular culture ever followed suit.
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