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The formation of Arthur Penn's cinema in tandem with that of Billy the Kid's psyche, a pensive and manic ballad. William Bonney (Paul Newman) enters out of the sagebrush as if newly born—he lugs a saddle like Randolph Scott yet his silence is less taciturnity than blockiness, the outsider's fumbling for identity. A cattleman (Colin Keith-Johnston) tells him of life "through a glass darkly" and gets summarily killed, leaving the image to rattle inside the wanderer's skull. (Bathwater makes a foggy canvas out of a windowpane, Billy sketches his vengeful plan on it and a lap dissolve gives Main Street just before the shootout.) A tale of birth is also one of death and rebirth, the fugitive is given a mock-funeral by his cohorts and resurrects himself by burning his death notice. "I ain't dead no more. I come awake!" The outlaw's "good mind" and the sheriff's "soft heart," for Pat Garrett (John Dehner) a matter of the word broken at the wedding. Newman's pas de deux with a broom in the saloon parlor, the flour-caked scuffle, the shooting of the moon's reflection in the pond. "Souvenirs of the West," documented by the Southern myth-peddler (Hurd Hatfield) who can't help being disappointed (cf. Eastwood's Unforgiven). The killing of the bailiff (Denver Pyle) is a tour of the force, the visceral execution of violence (slow-motion under harsh sunlight) along with its moral critique (the childish giggle receives a disapproving slap). A Blakean modernity in old Warner Bros. sets, the "figure of glory" who loses a father figure and cuckolds another and gets shot by a third one. The inspired revision of Ford and Ray is a decisive influence on Peckinpah and Malick, Penn would take another look at the hideout papered with reward posters and see Bonnie and Clyde. With Lita Milan, James Congdon, James Best, Ainslie Pryor, John Dierkes, and Martin Garralaga. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |