Thanks, Colin. No question but that the method employed was crude and subject to errors, and with ongoing work keeping me data away “from the range” for several years now I am not in the position to be at all authoritative about the details of these films as regards their “noir bonafides.” So your thoughts on this will carry a great deal of weight...particularly with respect to the idea that the method is built around, a kind of crude grayscale where the third group is comprised of films that have some nourish aspect to them but that aren’t sufficiently imbued with entrapment, fatalism, betrayal, moral ambiguity to classify as “western noir” (as some folks, including Imogen Smith, turn the phrase around in hopes finding more clarity in the classifications). I will see if I can retrieve the films Smith included in her recent Criterion Channel “western noir” series so that those films can be identified WRT where they are currently situated on this list. The other two things that would be very useful: determining if the fourth group is accurate as “non-noir” westerns, and adding any titles that have been missed completely.
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