Westward the Women

Wellman’s unflinching Western turns the genre’s traditionally genteel women into tough, trailblazing ladies ready to outride and outlive any cowboy.

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  • Director

    William A. Wellman

  • With

    Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson, John McIntire

  • USA 1951. 118min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    PG

Hinting at the revisionist Westerns coming over the horizon, though unmistakably cast in the rough, tough, ‘wild’ style Wellman made his own, Westward the Women sees a group of pioneer women join a wagon master to take the treacherous journey west, from Chicago to California, in 1851. But these aren’t your typical heroines of the classical Western. Up against misogynist cowboys and the arduous crossing over plains and mountains, the women here prove themselves as tough and hardy as any male hero – if not more so – while losing none of their dignity or sensitivity. The film, screening from a pristine 35mm print that captures in crisp black and white the perilous mountains and hot, dry desert, mines the tensions and triumphs that marked the westward expansion.

Rosie Taylor