"Best of enemies. Deadliest of friends." So said the movie posters for Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid back in 1973.
Such a reductive analysis of the film is no surprise given the studio's attitude toward Peckinpah's legendarily difficult (and arguably still unfinished) production. The MGM brass didn't get it, the six editors who assembled the much-maligned theatrical cut didn't get it, and sometimes even Peckinpah himself didn't get it. Nonetheless, it's possibly the troubled director's darkest, most haunting work, which is quite a statement since he also gave us The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
Moviegoers in 1973 had seen this tale told before, but never like this. Screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer frames the drama around the dilemma facing Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn, in the performance of his career), a former outlaw now beholden to the corrupt landowners he used to steal from. They demand he rid the territory of his one-time partner Billy the Kid, essentially asking him to hunt down and exterminate the very symbol of his own lost youth and virility. His comfortable new life as a lawman will cost him his soul, and he knows it.
Kris Kristofferson effectively portrays Garrett's quarry as equal parts charismatic and dangerous. Unaware that his time is running out, Billy can't bring himself to flee despite every chance Garrett gives him. Indeed, the Kid greets his former partner in crime with a warm smile just before their final confrontation, still unable or unwilling to accept that their relationship has changed.
Bob Dylan's music score perfectly punctuates both the melancholy and brutality of the piece. In one pivotal scene, an acquaintance of Garrett's dies from a gunshot wound as his wife helplessly looks on. Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" provides the haunting backdrop as Coburn quietly observes them.
Peckinpah directs his story in circles, seemingly as reluctant about reaching its inevitable conclusion as Coburn's Pat Garrett. As I mentioned previously, however, this is in some ways an unfinished film, and not just because of how it's been edited and distributed over the years. For his part, Peckinpah never fleshed out the crucial "death of Paco" subplot that drives Billy back into Garrett's crosshairs. Then MGM, fearful of cost overruns and needing a hit release, removed Peckinpah from post-production and assigned six editors to reduce the film's circular narrative to a more linear, less poetic one.
The film as released made some money but was trounced by the critics. After Peckinpah's untimely death 11 years later, his director's cut (which was stolen from MGM and delivered to him by an associate) surfaced, giving audiences and reviewers a better understanding of his original vision. I prefer the 2005 Special Edition assembled by Peckinpah scholar Paul Seydor, which balances the director's style with a more cohesive narrative, though it cannot compensate for what was never filmed. Seydor and Roger Spottipswoode have recently modified that version for a 50th anniversary cut just released by the Criterion Collection alongside the theatrical and director's cuts. My preferred 2005 cut is available only on the 2006 Warner Bros. DVD release.
What if Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid had been made at the peak of Peckinpah's powers, when he wasn't in the depths of alcoholism? It may have been his greatest work (I already think it is), if not the best Western ever made. It may also have been impossible for him to tell this story so well without his demons in the way. Regardless, we're left with a frustratingly incomplete work of art, so potent that it remains a masterpiece nonetheless.
I cannot promise you will like this film, but I can assure you that you've never seen anything like it. It's haunting and unforgettable, warts and all, and that's as good a definition of art as I can think of.
Discussion about this post
No posts