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I think there's something confusing here.
'Unforgiven' is as 'mythic' as you can get. It talks about the apparent unresponsiveness of the universe, the unorthodox and moral ambiguity of the true 'hero', and lots more besides. English Bob reacts to that cold universe by making art and bluffing his way, Little Bill reacts by trying to enforce order from chaos, and Money (Munnie?) carves a realistic truthful way, despite his awful past, by cold honesty. The penny-dreadful writer is the mythmaker. By comparison, the blacks and hookers are the victims.
These are not 'cliches', but great realities. There may be more 'positive' people, but the film is about the 'Unforgiven'.
It very much reminds me of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' where each character succumbs to whatever is his own view of fate and only Antony who rides the currents survives. Eastwood's character survives by cold clear vision and honesty, and of course the mythmaker writer.
There are biblical underpinnings, the parable of the rich man's barns, and Bill's 'I don't deserve this: I was building a house ...'.
Now if you say you want mythic stuff, there it is, and the historical reality of who ran pimps and brothels really isn't that important.
We also need to know that Western films are not just about THEN, they're about the era in which they are made, and the world described is today's world. That's art.
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Is it safe? Has he gone? 
It's worse than YOU CAN IMAGINE.
W teamed up with Member.
and now WILLIAMDCRUM has joined the possee!
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True westerns are ‘idealistic’ and not the cynical post-Leone films and post-Peckinpah films and hippie westerns.
Says who? Ah, you, yes. :-)
Yet someone else might just as well claim that "'true" Westerns are the cynical and nihilistic deconstructions of the romanticised Hollywood fiction and not the idealistic fairy tale nonsense of the Golden Age', and he'd be just as right (or wrong).
It's rubbish to call one type of western "true" just because it may be more to your liking. There is no more "truth" in "My Darling Clementine" than there is in "Unforgiven".
True western films were made during the Golden Age and that's their origin in terms of mythology.
The cynical ones are under the European influences.
I enjoy all decades, by the way.
Origin does not equate "true", so it is by no means a scoring point.
But I enjoy all decades as well, by the way, and consider John Ford to be one of the all time great directors (regardless of genre), so I consider asking me for a single film I enjoyed by him unfair and a call to arms. ;-)
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I disagree. There is infinitely more truth on many levels in My Darling Clementine. Ford was briefly acquainted with Wyatt Earp in the 1920s when Earp was actively trying to get his story filmed, and like a true director Ford observed Earp's behavior, manners, speech and disposition which he carefully directed into Fonda's performance. There are other layers of truth in My Darling Clementine, even amidst the historical inaccuracies.
In comparison, Unforgiven is just a laundry list of movie cliches and misconceptions about the historical west that Clint misconstrues for fact. Nonsense that Clint learned from watching other movies. For example, prostitution was a woman's business. Women organized and ran it, not saloon keepers like Skinny Dubois (the part played by Anthony James). In real life the saloon keeper worked for the Madame because she was the one taking in all the money. Madames ran their prositutes with an iron will, but at least kept them clean, usually. Madames frequently became a community's most charitable citizen, donating money to build churches and paying for funerals and setting up soup kitchens for the poor. They were the only ones who could afford it. That doesn't mean they were admitted into polite society. One of the duties of a town sheriff was to collect taxes and fees for public licenses and to write receipts for same. Brothels paid for their license to operate and paid the highest taxes in town. For example, the License and Fees ledgers from the actual town of Tombstone still exists. It is kept in the county clerk's office in Bisbee, the county seat. You can go in there and look up the names of the Madames and prostitutes and find out what all the transactions were. No pimps like Skinny Dubois were on the books. Compared to the real thing, Unforgiven as horsepuckey for those who don't care what they eat.
I find it both interesting and telling that you defend My Darling Clementine in spite of its (perceived or real) historical inaccuracies, but attack Unforgiven for its (perceived or real) historical inaccuracies. Do I detect a sort of bias? Let me just ask a question... before I make any point to this, let me just ask: WTF? Which way? What is at issue and ultimately what counts when the chips are down? Historical accuracy or layers of truth amidst historical innacuracies? Or are you just gonna mix and match your case as you see fit? (Perfectly fine, but then, let's everybody else mix and match their fits too.)
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If you want to see the positively BEST ever documentary on the history of the Western in terms of content, style and sheer wit, watch Rich Hall's 'How the West was Lost':
https://vimeo.com/59340851
Rich is sharper than any film critic and hugely entertaining:
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