Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
directed by Sam Peckinpah
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
directed by Frank Capra
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
"At one point, Peckinpah even posed for a joke photograph that he sent to the
Hollywood Reporter, showing him lying on a hospital gurney while receiving a bottle of whiskey through an intravenous drip."
from a
TCM Spotlight article by Paul Tatara
Before Christmas, I watched
It’s a Wonderful Life with Elizabeth, but I was too lazy to write much about it. On the drive to Texas for the holidays, I passed the turnoff to Fort Sumner heading south on 285 in eastern New Mexico. There was snow on the ground, dry as the plains. Syl and I have shared so many conversations about
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid that anything I can say is inextricable from our mutual revelations. That’s part of the appeal, of course, in much the same way that
It’s a Wonderful Life means so much to other people I care about (and to me).
The above photo is a clue to
Pat Garrett’s reputation as a “problem” film; few critics embrace it completely, and most writers dwell on particular aspects of the production while dismissing its idiosyncrasies out of hand. But to love the movie is to love both Bob Dylan’s turn as Alias and his carefree soundtrack, which keeps the youthful friendship the narrative is built on at the forefront of Peckinpah’s elegy. Rudy Wurlitzer’s script (and there is nothing else like it in movies) is a roll call of names and stories used as currency to keep adulthood at bay. The longer characters live, the more that list sounds like a charm against the inevitable inauspicious death that awaits them all.
I spend so much time talking about actresses that you’d assume my favorite performance was Anna Karina’s first screen test, but it’s James Coburn as Pat Garrett, and probably always will be. No one else would have played Lincoln’s famous marshal with equal parts amusement, confidence, and patience. No one else could make so sad a role so funny or so warm. Billy’s gang isn’t just afraid of Garrett; they like him and remember that they used to like him even more, before he changed with the times. Pat wears a serape when he rides to Fort Sumner to warn Billy about his impending arrest, and ever after a black suit – the only adult in the room.
It’s a Wonderful Life has attracted some of the worst criticism in the genre of film theory. At the end of 2008,
The New York Times couldn’t help but
drag out the old horse just to kick it in the shins one more time: "Maybe that’s what turned my dad off, that or the saccharine title." Watching
It’s a Wonderful Life again this year, I loved it more than ever. Yes, it makes disappointments universal, and in doing so democratizes the unhappiness that we all feel. But the worst night of George Bailey’s life takes place mere hours before the closing credits; the angel’s revelation of George’s impact on the lives of so many of Bedford Fall’s citizens saves him, but surely a sense of futility will return from time to time.
Once you watch the movie twice, the early, innocent remarks of kids and teenagers flush with love contain the fates you now foresee. “I’ll love you until the day I die,” young Mary whispers to soda jerk George. It is a sweet remark, and strong. Beside her on a stool, Violet asks what’s wrong with liking all the boys. We laugh, but the film’s magnanimous answer is: nothing at all. Even in the alternate universe of Pottersville, Violet is just as appealing, and just as taken aback by George’s crazy moonlight schemes.
One of the best scenes in
It’s a Wonderful Life is when George gives Violet money to start again in another town. The act is more than a charitable loan – more than the embodiment of the family “penny-ante” S & L that George inherits. The scene implies that George and Violet see each other all the time; they keep in touch because George understands something about Violet, which is that Bedford Falls is just too small a place. George himself doesn’t make a life there so much as make the best of one, but Violet is never punished by the screenplay or director Frank Capra. She isn’t reduced or embarrassed, or made small. Who would we have her be? The wife of Sam Wainwright, the braying donkey? No, Violet is simply, like George, misunderstood by people who, more often than not, look after themselves first.
The title is
It’s a Wonderful Life, and it is meant without rancor or cynicism. We believe it because George, long subjected to the innate, helpless selfishness of the kindest people in the world, can – in rare moments – come up for air. Bedford Falls is a lonely place, but the Baileys still christen each home in Bailey Park with bread, salt, and a bottle of wine, so that the lives lived out there will never know hunger and be filled with joy.
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is the end of that, but with more good times along the way. Mostly, I equate the two films because they are movies through and through. With each
Jewel Robbery or
Design for Living, I wonder if art could possibly be better, and sometimes think it could not. But those movies were plays first, and retain something stagnant from the stage. My two favorite films are broader than that: less dominated by the personalities of their directors than earlier and later projects, subtler in their cinematographers’ schemes, freer with words and mistakes, shouldered by actors completely in step with the most sympathetic readings of their characters. And some of the best music, to boot, whether "Turkey Chase" or “
Auld Lang Syne.”
From the photograph of Sam Peckinpah taking whiskey from an intravenous feed, you’d think the
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid shoot was a lark. The point is that the crew made it seem like one. I am occasionally asked why I like movies so much. I like them most when I watch them with friends. There’s no gallery like a sofa, no book like a title sequence, and no title sequence like
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid's.
