The American Film Institute defines western films as those "set in the American West that embod[y] the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier." Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th century popular Western fiction and were firmly in place before film became a popular art form. Western films commonly feature their protagonists stalking characters such as cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, and are often depicted as semi-nomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and buckskins, use revolv
ers or rifles as everyday tools of survival, and ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on trusty steeds.
Western films were enormously popular in the silent era. However, with the advent of sound in 1927-28 the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westernse due to exhibitors' inability to switch over to widescreen during the Depression.
Early Westerns were mostly filmed in the studio, just like other early Hollywood films, but when location shooting became more common from the 1930s, producers of Westerns used desolate corners of Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, or Wyoming. Productions were also filmed on location at movie ranches.
Often, the vast landscape becomes more than a vivid backdrop; it becomes a character in the film.
