CAMERAS WEST

From The Great Train Robbery to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a history of Western films that begins with countless business deals and company histories, names the great producers, directors and stars without conveying any sense of their greatness, and ends with a monotonous chronology of more recent cowboy films. There is no cogent analysis of the Western's essence or appeal, no technical appreciation of the medium, no lively or amusing anecdotes to give zest to the telling. Without the coherence of Manchel's first history in this series, When Pictures Began to Move, this is an uninspired assemblage of names and titles and scraps of plots that even horse opera buffs will find dull.