Once Upon a Time in the West The History of the Western Genre

For a long period, the Western was unquestionably one of the most important Hollywood genres, with Westerns making up one quarter of all films produced in Hollywood between 1910 and 1960. Film history and the history of the Western are thus linked in a unique way. "The Western is situated at a point of intersection where historiography and mythologization, actual occurrences and mass media interpretations, meet and flow into one another." (Alexandra Seitz)