"Every champion must die and every empire must fall; the inevitability of decline after incredible success is part of nature's course correction. Look no further than the recent diminishment of superhero cinema or the collapse of the musical in the last few decades of the 20th century. The Western, an endlessly reliable source of income for both US and Italian filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s, wilted into its twilight zone in the 1970s.
The rebellious young filmmakers who pioneered the Hollywood New Wave turned to the themes of the time to define their work: paranoia, anti-establishment ideology, conspiracy, distrust, violence. This artistic rebellion left the Western, a firm representation of moral earnestness and a reminder of the importance of law, at a creative crossroad. By the end of the 1970s the genre had faded but not before some of the great directors snuck in some final heavy hitters."
