Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) was, like The Wild Bunch (1969,) a landmark moment in director Sam Peckinpah’s career. The Wild Bunch brought him back from Hollywood exile after the butchering of Major Dundee (1965) and into the most productive years of his career where he made in addition to The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970,) Straw Dogs (1971,) Junior Bonner (1972,) and The Getaway (1972.) Pat Garrett, unfortunately, was a landmark of disastrous proportions. The film’s butchering at the hands of MGM studio chief James Aubrey, who had a notorious reputation for taking and re-cutting films, along with Peckinpah’s own substance abuse problems and paranoia sent him into a personal and professional nosedive from which he never recovered.
Pat Garrett remains a difficult film to review. For starters, there was never a definitive version of the film. The 93-minute version released by MGM in 1973 was a disgrace that contained only action and the barest elements of plot. This two-disc special edition contains the 1988 Turner Preview Version, which is often referred to as the cut that Peckinpah liked most, and was first shown on Jerry Harvey’s Z Channel in Los Angeles back in 1988. Also contained is the 2005 Special Edition that is put together from the 88 cut and the original theatrical cut. What can be said about Pat Garrett is that it is one of Peckinpah’s greatest films, maybe even a masterpiece, but a most problematic and flawed one.
Written by Rudolph Wurlitzer, who also penned the critical favorite Two Lane Blacktop (1971,) Pat Garrett opens in 1908 with an aged Garrett being ambushed and killed by three men. As Garrett falls, he flashes back to Billy the Kid and his crew in Fort Sumner, New Mexico during 1881. Garrett rides up and has a drink with Billy. It is over this drink, one of a thousand in the film, that Garrett informs Billy that he has accepted the job of sheriff of Lincoln County and that his first job is to get rid of Billy. Being that they are old friends, Garrett asks him if he’ll leave town and go to Mexico. But Billy the Kid is not one for taking the easy way out. The rest of the film is a circular chase of Garrett pursuing Billy that ends where the film starts in Fort Sumner with Garrett killing Billy.
Peckinpah had intended the film to be an epic on the scale of The Wild Bunch - which is evident from the multitude of old time western stars scattered throughout the film. In addition to James Coburn as Garrett and Kris Kristofferson as Billy the Kid, the film also features Peckinpah regulars R.G. Armstrong, Emilio Fernandez, and L.Q. Jones, Jack Elam, Richard Jaekel, Chill Wills, Katy Jurado, Slim Pickens, Elisha Cook Jr., Charles Martin Smith, Harry Dean Stanton, and in a haunting cameo near the end of the film, Peckinpah himself. The most unusual casting choice would be Bob Dylan as soft-spoken Alias. Dylan, who composes the film’s elegiac and haunting score and songs, was given the part by Peckinpah in an attempt to capitalize on the singer’s iconic status. There are times when his presence seems like a gimmick but thankfully he is given very little dialogue other than reading food labels. Coburn gives a magnificent performance as the conflicted, self-loathing Garrett and (outside of his Oscar winning performance in Affliction) this is his best work. Kristofferson, although a little old to be playing Billy the Kid, has the right boyishness, charm, and weariness to make it work. He brings home the hopelessness of his life and the desolate nature of the world around him. You won’t miss Emilio Estevez that’s for sure.
In the 2 versions here, Peckinpah still has control of his talents but you can sense them fading. Indeed after this film he would only have one masterpiece left (Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia from 1974) and one great film left (Cross of Iron from 1977.) His substance abuse problems, already having affect on him during the shooting here, would only intensify and inevitably destroy him. Coming off The Getaway, his biggest commercial success, and this being his first true western since Wild Bunch; there was a great deal of pressure on him to make the film a hit. It just might be his most beautiful and striking film. There is an emphasis on the west’s material bareness and limitations rather than the expansiveness and freedom that is so often glamorized. There is an overwhelming sadness and melancholiness here that exemplifies the weariness and lack of opportunity that the characters have. The film clearly influenced Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. There are very few moments of happiness here and when there are, they are short-lived and usually followed by death. The killings here are violent and bloody but, unlike The Wild Bunch or even Straw Dogs, these are truly sad, cold deaths. There is no exhilaration or thrill in the killings here.
Alcohol fuels the film throughout, much like Alfredo Garcia, and one can make the inference that not only is Peckinpah commenting on his characters drowning their lives in booze but how his own alcoholism was spiraling out of control. There are many scenes of true Peckinpah greatness including Slim Pickens’s death walk set to Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door and Garrett’s standoff with a father drifting down a river on a raft. The dreamy, metaphysical ending is rich and filled with symbolism. The film also contains several scenes that serve absolutely no purpose and are pointless to the film, especially towards the end. Many scenes seem to linger a little longer than they should. The scenes involving Emilio Fernandez are awful and the scene involving Dub Taylor and Elisha Cook Jr., is a headscratcher. Both are obvious examples of Peckinpah shooting scenes for no other reason than for motivation and exposition that could have been divulged with a line of dialogue or a glance. It is scenes like these where you can sense Peckinpah slipping.
Garrett and The Kid are two sides of the same coin and are representative of the war between youth and responsibility. Billy is very much the 60s/70s antihero whose refusal to grow up dooms him while Garrett, who compromises his values in order to lengthen his life, begins to detest what he is and what he stands for as the film progresses and he literally kills off his past. In this sense, Garrett is very much like Deke Thornton from The Wild Bunch. You can sum it up with Garrett shooting the mirror at the end after having shot Billy. True to form, Peckinpah infuses the film with numerous allusions and metaphors for Watergate and Vietnam.
Both versions have their positives and negatives and some will like one more than the other. Personally I go with the 88 version. That version runs 122 minutes with the 2005 cut clocking in at 115 minutes. Both versions also contain the informative and revealing commentary with Peckinpah scholars Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons, and David Weddle.<!--page-->
It would have been nice to see the butchered theatrical version included here and have all three versions much like Criterion did with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Disc two, in addition to the 88 version, also contains 2 new documentaries Deconstructing Pat and Billy and One Foot in the Groove: Remembering Sam Peckinpah and Other Things. Deconstructing runs about 15 minutes and details the changes made to the various cuts of the film as well as the troubled production. Groove runs about 28 minutes and features Kristofferson and fellow band member Donnie Fritz, who also appears in the film, discussing their careers before the film and working with Peckinpah. The other extra contains the aforementioned two performing a couple of songs that were inspired by Peckinpah.
Warner Brothers has done a wonderful job in assembling this set and provides us with a chance to get an idea of what Peckinpah had originally intended the film to look like. This is a more lyrical, poetic, and sad film than The Wild Bunch but it is powerful nonetheless. It’s a hard film to judge given its different versions and problematic nature, but there are true moments of Peckinpah brilliance here.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Two Disc Special Edition) is now available at Amazon . The DVD is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a August 7th release. Visit the DVD’s database for more information.
The two-disc DVD is also part of the Sam Peckinpah’s The Legendary Westerns Collection now available at Amazon . As of yet, the set has not been released in the UK. Visit the DVD set’s database for more information.
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