Narrative Research In Hollywood Western

After a long history of development,the western film has turned into one of the clear-cut and mature genres in Hollywood's type system.A large number of these films originate from western novels,myths and legends.Actually,the western's charm consists in both audio-visual entertainment and cultural connotations.By the modern movie-producing technologies,western films show us the real history of western pioneers and their hardships,and this genre can be regarded as “the mirror of the US”.The paper focuses basically on Hollywood's western films in the view of narration,and is divided into five chapters to illustrate and explain this topic.The preface is the introduction that shows the reason for this research topic and some reviews in this field.The first part makes an explicit definition of this film genre and gives an overview of the historical and cultural background in the 20 th century as well as the inside content of western films.The second part choses some representative western films in different periods,each of which has its significant styles.The third part elaborates on the theme of Hollywood's western films,including the inheritance and disappearance of the western myths and the thoughts on the previous and future western spirits.The forth part,through the systematic analysis and summary of film texts,discusses the aesthetic features of western film narrative,from film structure to characterization.The fifth part provides up-to-date information on Hollywood's western films in the 2010 s and tries to describe the narrative changes of today's western films.The conclusion part is based on the classical western movies mentioned above.Since the strategy of “Western Development”,thousands of Chinese western movies have emerged in the nearly last twenty years.It is found that Hollywood's western films have lots of features in common with Chinese western films.Thus,through all these presentations on western films in Hollywood,we hope this paper can offer some feasible suggestions to the creation of Chinese western films.