Westerns are the most cherished American film genre, providing rip-roaring action and powerful drama. Some of the most provocative, often in black-and-white, probed the psychology beneath the gunplay. In my favorite

  Clint Eastwood was still a whippersnapper when he debuted on “Rawhide” as Rowdy Yates. But, especially when the going got tough on the trail and he furrowed those iron brows, the outline of the persona he revealed a few years later in Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly could be discerned. On “Rawhide Season Five,” a two-volume DVD set (with some 27 hours of pro...

A barely perceptible silhouette crawls forward on the trail, a slight shadow on the face of the rocky desert. The silhouette is a horseman at the onset of For A Few Dollars More and the only sounds are the absent-minded humming and jangling of the distant rider�until a rifle shot cracks the stillness and the tiny silhouette collapses. The perspective is like that of an uncaring god, mirroring th...