Robert Warshow
MOVIE CHRONICLE: THE WESTERNER
They that have power to hurt and will do none)
That do not do the thing they most do show)
Who) moving others) are themselves as stone)
Unmoved) cold) and to temptation slow)·
They rightly do inherit heaven)s graces)
And husband nature)s riches from expense)·
They are the lords and owners .of their faces)
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The two most successful creations of American movies are the
gangster and the Westerner: men with guns. Guns as physical objects)
and the postures associated with their use, form the visual and emotional
center of both types of films. I suppose this reflects the importance of
guns in the fantasy life of Americans; but that is a less illuminating
point than it appears to be.
The gangster movie, which no longer exists in its "classical" fonn,
is a story of enterprise and success ending in precipitate failure. Success
is conceived as an increasing power to work injury, it belongs to the
city, and it is of course a fonn of evil (though the gangster's death, pre–
sented usually as "punishment," is perceived simply as defeat). The pe–
culiarity of the gangster is his unceasing, nervous activity. The ex'act
nature of his enterprises may remain vague, but his commitment to en–
terprise is always clear, and all the more clear because he operates
outside the field of utility. He is without culture, without manners, with–
out leisure, or at any rate his leisure is likely to be spent in debauchery
so compulsively aggressive as to seem only another aspect of his "work."
But he is graceful, moving like a dancer among the crowded dangers
of the city.
Like other tycoons, the gangster is crude in conceiving his ends but
by no means inarticulate; on the contrary, he is usually expansive and
noisy (the introspective gangster is a fairly recent development), and
can state definitely what he wants: to take over the North Side, to
own a hundred suits, to be Number One. But new "frontiers" will pre-
