How John Ford's and Anthony Mann's Western Films Portrait the U.S. Social Change after the Second World War

In USA, Cold War and unemployment were social problems while TV and European auteurist films threatened Hollywood film business. Audeince were differentiated film audience into entertainment seekers and serious adult theme-viewers. These changes resulted in the change of cinematic expression of U.S. filmmaking. Western, once considered as the most typical U.S. film genre and the myth of U.S. nationbuilding, was no exception. This paper examines how these changes are articulated in the postwar western films, especially three John Ford's films and two Anthony Mann's. John Ford's <My Darling Clementine> figured Wyatt Earp, the sheriff of multicultural town, Tombstone, as USA as an international superpower. <The Searchers> articulated the matter of postwar accommodation of war veterans as the Ethan Edwards who wandered to save his niece abducted by Indians. <The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance> raised the question of authenticity of traditional myth and legend. In Anthony Mann's <Bend of the River>, Glyn Mclintock, a guide for wagon trail for Oregon and a former outlaw during the U.S. Civil War, symbolized war-weariness. In <Man of the West>, Link Jones once engaged in robbery tried to break his dark past, war veterans’ break off with war experience.