Historic Replicas

Among the movie genres, Westerns are one of the most classic and most popular. Most take place during the latter half of the 19th century in the area that became known as the American Old West or Wild West, but several well known western films, including Vera Cruz, The Wild Bunch, The Proposition, Quigley Down Under, and others have been set in Canada, Mexico and even in Australia. The earliest Western movies were filmed entirely on set, and utilized canvas paintings as Old West backdrops and other Western replicas as props.

The primary theme of these films is often how created but primitive ways of life and routine conflict when confronted with social change, most commonly depicted by conflicts between settlers and ranchers or natives and the coming industrial revolution. This theme of the modern impinging on the established is represented in most films of the genre. The set-up order of things was continuously changing for real Old West settlers as well, since they started to construct towns and farms the land of the new frontier, and this sense of being at the forefront of a new age is often found in many Westerns as well.