Bob Dylan’s soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah’s autumnal western contains a classic song Dylan almost didn’t write for a movie that kept threatening to fall apart with or without it.
“ set, except for a prologue, entirely during the final few days of Billy’s life”
I feel differently here. I felt like the final Hunt for Billy, after the jail escape, took weeks at a minimum, maybe even months. Garrett plainly ages, and is even threatened with replacement as the hunt drags on.
But I could be wrong, as now I’m questioning which version I watched (I watched a few weeks ago when the Criterion 4K showed up). I thought it was the newly assembled one, but I don’t remember the Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door lyrics ever coming in. I took note of it, because you naturally expect it, the song is so famous, but then there’s no lyric.
I remember watching this in the 90s, and Dylan’s presence being like a record scratch, his fame and legend overwhelming the moment that he’s meant to be part of. I feel that’s less true on a 2024 watch, and that the movie lands more naturally now. He’s just another one of the famous guys in the movie. This will obviously be different for every viewer.
Regardless, this is one of those movies where, if you can’t put your phone in another room for the duration and allow yourself to fully marinate in it, then you shouldn’t bother with it. I had a great experience with the movie this time, obviously need to revisit the other versions and, finally, the commentary. Really happy with what Criterion has done here and the 4K transfer looks better than it has any right to.
I think time feels pretty fuzzy in this movie but I'm pretty sure the span between Billy's first arrest and his death is short. Assuming they're sticking to history, Billy's escape was on April 28, 1881. He died on July 14, 1881.
The vocal "Knockin'" is in the theatrical release and the anniversary release but not the preview version. Both the anniversary and theatrical versions look much different from the preview version, which has not had the same restoration.
Just short of 3 months seems right, that makes sense; I probably took “final few days” literally. Coburn does such a great job of letting us see how it weighs on him, he looks like he’s aging in front of our eyes, even though everything he *says* indicates total commitment. I think this is the best Coburn performance I’ve seen; caveat: haven’t seen Affliction of a few other maybe-key performances.
Now I have to go back and re-watch, because my memory is faulty regarding the lyrics, what a shame :). I had a great time revisiting this movie.
Also, I’m going to choose to believe the story about Peckinpah in the bath, just because I enjoy it. Amazing that there was anyone who could draw something like an audition out of Dylan in the early 70s. If any of that is true.
This feels like as good a place as any to get on my soapboax about "revisionist" Westerns, and the Westerns of the 60s and 70s more generally, including Peckinpah. During the pandemic, my partner--who, once she gets into something, *really* gets into it--watched something like 70 or 80 Westerns: the Fords, the Ranowns, the Anthony Manns, the Leones, the Corbuccis, you name them. My observation is that the Westerns following WWII are *already* revisionist--very clearly influenced by the Holocaust in their treatment of the interactions between settlers and Native Americans, very aware of the human cost of violence, and extremely interested in the dialectic (sorry! but it's really the right word!) of barbarism and civilization. John Wayne, for example, who we think of as unreflected Americanism incarnate, usually plays a war veteran who has spent time among the Indians and speaks their language, and so often a humane mediator between "civilization" and "the barbarians," or the male and female worlds in Ford's cavalry Westerns. What makes that era of Western so good is that the moves are aware of the ideological freight that the genre carries and know how to bring it out subtly, and make it work with and against the mythic power of the imagery. When loveable codger Walter Brennan is playing the villain in My Darling Clementine, you know something is very wrong.
The more self-consciously revisionist Westerns of the late 60s and 70s--I'd include Leone in this, but he's such a master visual storyteller it doesn't matter--don't have the same ideological investment in the themes and concepts that made the Western so powerful for so long, and so to me they often seemed kind of boring and nihilistic. They didn't really "subvert" expectations because the filmmakers obviously didn't have any investment to begin with, and so the movies are kind of slack. Probably the last great Western here is The Wild Bunch, which leaves its mark because it's basically one of the first modern action movies, and invented a new, super kinetic visual language. But watching High Plains Drifter which *opens* with Clint Eastwood raping a woman, I don't know, it feels like at that point there's just no tradition left to work with to put formal pressure on the whole thing and make the choices really matter.
I'm Kent Brockman, and this has been...my two cents.
“ set, except for a prologue, entirely during the final few days of Billy’s life”
I feel differently here. I felt like the final Hunt for Billy, after the jail escape, took weeks at a minimum, maybe even months. Garrett plainly ages, and is even threatened with replacement as the hunt drags on.
But I could be wrong, as now I’m questioning which version I watched (I watched a few weeks ago when the Criterion 4K showed up). I thought it was the newly assembled one, but I don’t remember the Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door lyrics ever coming in. I took note of it, because you naturally expect it, the song is so famous, but then there’s no lyric.
I remember watching this in the 90s, and Dylan’s presence being like a record scratch, his fame and legend overwhelming the moment that he’s meant to be part of. I feel that’s less true on a 2024 watch, and that the movie lands more naturally now. He’s just another one of the famous guys in the movie. This will obviously be different for every viewer.
Regardless, this is one of those movies where, if you can’t put your phone in another room for the duration and allow yourself to fully marinate in it, then you shouldn’t bother with it. I had a great experience with the movie this time, obviously need to revisit the other versions and, finally, the commentary. Really happy with what Criterion has done here and the 4K transfer looks better than it has any right to.
I think time feels pretty fuzzy in this movie but I'm pretty sure the span between Billy's first arrest and his death is short. Assuming they're sticking to history, Billy's escape was on April 28, 1881. He died on July 14, 1881.
The vocal "Knockin'" is in the theatrical release and the anniversary release but not the preview version. Both the anniversary and theatrical versions look much different from the preview version, which has not had the same restoration.
Just short of 3 months seems right, that makes sense; I probably took “final few days” literally. Coburn does such a great job of letting us see how it weighs on him, he looks like he’s aging in front of our eyes, even though everything he *says* indicates total commitment. I think this is the best Coburn performance I’ve seen; caveat: haven’t seen Affliction of a few other maybe-key performances.
Now I have to go back and re-watch, because my memory is faulty regarding the lyrics, what a shame :). I had a great time revisiting this movie.
Also, I’m going to choose to believe the story about Peckinpah in the bath, just because I enjoy it. Amazing that there was anyone who could draw something like an audition out of Dylan in the early 70s. If any of that is true.
I really need to see this, I think James Coburn is an under-rated actor.
can't forget MJ Lenderman's excellent interpolation on his song "Knockin'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb47lqqF-v0
This is just a piece of damn poetry, thank you very much.
Agreed. Great conclusion sentence.
This feels like as good a place as any to get on my soapboax about "revisionist" Westerns, and the Westerns of the 60s and 70s more generally, including Peckinpah. During the pandemic, my partner--who, once she gets into something, *really* gets into it--watched something like 70 or 80 Westerns: the Fords, the Ranowns, the Anthony Manns, the Leones, the Corbuccis, you name them. My observation is that the Westerns following WWII are *already* revisionist--very clearly influenced by the Holocaust in their treatment of the interactions between settlers and Native Americans, very aware of the human cost of violence, and extremely interested in the dialectic (sorry! but it's really the right word!) of barbarism and civilization. John Wayne, for example, who we think of as unreflected Americanism incarnate, usually plays a war veteran who has spent time among the Indians and speaks their language, and so often a humane mediator between "civilization" and "the barbarians," or the male and female worlds in Ford's cavalry Westerns. What makes that era of Western so good is that the moves are aware of the ideological freight that the genre carries and know how to bring it out subtly, and make it work with and against the mythic power of the imagery. When loveable codger Walter Brennan is playing the villain in My Darling Clementine, you know something is very wrong.
The more self-consciously revisionist Westerns of the late 60s and 70s--I'd include Leone in this, but he's such a master visual storyteller it doesn't matter--don't have the same ideological investment in the themes and concepts that made the Western so powerful for so long, and so to me they often seemed kind of boring and nihilistic. They didn't really "subvert" expectations because the filmmakers obviously didn't have any investment to begin with, and so the movies are kind of slack. Probably the last great Western here is The Wild Bunch, which leaves its mark because it's basically one of the first modern action movies, and invented a new, super kinetic visual language. But watching High Plains Drifter which *opens* with Clint Eastwood raping a woman, I don't know, it feels like at that point there's just no tradition left to work with to put formal pressure on the whole thing and make the choices really matter.
I'm Kent Brockman, and this has been...my two cents.