4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
James Coburn is Pat Garrett, the outlaw-turned-sheriff hired by New Mexico cattle barons to hunt down his old partner William “Billy the Kid” Bonney, played by singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who was just getting his feet wet as an actor.
(Click an image to scroll the larger versions)
“PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID: THE CRITERION COLLECTION”
4K UHD and Blu-ray, 1973, unrated and rated R, Western violence and sexuality/nudity
Best extra: A new commentary with editors Roger Spottiswoode and Paul Seydor moderated by critic Michael Sragow (on the 50th Anniversary release)
WHEN IT COMES to pulling out the stops, no one does it like Criterion. Case in point: “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” the last Western by the incomparable Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch”).
Shot in remote Durango, Mexico, the production was fraught from the beginning. As costs and delays piled up, “Bloody Sam,” whose health was deteriorating from acute alcoholism and the personal demons that had long haunted him – and who didn’t give a damn about MGM’s hand-wringing anyway – at one point directed from a hospital bed. His overlords in Hollywood were not only pissed, they were dead set on a pre-determined running time. They took over the editing and released a 106-minute version that got a decidedly mixed reception.
This four-disc set includes the original theatrical release, the final preview cut that Peckinpah was working on before he walked, and a 50th Anniversary release supervised by lead editor Roger Spottiswoode and editor/filmmaker Paul Seydor, who directed the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage” (1996).
How’s that for context?
(1) “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” Sam Peckinpah’s last Western, premiered in the U.S. on May 23, 1973. (2-7) Garrett finds the Kid holed up with Bowdre (Charles Martin Smith, center, fifth image) and O’Folliard (screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer). After they’re taken out, Bonney surrenders. There’s been some debate whether Kristofferson’s pose was intended to evoke Christ.
In a new commentary with Seydor and critic Michael Sragow, Spottiswoode, who also edited Peckinpah’s divisive “Straw Dogs,” says Peckinpah’s M.O. was different this time. Where “Straw Dogs” was carefully thought out, “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” was “made in the moment,” evolving as filming progressed. He has high praise for the dialogue-driven screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer (“Two-Lane Blacktop”). “It all became clear because it was so well-written. It was all there in the words,” he recalls. Peckinpah, to an extent, “let the actors create the characters and the editors create the form.”
The story, though, couldn’t be more linear. Garrett (James Coburn, Peckinpah’s “Cross of Iron”) and the Kid (a very green Kris Kristofferson, “Blade”) once road together, but Garrett is now a lawman hired by New Mexico cattle barons to hunt down William Bonney. An exchange between the two at a saloon lays it out.
“Ol’ Pat … Sheriff Pat Garrett. Sold out to the Santa Fe ring. How does it feel?” Bonney asks.
“It feels like … times have changed,” Garrett says.
“Times, maybe. Not me.”
Changing times, especially the changing West, defined Peckinpah’s Westerns – that and loyalty. Think about the final shot in “Ride the High Country” or when Pike, Dutch, and the rest of the Wild Bunch march into the viper’s nest to accept their fate. Like those films, “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” doesn’t sugarcoat the violence, but people who still can’t get past it are missing something key to a Peckinpah movie.
(1) Billy passes the time in jail playing cards. (2&3) J.W. Bell (Matt Clark) draws on his fellow deputy Ollinger (R.G. Armstrong) when he threatens their prisoner. (4) The Kid escapes and greets Ollinger with a shotgun loaded with thin dimes. (5) Peckinpah’s wide shots, like this one of Billy riding past a pond at twilight, are wonderfully composed with perfect character placement.
In the new making-of feature “Poetry & Passion: Peckinpah’s Last Western,” Coburn says the director was “a seeker of truth.” And Peckinpah acknowledges as much. “The moment of truth is always based in violence,” he says in a recently-unearthed audio recording. “It’s interesting. It seems to be a recurring theme in my movies.”
Like at the end of the film, when he makes a cameo as a coffin maker. “You finally figured it out,” he tells Garrett as he closes in on the Kid. “Just get it over with.”
Coburn and Kristofferson are totally convincing. Even though they were considerably older than Garrett and Bonney, their age difference was about the same as the friends-turned-adversaries. A supporting cast of Western regulars, many of them Peckinpah veterans, ups the authenticity: R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, Chill Wills, Slim Pickens, Jason Robards, Emilio Fernández, Dub Taylor, Jack Elam, Matt Clark …
A couple of newcomers aren’t bad, either: Charles Martin Smith, who would soon play Terry “Toad” Fields in “American Graffiti,” and Bob Dylan – yes, that Bob Dylan – as the printer Alias who takes up with the Kid. By the way, he wrote the music, too.
“Sam was very aware that he had already made the definitive Western and he was not trying to outdo it,” Spottiswoode says. “It was a radical change after ‘The Wild Bunch’ and has its own beauty. It was an homage to the past – and his past as well. He was saying goodbye.”
(1) Billy has his doubts about four strangers who show up at his hideout. (2) Bob Dylan not only wrote the music, he plays Alias, a knife-wielding printer who takes up with the outlaw. (3) Garrett is resolute in tracking down his old partner. (4&5) In the movie’s most moving sequence, Mrs. Baker (Kathy Jurardo, “High Noon”) watches as her husband, Sheriff Cullen Baker (Slim Pickens), bleeds out after he’s shot trying to learn Bonney’s whereabouts. Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” plays on the soundtrack. (6) Alone on the trail, Garrett takes time to ruminate.
VIDEO/AUDIO
Spottiswoode and Seydor supervised the 50th Anniversary release, mastered in 4K from the original 35 mm camera negative and a 35 mm color reversal intermediate. The original theatrical release was also mastered in 4K from the original 35 mm camera negative. Both received Dolby Vision HDR upgrades, while the enclosed Blu-ray versions and special features got the high-definition SDR treatment.
The extra attention given to the anniversary and theatrical releases pays off big time. Other than a few instances, the video is remarkable, with sharp detail, defined contrasts, and a steady grain. Colors are off the charts, too. Check out the panoramic shot of Billy riding past a pond at twilight. Seriously, except for those times when the image softens, both are reference-quality presentations.
Peckinpah’s final preview cut couldn’t support the 4K process so it was mastered in 2K from a 35 mm print from the Academy Film Archive collection. Presented in high-def SDR, Criterion notes that it was intentionally unrestored and minimally color-corrected to convey the feeling of watching the raw, rough-edged, unfinished film. All three are presented in the original 2.35: 1 aspect ratio.
All three also sport restored, uncompressed monaural soundtracks that more than do the job. The gunplay fills every corner (so much so that it sent my dog into my lap) while the dialogue and Dylan’s music, especially the powerfully moving “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” could not be clearer.
EXTRAS
The Spottiswoode-Seydor-Sragow commentary is a must. Same goes for “Poetry and Passion,” if only because of Peckinpah’s insights into the violence in his movies. It was a means to an end – that by showing it unvarnished, people might see it for what it is and maybe, just maybe, think twice. In that sense, he says, he failed.
Also new is “Dylan in Durango,” an interview with prolific biographer Clinton Heylin. Filling out the package are an archival interview with Coburn and “Renegade’s Requiem,” a wide-ranging, insightful essay by author Steve Erickson that’s included in the booklet. It’s a good read, but some may argue with his contention that “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” which he calls “an examination of how American power and greed corrode the stuff of freedom and friendship,” is Peckinpah’s greatest movie.
That would be “The Wild Bunch,” and that raises a question: When is Criterion going to turn its attention to it?
– Craig Shapiro
(1&2) The Kid is welcomed at the table of Alamosa Bill (Jack Elam), a onetime outlaw who now wears a badge. (3&4) Know how the reunion is fated to end, they set the rules for getting it done. (5) Garrett also knows what’s in store for Billy, and the outcome doesn’t rest easy with him.
Comments