In partnership with The Film Foundation, Turner Classic Movies is proud to bring you this exclusive monthly column by iconic film director and classic movie lover Martin Scorsese in July 2016.

TCM SPOTLIGHT: TCM PRESENTS SHANE (PLUS A HUNDRED MORE GREAT WESTERNS) (Tuesdays and Wednesdays in July, 6am)--This month, TCM has curated a massive salute to the Western, beginning with The Great Train Robbery (1903) and ending in 1980 with Heaven's Gate. The genre effectively faded out in the '70s with Sam Peckinpah. The question is: why? First of all, the actors and the directors who made the great Westerns were passing away. And, I suppose that the idea of America as free and endlessly expanding started to fade right around that time as well. Many of the individual pictures that comprise the genre take a critical look at the mistreatment of Native Americans (including multiple titles in this series, from The Vanishing American in 1925 to Little Big Man in 1970) and the takeover of the West by the cattle barons and the railroads (which plays an important role in Shane [1953] and Heaven's Gate). But the idea of the genre as a whole is tied to the image of the West, and its many varieties of open spaces--the deserts, forests, mountain ranges and prairies. Those of us who grew up with the genre got to know the most frequently visited locations--like Lone Pine, Monument Valley and Old Tucson--not by name but by eye. There were many Western stars, all of whom are represented here: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford, Randolph Scott, James Stewart in his post-war career, Joel McCrea and Clint Eastwood. They were transformed by those landscapes. For instance, if you think of Wayne in his Westerns and in his war pictures, it's almost a question of two different actors. The 105 pictures being shown in July cover a lot of ground (all that's missing, I think, are some of the "noir" Westerns of the late '40s, like Pursued [1947] and Blood On the Moon [1948]). There are epics like Cimarron (1931) and How the West Was Won (1962). There are suspense films like 3:10 to Yuma (1957) by Delmer Daves, who knew the West and its history better than any other director. There are comedies like Buster Keaton's Go West (1925) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951), featuring a rare live action appearance by the great Stan Freberg. There are musicals with Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, the Sons of the Pioneers, Roy Rogers (who had been a member of that group) and the "Bronze Buckaroo" Herb Jeffries (who also sang with Sidney Bechet and Duke Ellington). There are multiple, vastly different approaches to legendary figures like Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Jim Bowie, and retellings of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the massacre at Little Big Horn and Quantrill's Raid. There are oddities like Red Sun (1971), starring Charles Bronson, Alain Delon, Toshiro Mifune and Gina Lollabrigida (!). There are spaghetti Westerns (by Sergio Leone and others), "modern" Westerns like Nick Ray's The Lusty Men (1952) and John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), and "revisionist" Westerns like Monte Hellman's The Shooting (1966). And there are films-- Stagecoach (1939), Red River (1948), Fort Apache (1948), The Naked Spur (1953), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956), Rio Bravo (1959), Ride the High Country (1962), The Wild Bunch (1969) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)--that are among the greatest works in the history of movies. Really, the Western, so well-represented with this tribute, is close to the very heart of cinema itself.