Pat Garrett chases Billy the Kid
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is an American feature film by Sam Peckinpah from the year 1973 . In this late west , characterized by a pessimistic and fatalistic mood, James Coburn plays the sheriff Pat Garrett , who unwillingly pursues the outlaw Billy the Kid , played by Kris Kristofferson , in order to kill him. The film was drastically shortened for its theatrical release by MGM against the will of the director and is now available in several reconstructed versions.
action
Note: The description of the action refers to the Special Edition from 2005.
A prologue shows old Pat Garrett in 1909 being ambushed to death by the people who hired him 28 years ago to hunt Billy the Kid. The plot turns back to 1881: Billy the Kid, an outlaw who makes life difficult for Lincoln County's businessmen and cattle barons , resides in the abandoned Fort Sumner . He and his buddies host a target shooting at the heads of chickens buried in the sand. Pat Garrett, a paternal friend of Billy's old days, visits Fort Sumner and warns Billy. Pat is about to be named sheriff of Lincoln County and the region's powerful want Billy to leave the country.
A week later, Garrett and his deputies track down Billy and two of his gang members in a lonely shack. A firefight ensues in which Billy's buddies both die. Billy surrenders to Garrett. After he is taken to Lincoln Jail , Garrett hands him over to the custody of Deputies Bell and Ollinger and rides off. Billy finds a gun in the toilet that has been left there for him, kills Bell and the religious zealot Ollinger and flees.
Garrett has the barber shave on his return and makes Alamosa Bill, a former outlaw, his new deputy. During a visit to his wife's home, it turns out that their marriage has broken down. Garrett leaves his home on a pretext. At a meeting with Governor Wallace and some businessmen from the Santa Fe Ring, Garrett is assigned to find and kill Billy. He brusquely refuses the offered bounty.
Billy has returned to his gang at Fort Sumner. The young Alias saves him from three bounty hunters who have sneaked in and becomes Billy's new companion. Meanwhile, Garrett seeks old Sheriff Baker so that he and his wife can accompany him to look for traces of Billy on Black Harris' farm. There is a shootout in which Harris dies. The badly injured Baker staggered to the nearby water and died there in the presence of his wife.
Billy and his cronies stole cattle from the landowner Chisum . One of Billy's men is shot dead by Chisum's men. Billy is asked by his friend, the old Mexican Paco, to leave the country and travel to Mexico . Billy rides away after his lover Maria gave him a medallion. Garrett, who is still looking for Billy, pauses on a river bank when a houseboat passes by, from which a man is practicing target practice on bottles that are thrown into the water. Garrett also shoots at the bottles and the boat man points at him. The two face each other with their weapons, but do not shoot. Garrett is visited at his campfire by John W. Poe, whom he already met at Wallace's and who is to stand by Wallace Garrett's side as deputy sheriff. Garrett and Poe visit Chisum, who reminds Garrett that he still owes him money. Garrett instructs Poe to find Billy on his own.
On his escape, Billy visits the Horrell family and meets Alamosa Bill there. The two duel, with Alamosa taking fewer steps than agreed, while Billy just stays in his place. Billy is faster and shoots Alamosa Bill. Meanwhile, Pat meets three of Billy's men, Alias, Beaver and Holly, in old Lemuel's bar. Garrett shoots Holly, but leaves the other two unscathed.
Chisum's people torture Paco and want to rape the young woman he is with when Billy arrives and shoots Chisum's men. The dying Paco begs Billy to ride on to Mexico, but Billy returns to Fort Sumner to face a confrontation with Garrett. He forces a prostitute to point out where Billy is. When he learns that Billy has returned to Fort Sumner, he makes his way there with Poe and another deputy. Once there, Garrett sits down on the porch of the house where Billy and Maria are sleeping together. When Billy leaves his room, Garrett shoots him. Poe tries to cut off a finger from dead Billy, but Garrett knocks him down with a cry. Pat Garrett rides off alone into the wilderness.
History of origin
Script and preproduction
The author Charles Neiders had published the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones in 1956 , which was based on the life story of Billy the Kid and was based on Pat Garrett's lurid biography The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid . As early as the late 1950s, Peckinpah wrote a screenplay based on Neider's novel, which was partially used in the film The Obsessive , Marlon Brando's only directorial work. So Peckinpah was already familiar with the story when producer Gordon Carroll planned a remake of the story in the early 1970s . Carroll commissioned Rudy Wurlitzer , who had already achieved some notoriety for the script for the film Asphaltrennen by director Monte Hellman , to write a screenplay. Hellman was supposed to direct Pat Garrett Chasing Billy the Kid , but MGM asked for a more established director, so Peckinpah was eventually asked to direct.
Peckinpah, who was in the midst of divorce from his wife, Joie Gould, agreed after Wurlitzer had drafted a new script; because originally Garrett and Billy should only meet at the end of the film, which Peckinpah did not see dramaturgically as feasible. If Garrett's tragic involvement had already been clearly psychologically worked out in the script, Billy still lacked character drawings to explain the motivation for his actions. Wurlitzer added the story of Paco's death; his death monologue, which motivates Billy to return, is particularly criticized by David Weddle as weak and artificial compared to the rest of the script.
After James Coburn had quickly agreed for the role of Garrett, the choice of the second leading actor turned out to be more difficult. Originally, Bo Hopkins , who had worked with Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch - You Knew No Law , was to take on the title role of Billy; MGM initially preferred Jon Voight for the role. Eventually, popular country and folk singer Kris Kristofferson, who also had film experience, got the part. Bob Dylan , a friend of Kristofferson and Wurlitzer, showed an interest in working on the film; despite a lack of acting experience, he got the role of the alias. At the same time, Dylan, inspired by Wurlitzer's script, wrote a number of songs that were to be used in the film. A number of veteran western actors such as Jack Elam , Slim Pickens and Paul Fix completed the cast.
Even before the shooting began, the project faced the first difficulties. MGM had decided under their then owner Kirk Kerkorian to enter the hotel business in Las Vegas . James Aubrey , president of MGM and known as the smiling cobra because of his reckless business conduct , tried to cut the budget of the resulting MGM films in order to have enough cash available for the hotel project. He therefore demanded that Peckinpah should do without his traditional film crew and instead shoot the film in 50 days with a cheaper Mexican crew. Peckinpah fought for his project and finally got his regular crew, a budget of three million dollars and 53 instead of the 75 days of shooting that he had required, it was clear to all experienced participants that the film could not be realized during this time.
Production and post-production
Filming began on November 19, 1972 in Durango, Mexico . A film crew was already there shooting the John Wayne film Vultures Know No Mercy ; thus a large part of the available resources was tied to labor, horses and filming locations. Peckinpah started filming anyway and sent the first wacky material to MGM in Culver City for development , a measure the studio took to save film development costs at nearby contractors. It was only days later that Peckinpah received the news that parts of the filmed material were out of focus due to a lens fault on a Panavision camera and therefore unusable. The error was discovered late, because the developed material was initially only viewed at high speed at 96 images per minute. Peckinpah, who had previously been denied a camera technician, urinated angrily on the screen during the test demonstration of the unusable material that had since returned to Mexico.
MGM asked Wurlitzer and Peckinpah to rewrite the script and dispense with the scenes that had already been filmed. Peckinpah ignored the instructions, changed the schedule and tried to re-shoot all the scenes. He filmed with high pressure and even officially used days when he was not shooting to gain usable material. A rampant infectious disease weakened Peckinpah and many of those involved in the film. Peckinpah began to drink excessively. James Coburn recalls: "He was a genius for four hours, then quickly went downhill, almost every day."
Peckinpah became increasingly moody and unpredictable and began to edit and rewrite the script in his own way, as he found Wurlitzer's dialogues to be too stilted and not authentic enough. His script changes now placed more emphasis on the issues of corruption, power games and the sellout of ethical values. In addition, Peckinpah added the framework story, which shows Garrett's death in 1909 and basically turns the whole film into a long flashback , into the script. The relationship between Peckinpah and Wurlitzer, who was also on the set, was therefore full of tension. Wurlitzer later called Peckinpah "a director famous for a spectacular western and even more famous for his fits, outbursts of anger, macho passions and his banal, highly embarrassing statements." James Coburn assessed the causes of the argument as follows: "Rudy wrote a wonderful script [ ...]. And Sam destroyed it. But the script has to […] die in order to be reborn in the form of a film. [...] Creation involves destruction. [...] Rudy hurt because he didn't understand the process. He thought Sam was just destroying his work, which was true, but also necessary. "
Aubrey directed producer Carroll to put pressure on Peckinpah. He forbade filming the houseboat scene as it would be unnecessary for the story to continue. Peckinpah also disregarded this instruction and began to slow down his work, as he knew at this point that the material that was being shot was already too clearly marked by his handwriting to be exchanged as a director for someone else. Peckinpah began to combat tension by throwing knives into wooden doors and using firearms to shoot into the air and walls. Rumors surfaced in Hollywood of his excessive drinking on set. The director defiantly responded by sending posed pictures to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety , which showed him lying on a stretcher and hanging on a drip, the infusion being a whiskey bottle.
In March 1973 filming was finished; the team brought 111,000 meters of exposed film, worked out in 803 camera positions, from Mexico. The production ended up being $ 1.5 million above budget and 21 days on schedule. MGM had already been presented with a rough cut version in mid-February that lasted 160 minutes. In order to quickly prepare the film for theatrical release, MGM set the time window for the editing very tight; In just two months, the English editors Garth Craven and Roger Spottiswoode should be editing the film ready for the market. At the instigation of the American artists' union, which did not tolerate foreign filmmakers in an American production, the two were soon replaced and replaced by Robert L. Wolfe and three other American film editors.
Controversy over the cut
In the last week of May 1973, a 124-minute cut, the so-called preview version, was finished and shown at MGM. Peckinpah wanted to invite some influential and well-meaning personalities like Henry Fonda and Marty Baum to the preview, but MGM refused. Eventually he managed to smuggle Jay Cocks from Time Magazine as well as Martin Scorsese and Pauline Kael into the preview. For those in charge at MGM, the version shown was too slow, too melancholy and too pessimistic. Against the will of Peckinpah, who secretly seized the preview version in order to save it, MGM commissioned a new cut version, which should be shortened to 90 minutes. Aubrey's ulterior motive was to be able to show the film in theaters several times a day. In order to have an easily noticeable start date on the hour, the final film had to be well under two hours long.
Wolfe and Spottiswoode fought to keep some scenes and got Aubrey to cut the film to a length of 106 minutes. Peckinpah, who at that time had already completely turned his back on the project, later resented the two editors for the concessions they had made to Aubrey. Spottiswoode recalls Aubrey's devastating influence: “The epilogue was cut and Garrett's ride out of Fort Sumner dissolved into a still image of Garrett and Billy laughing together. That was Aubrey's idea and it was horrific, just horrific. ”The 106-minute version, which hit theaters in July 1973, kept character drawing to a minimum and consisted essentially of a series of shootings that were pointless in the context of the plot. The frame story with Garrett's death had been completely cut out, as were several scenes that illustrated Garrett's inner conflict. The film was now at a faster, less elegiac pace than the preview version and showed the story from Billy's point of view rather than from Garrett's point of view. At least the editors had managed to fit the houseboat scene into the finished film.
Peckinpah sued MGM for breach of contract, unfair competition, invasion of privacy and defamation for damages of $ 1.5 million to $ 2.5 million and the restoration of its cut version or removal of its name from the film and advertising. The process fizzled out after several years.
Carroll, looking back on the making of Pat Garrett chasing Billy the Kid, summed up : "The film was nothing more than a battlefield, from two or three weeks before shooting to 13 weeks after shooting." Peckinpah remained disappointed and bitter about the experience throughout his life: " Rudy Wurlitzer's script […] was a truly epic confrontation of great poetic quality. I brought it down a bit but tried to keep its lyrical character and I really liked the result - I was proud of it. Then those emotional eunuchs from MGM cut out the character, humor and drama and left only the shootings, or at least they tried that. And that didn't work. "
For David Weddle, Pat Garrett chasing Billy the Kid is the point in Peckinpah's career from which his excessive alcohol consumption also became visible in the result of his film work: connection errors , sudden changes in the mood created and carelessly prepared scenic structures can be seen in this film and in all subsequent ones that allow conclusions to be drawn about the condition of the director at the time of shooting. Peckinpah didn't shoot a western anymore. Pat Garrett chasing Billy the Kid is, according to Kitses, "Peckinpah's ultimate statement, a snapshot of a tragic moment, his last western, his farewell to the western."
Film analysis
Cinematic means
Camera, montage and editing
Peckinpah stages violence with his typical use of slow motion and using several cameras at the same time, as it were as a “ballet of death” of falling and dying bodies. He was influenced by Sergej Eisenstein with regard to assembly technology and by Akira Kurosawa with regard to the use of several cameras. While with Kurosawa the cameras precisely define the space shown by filming the scene at roughly right angles to one another, with Peckinpah they are randomly distributed and do not necessarily focus on the main event. The chaos of the act of violence is thus emphasized more strongly. Peckinpah's use of slow motion was probably inspired by Arthur Penn's film Bonnie and Clyde , which for the first time used excessive slow motion to depict violence.
Peckinpah often filmed the barren landscape in a super long shot . The characters acting in it remain small, abandoned and lost. The country is no longer promising like in the classic western, but reflects the material hardship and the limitations of life in the wilderness.
On the other hand, Peckinpah endeavored to counter the tragedy of the plot with the impressive beauty of the images, combined with Dylan's melancholy music. This becomes particularly clear in Baker's dying scene by the water, bathed in a soft, golden evening light, or on Billy's return to Fort Sumner, when he is resting at a pond at dusk.
Most impressive in terms of editing is the parallel montage at the beginning of the film, which was realized by the editor Wolfe: Billy's gang's shooting exercises in Fort Sumner in 1881 against the murder of Garrett in 1909 are edited. This break with the chronological narrative style gives the scene a dynamic that is not sequential but historical. To the viewer, it looks like the 1909 Garrett will be shot and killed by Billy and his gang in 1881.
Movie tempo
The pace of the film, apart from the outbreaks of violence, is sluggish and shaped by the atmosphere of mutual observation. The leisureliness is also made clear by the fact that horses galloping once - an otherwise tried and tested means of creating dynamism in classic westerns - can be seen in the film. The film creates a mood of tension through the slowness without being really suspense in the sense of suspense .
Historical background
The events of Pat Garrett and Henry McCarty, known as Billy the Kid, are among the mythically disguised stories from the time of upheaval between the conquest of the Wild West and the incipient influence of traders and speculators. Peckinpah assumes that the viewer is familiar with the story; he does not explain the background. Billy the Kid, described by contemporary sources as either an unscrupulous murderer or a victim of political and economic intrigues against which he defended himself, the cattle thefts and shootings of the so-called Lincoln County War drew the enmity of the influential people of the so-called Santa Fe Rings, to which the cattle baron Chisum and the governor Lew Wallace belonged. Pat Garrett, nine years older than Billy and friends of him, had, like Billy, grown up in the adverse conditions of the West and was also not always on the side of law until the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office forced him to hunt on Billy to open up. The last months in Billy's life from April to July 1880, when he was given the opportunity by Garrett to flee to Mexico, have not been historically documented; an opportunity for the scriptwriter to let the fictional events of the film take place at precisely this time and to concentrate on the question of why Billy doesn't flee when he has the opportunity.
Fatalism and determinism
The producer Carroll summed up the story of the film in one sentence: "A man who does not want to flee is pursued by another man who does not want to catch him". Both main characters act against their free will and accept their predetermined fate: the one to become the murderer of his friend, the other, as part of a role that the public ascribes to him with a burgeoning legend, through the friend's ball to die. Both resign themselves to the social and economic changes that rob them of their former basis of life. As in the Greek tragedy , their fate is inevitable due to the external circumstances, there are no functioning alternative courses of action for either of them. The premonition of death hangs over both of them from the start, and unlike in The Wild Bunch, where the protagonists rebel and defend themselves against their fate until the end, it is fatalistically accepted by both .
Because the whole story is just a single flashback at the moment of Garrett's death in Peckinpah's cut version, the deterministic predestination becomes clear to the viewer : Garrett's death at the hands of his clients is just as certain as Billy's death.
Alienation and self-loathing
Pat Garrett believes that by choosing to stand on the side of the law, he can give meaning to his life and prepare for the times to come; but the opposite is the case: through his decision he loses his humanity when he has to cheat and kill his friends and comrades. He becomes alienated from himself and his social environment and loses his self-esteem, depicted in the film by his black clothing, with which he stands out monolithically like a silhouette or foreign body from the environment. Bit by bit, Garrett destroys his own past on his chase, because companions like Black Harris and Sheriff Baker have to die because Garrett is chasing Billy.
The most impulsive outburst of self-awareness and thus self-hatred is the moment in the film when Garrett fires a second shot in a mirror after shooting Billy. Garrett then steps in front of the mirror in such a way that the bullet hole appears to be where the heart of his mirrored figure is. A crack in the glass cuts Garrett's face in half; he recognizes his own dehumanization and conflict.
Conspiratorial worldview
Peckinpah's work can be read as a political and social parable of both the political situation in the USA at the time of shooting and his own experiences in the film business. The protagonists no longer freely decide their fate, but are exploited by powers in the background. In a conspiratorial worldview, behind every event a mastermind is suspected who, with the loss of individual freedom, uses scapegoats like Garrett to enforce his own power interests. Both the political events of the Nixon era with the Watergate affair - Peckinpah was a staunch opponent of Nixon - and the power games of the film companies, guided by economic interests, under which Peckinpah and his work suffered time and again , gave rise to such considerations .
The film as a late west
Neither Garrett nor Billy are portrayed in their actions as heroic or guided by higher morals. In contrast to the classic western, there is no sharp distinction between good and bad or between right and wrong. Not only Garrett, who betrays his friend, but also Billy is portrayed as shabby in his behavior: he shoots Deputy Bell, with whom he had previously had a friendly relationship, in the back, although he had previously pleaded with him not to do so to do.
All characters are too limited in their point of view and too jaded to solve their problems with anything other than violence. Their memories of the "golden age" of the Wild West, which they are constantly exchanging, only serve as pillars of their collapsing self-esteem, and their memories are always related to acts of violence or at least incidents in which someone has been harmed.
The film is also differentiated from the content of classic westerns in another context: Seydor, Kitses and others speculate about a possibly existing, latent homoerotic subtext in the film, perhaps most clearly expressed in Billie's lascivious death pose. Garrett's obsession with Billy goes beyond male friendship; he sees in him a suppressed, freedom-loving part of himself, a part with which he can only be reunited in transcendent love in death. Images with religious connotations such as Billies (Kitses calls him a "charming bad boy Christ") crucifixion pose when he was arrested for the first time also point to a redemption motif through death. Coyne chooses Tristan and Isolde's “love death” as a comparison to the relationship between the two main characters .
Violence and the reactions
Unlike in some of Peckinpah's other films, the violence depicted in the film is not used as a purely aesthetic spectacle, but is the consequence of the character disposition: violence is the result of the absence of one's own will, the lack of options and the loss of social relationships with others . It symbolizes the defeat of the individual and the loss of personal freedom. The acts of violence, which in their fast, brutal staging break out of the leisurely pace of the film without warning, are taken for granted and inevitable by the protagonists.
Three scenes particularly illustrate how Peckinpah deals with violence and people's reactions to it in this film. In all three scenes he stages tableau-like images to achieve a certain urgency.
In one scene, a gallows is set up in Lincoln, with which the death sentence against Billy is to be carried out. Children play at ease on the gallows and swing in the noose of rope. Since Ollinger, blinded by religious motives, previously feasted on Billy's helplessness and threatened him with the death penalty as a result of divine justice, the child's apparently self-evident acceptance of the gallows as an object of killing is critically thwarted by the endorsement of the psychopath Ollinger.
The second tableau-like scene is the picture of the assembled Horrell family during the duel between Billy the Kid and Alamosa Bill. There is no emotion on the faces of the family when Alamosa is shot by Bill in violation of the rules of the duel. All remain silent; their ability to empathize has died. The violence exercised does not have the effect of catharsis as it has become commonplace in the lives of these jaded people.
Thirdly, there is the houseboat scene, which is now considered one of the most impressive sequences in Peckinpah's entire film work. When Garrett and the man from the boat suddenly face each other with their weapons armed, the violence is exposed in its banality: the killing has become a groundless act, it appears in a world full of suspicion as the first solution to overcome conflicts, whereby the step from the enjoyable The pastime for engaging in murderous violence is only a small, affect-driven one.
Peckinpah's ironic self-view in the film
Peckinpah gives the film an additional bitter, dark undertone with a cameo as the coffin maker in a scene just before Garrett kills Billy. His character self-ironically rejects Garrett's offered drink on the one hand - which would not have occurred to the massive alcohol consumer Peckinpah - and on the other mocks and insults Garrett. The irony lies in the fact that Peckinpah was naturally able to empathize with the character Garrett and inevitably sympathized with him: the pain of self-destruction and the feeling of being curtailed by external circumstances in the freedom of choice united the director and his main character. As Godard in his cameo in Breathless , as he makes the policemen on Belmondo attentive, Peckinpah gives his cinematic image of the final push to meet his fate at last.
Outlaws and rock stars
Peckinpah uses stars of rock and country music as actors in his film . In addition to Kristofferson and Dylan as, according to Lenihan, Billie's " groupie ", Kristofferson's then wife Rita Coolidge and some of Kristofferson's band members also play. The similarities between Billy's gang and the hippies of the Woodstock generation are obvious: They pretend to be passive, childish drifters with no determination or ability to strike. J. Hoberman commented: "In this film maudit ('bad-talked film', literally 'ostracized film'), the end of the western is inextricably linked with the fading of the 1960s." Parallels between the lifestyle of rock stars according to the motto “Live fast, die young” and that of outlaws from the American West are illustrated by the choice of actors. Kristofferson seemed to Peckinpah to be the right cast: Although the historical Billy was murdered at the age of 21, he had him portrayed by the then 36-year-old country singer, who looked like a star who had just passed his climax; charismatic, but a bit sluggish in its way and with a slight belly. Just as aging rock stars strive to live up to their own legend in order not to be forgotten, Peckinpah also saw the attitude of the film character Billy the Kid.
music
Peckinpah's original idea was to have Jerry Fielding write the music for the film and then add some of Dylan's songs to the score. Fielding was supposed to be overseeing Dylan's recordings musically, but the two didn't get along because of their different approaches to music. Fielding recalled, “That was total frustration. Wasted effort. [...] I was brought in late after Sam had doubts whether Dylan's music could hold together a two-hour film. […] [Dylan] looked at me and all he saw was that I was representing the ' establishment '. He wasn't even listening to me. [...] I couldn't take part. Why is it wrong for him to sing 'Knock-Knock-Knockin' on Heaven's Door 'to the accompaniment of rock drums in a scene where a guy dies and the emotion speaks for itself: If I have to explain that too, then I'm out of place. ”In the end, Dylan wrote the score alone. Both Peckinpah and Fielding weren't that happy with the result; they found the sparsely orchestrated folk and rock music, along with Dylan's nasal singing, unsuitable for many scenes in the film. The soundtrack, whose best-known song is Knockin 'on Heaven's Door , was released as a regular Dylan album in 1973 .
Reception and aftermath
Reactions to the theatrical version
In its theatrical version, the film was not received very well by the audience and film critics. He couldn't live up to the high expectations that Peckinpah had built with his previous westerns, particularly the widely recognized masterpiece The Wild Bunch . The well-known quarrels about the cut reinforced the critics in the opinion that this is not the final artistic work of Peckinpah, but a compromise made for economic reasons. The film posted total revenues of $ 5,400,000 by 1976, so it made no loss to MGM; there was even a small profit left.
In his 1973 review, Roger Ebert was disappointed with the lack of tension and with Dylan's contribution to the film. The film is based "almost only on one mood - a melancholy one"; the result is boredom, which Ebert could not previously imagine in a Peckinpah film. Dylan plays "a character called Alias (" pseudonym "), and he should have used one." He looks in the film "like the victim of a joke with itching powder", his score is "just terrible". Ebert praises two scenes that remind him of Peckinpah's original vision: the scene between Garrett and the man on the houseboat, when they pointlessly put their guns on each other, and the scene when Garrett waits on a rocking chair for Billy has ended his night of love only to kill him.
Even Vincent Canby criticized the cut version shown in the cinema in 1973: The film is, so strangely cut "a pretty bloody mess of card games shootings and Kumpanentum that it is difficult to follow a story that has little more to offer than we remember us to the old days'. "
Tom Block recognized that the shortcomings of the film resulted from the history of its creation: “Despite a highly talkative […] script”, the film lacks a real plot; He conveyed his message in his best moments only through “opaque sprinkles of irony”. It is “almost baroque in its unevenness”, resulting from the disputes between Peckinpah, Wurlitzer and the producers, which “led to all sorts of misjudgments and a lack of care”.
The world judged, however, that Peckinpah's Late West was "a sobering and melancholy farewell to the lost days of the pioneering days". The film is "the most beautiful, the most exciting American film" of the year. There are “moments and entire sequences that belong to the best that Peckinpah has ever created” to be discovered.
Andrew Abbott of the University of Edinburgh Film Society praised the quality of the slow film pace. The film is "an oasis of calm compared to the doomed scenario of Peckinpah's earlier film The Wild Bunch , although it still contains enough blood and gunfire to qualify as a classic Peckinpah western." of old photos, “on which you can see the whole life story of the person depicted.” For him, the film is “very worth seeing because of its acting, unique atmosphere and sincerity”.
Turner version and special edition
In 1988 MGM / UA and Turner published the preview version for use on American cable television and released it in 1993 as the so-called Director's Cut on laser disc , although this version certainly does not represent the director's final cut version. You can tell that the editing is somewhat awkward due to the rush of editing and the lack of fine-tuning of the tone, and some lengths disturb the narrative flow. In 2005 the film restorer and film editor Paul Seydor produced a special edition in collaboration with Spottiswoode , which supplements the more fluent cut scenes from the theatrical version with the missing scenes from the preview version. Compared to the theatrical version, the Special Edition also shows the framework plot with Garrett's death, the scenes between Garrett and his wife and his visit to Chisum. The brothel scene is significantly longer than in the theatrical version, as is Billy's courtship for Maria. Compared to the Turner version, a scene was removed that shows Poe finding out Billy's whereabouts; a scene that, according to Spottiswoode, was shot only in order to be able to easily sacrifice it in the negotiations with MGM about the length of the film. As in the theatrical version, the scene when Baker dies in the special edition also features the vocal version of Dylan's Knockin 'on Heaven's Door , while in the Turner version the title can only be heard instrumentally. Both the Turner version and the Special Edition are available on DVD.
The lexicon of the international film praises the preview version, "which accentuates the historical facts of the civil war-like conflicts as well as the social and political details" with the restored framework.
In today's reception, the film in its restored cut is recognized as being on par with Peckinpah's other westerns. In 2006 the Berlinale showed the Special Edition as a graduation film.
Awards
Pat Garrett chases Billy the Kid was nominated for the 1973 British Film Awards for best film music (Bob Dylan) and best young talent (Kris Kristofferson). At the 1974 Grammy Awards , Dylan was nominated for "Best Original Music Album Written For A Movie or TV Special."
literature
- Peter Körte: Pat Garrett is chasing Billy the Kid . In: B. Kiefer, N. Grob with the collaboration of M. Stiglegger (Ed.): Filmgenres - Western . Reclam junior, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-018402-9 , p. 326-330 .
German-language secondary literature
- Frank Arnold, Ulrich von Berg: Sam Peckinpah - An Outlaw in Hollywood. Ullstein publishing house, Frankfurt (Main) / Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-548-36533-7
- Mike Siegel : Passion & Poetry - Sam Peckinpah in Pictures. Verlag Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin, 2003, ISBN 3-89602-472-8
English language secondary literature
- Jim Kitses: Horizons West - Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood ; British Film Institute Publishing, London 2004, ISBN 1-84457-050-9
- Stephen Prince: Savage Cinema - Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies ; University of Texas Press, 1998, ISBN 0-292-76582-7
- Paul Seydor : Peckinpah: The Western Films - A Reconsideration. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999, ISBN 0-252-06835-1
- Garner Simmons: Peckinpah - A Portrait in Montage. Limelight Editions, New York, 1998, ISBN 0-87910-273-X
- David Weddle: "If They Move ... Kill em!" - The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah ; Grove Press, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-8021-3776-8
Web links
- Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Pat Garrett hunts Billy the Kid in the online movie database
- Pat Garrett chases Billy the Kid in the German dubbing file
- Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - essay at senses of cinema
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for Pat Garrett chasing Billy the Kid . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , April 2006 (PDF; Turner version).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Arnold, von Berg; Pp. 58-89
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Siegel pp. 277–301
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Seydor pp. 255–306
- ↑ a b c d e f g Weddle; Pp. 445-491
- ↑ a b c Simmons; Pp. 169-188
- ↑ a b c Arnold, von Berg; Pp. 249-256
- ↑ a b c d Kitses pp. 229-240
- ^ Prince p. 51
- ↑ a b c Prince pp. 94-96
- ↑ a b c Prince pp. 140-145
- ^ Prince p. 206
- ↑ Michael Coyne: The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western , IB Tauris & Co Ltd, 1999, ISBN 1-86064-259-4 , p. 167
- ↑ a b c Prince pp. 179-182
- ^ Prince p. 198
- ^ John H. Lenihan, Showdown - Confronting Modern America in the Western Film , University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1980, ISBN 0-252-01254-2 ; P. 162
- ↑ Peter Körte: Pat Garrett chases Billy the Kid in: Bernd Kiefer, Norbert Grob (Eds.): Film genres: Western , Reclam Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-018402-9 ; P. 329
- ^ Film review by Roger Ebert
- ↑ Critique from Vincent Canby ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Review by Tom Block
- ↑ Quoted from: Dirk Manthey, Jörg Altendorf, Willy Loderhose (eds.): Das große Film-Lexikon. All top films from A-Z . Second edition, revised and expanded new edition. tape IV . Verlagsgruppe Milchstraße, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-89324-126-4 , p. 2160 f .
- ↑ Critique by Andrew Abbott ( Memento of the original from October 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The version differences on filmkritiken.org
- ↑ Pat Garrett chases Billy the Kid. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Pat Garrett chasing Billy the Kid on the Berlinale pages
