Criterion comes through with the spectacular special edition hinted at by Alex Cox back in 2022… Sam Peckinpah’s final western sees the light of day in three versions, two of them remastered to a glowing 4K Ultra HD. Sam’s shooting-gallery rumination on loyalty and betrayal in a corrupt New Mexico is an unending parade of western-associated actors; James Coburn makes with the disillusioned stares, Kris Kristofferson gives a good performance and none other than Bob Dylan provides the music and songs. Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens’ 6-minute episode steals the movie. A new commentary and some very informative video docus help out this classy 4-disc set. Warners, let Criterion do The Wild Bunch!

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1224
1973 / Color / 2:35 widescreen /117 50th Anniversary Release; 106 Theatrical; 122 Final Preview Cut / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 2, 2024 / 69.95
Starring: James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Jason Robards, Richard Jaeckel, Katy Jurado, Chill Wills, R.G. Armstrong, Luke Askew, John Beck, Richard Bright, Matt Clark, Rita Coolidge, Jack Elam, Emilio Fernández, Paul Fix, L.Q. Jones, Slim Pickens, Jorge Russek, Charlie Martin Smith, Harry Dean Stanton, John Davis Chandler, Michael T. Mikler, Rutanya Alda, Walter Kelley, Gene Evans, Donnie Fritts, Aurora Clavel, Elisha Cook Jr., Barry Sullivan, Dub Taylor.
Cinematography: John Coquillon
Art Director: Ted Haworth
Film Editors: David Berlatsky, Garth Craven, Richard Halsey, Roger Spottiswoode, Robert L. Wolfe, Tony de Zarraga
Wardrobe: Michael Butler
Original Music: Bob Dylan
Written by Rudy Wurlitzer
Produced by Gordon Carroll
Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Sam Peckinpah’s final western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is yet another show dogged by production problems, this time not all the writer-director’s fault. Peckinpah alienated his producers and blamed others for his own problems. His talent was so great that he bounced back after being banished from studio work, with the masterpiece  The Wild Bunch. But he squandered his second chance at a flourishing career. His output became that of a dissipated man who lost his grip on his profession —  The Killer Elite, Convoy, The Osterman Weekend. The talented Peckinpah was too self-destructive to qualify as a Hollywood martyr.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid could have been another ‘chance to do it right’ like  The Wild Bunch. But it came together at MGM, when the fading studio was ruled by production chief James Aubrey, a former TV exec known as ‘The Smiling Cobra.’ A malign joy killer, Aubrey routinely took pictures away from big directors for re-cutting, sometimes just to prove who was in charge.  Writer-director Blake Edwards’ The Carey Treatment was a major victim of Aubrey’s creative sabotage. Sam Peckinpah may have thought he’d seen the worst of studio politics on his  Major Dundee, but Aubrey editorially raped Pat Garrett, hacking it down to 106 minutes. Savant remembers seeing it on opening day in Westwood with screenwriter Steve Sharon, and being very disappointed.

What would Peckinpah’s cut have been like?  For television showings several ‘R’- rated sequences were replaced with new material we hadn’t seen in the theater, such as a brief appearance of Barry Sullivan as John Chisum. Years later, Jerry Harvey’s ‘Z’ Cable channel aired a version of Peckinpah’s film called the ‘1988 Preview/Turner Cut.’  It was apparently a workprint copy smuggled out of the cutting room. Warner Home Video’s 2006 special edition DVD boxed set of Peckinpah films included that Final Preview Cut, plus a new cut by editor / Peckinpah biographer Paul Seydor, who combined some of its scenes with the Original Theatrical Cut.

The proliferation of versions likely contributed to the film’s delayed appearance on Blu-ray. But interest in the show has always been strong. In an interview back in March of 2022, director Alex Cox only had to mention that Criterion was working on a special edition, to start the Peckinpah fans buzzing.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a revisionist account of the taming of the New Mexico territory, as its wilder elements are pushed out by big-money landowners. It’s very unlike the John Wayne / Andrew V. McLaglen Chisum (1970), which tells part of the same story from the viewpoint of a prominent cattle rancher.

1909. Bushwhackers hired by a land-grabbing group known as ‘The Santa Fe Ring’ ambush and gun down New Mexico rancher Pat Garrett (James Coburn) on his own land. 1881. Pat is still a friend to his fellow former outlaw colleague William Bonney (Kris Kristofferson), but is now the sheriff of Lincoln County. Seeing middle age on the horizon, Garrett sells out to the ‘business’ cohorts of governor Lew Wallace (Jason Robards Jr.). They demand that he hunt down and kill Bonney – better known as Billy the Kid.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is yet another elegiac and lyrical Peckinpah vision of the death of the West, seen through the soul-weary eyes of an outlaw turned lawman. Looking for a way ‘to grow old and gray in peace,’ Pat feels he has no choice but to cooperate with the fat cats of The Santa Fe Ring. At its center is New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace, a pious hypocrite who would eventually gain fame as the author of Ben-Hur. Pat’s first task as part of The Ring’s territorial image enhancement campaign is to eliminate the notorious William Bonney.

Peckinpah’s most easily recognized filmic pattern to provide character conflict is the use of a ‘binary hero.’ Every critic from Jim Kitses forward has ruminated on the polar tensions between Steve Judd and Gil Westrum, Amos Dundee and Ben Tyreen, Pike Bishop and Deke Thornton. In each case the bonds of loyalty go deep into the past, and the present conflict illuminates the pair’s weaknesses and strengths.

Without any malice toward Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, its character conflict lacks impetus. James Coburn’s Garrett broods with regret and self-loathing in the very first scene, telling Billy that he’d better light out for Mexico and stay there. The rest of the movie just repeats the same static situation. Despite a lot of comings and goings, there is nothing resembling a constructed plot, just disconnected episodes. Most every scene dotes on images of our two heroes staring meaningfully, caught up in existential angst.

It’s not plot-driven, but many fans like that.

For better or for worse, Pat Garrett is a structurally loose collection of compartmentalized scenes. Their order often feels arbitrary, and too many feel redundant. Coburn’s Garrett, Kristofferson’s Billy or John Beck’s character Poe comes across a new group of well-remembered western actors, and something violent happens. Billy visits a family man played by Gene Evans, and discovers Alamosa Bill (Jack Elam). Everybody watches Billy gun Bill down, and then Billy simply rides off. Similar shootouts occur at least once every ten minutes or so, upping the body count but not really advancing the story.

A number of episodes turn into excellent set pieces, little one-act wonders. But too many could be dropped without affecting story continuity. The original Theatrical Cut dropped an episode with John Chisum, an old-time land baron being squeezed by The Ring. Chisum is played by Barry Sullivan, in stark contrast to John Wayne’s heroic version.

A couple of key moments appear to be restaged from older Billy the Kid movies, such as Arthur Penn’s  The Left-Handed Gun. Billy’s jailbreak is a carbon copy of a classic scene from Marlon Brando’s  One-Eyed Jacks. Peckinpah did write an early draft of Jacks, before Stanley Kubrick came in and changed everything. Did Sam consider the scene his to re-use?  We don’t complain because this staging improves on Marlon Brando’s: the ferocity of R.G. Armstrong’s shotgun-wielding deputy easily bests that of Slim Pickens.

Most of the shootouts are well-done, yet a sense of pointlessness crops up. Billy’s big decision to not go to Mexico is fumbled in yet another gundown of Chisum cowboys. We’re supposed to experience Billy’s loss of Paco, a cherished buddy from South of the Border (Emilio Fernández). Billy tenderly says his goodbye, but the focus on the scene is topless nudity from Paco’s raped daughter. Billy just rides away, leaving her to deal with the body and her ransacked wagon on her own.

Scenes like that rob the vitality from other, much better conceived and directed vignettes. One little moment in which Pat and a guy on a raft exchange impromptu, murderous gunfire plays as if it were a short story by Ambrose Bierce. Minus any really meaningful irony, though. The West is a place of random aggressive murder?  Hmm, maybe Peckinpah has a point there after all.

A great movie for observing ne’er-do-wells and loiterers.

As if aware that he’s selling a character rumination, not a story, Peckinpah populates Pat Garrett with scores of familiar sagebrush faces — it’s like a quiz show. Western fans love the parade of unshaved saddle bums – just about every character actor associated with horses and capable of picking up a gun is represented. Tiny roles are filled by interesting casting choices. Hanging around in the background when Pat and Billy first talk are Jorge Russek (The Wild Bunch, Hour of the Gun), Harry Dean Stanton (Two Lane Blacktop) and Charlie Martin Smith ( American Graffiti).

Billy’s bunch hangs out in groups in corrals and barrooms. Gang members and Pat are shown bedding down with prostitutes. That material will either seem realistic, or offensively sexist: at this point in his career few of Peckinpah’s women do much more than decorate scenes and show their bodies.

↑  Bob Dylan’s acting turn is a genuine casting coup. After being introduced with some elliptical dialogue, the function of Dylan’s ‘Alias’ is to be a fly on the wall. He throws his knife in one scene, but otherwise appears in cutaways, ‘observing’ Pat and Billy in disconnected close-ups. As a culture legend who normally shunned film appearances, Dylan must have been an enthusiastic fan of Peckinpah. That he enlisted to do the film’s music is a benefit that should have had MGM and James Aubrey doing cartwheels.

Peckinpah’s westerners trade believable obscene gab, some of it eyebrow-raisingly foul. We wonder if Chill Wills improvised some of his dirty-mouth asides. More potentially offensive to the animal-loving demographic is the opening scene in which Billy and his boys use live chickens for target practice. Viewers that won’t abide films with faked harm to an animal, are likely to walk out before the movie even gets started.

The show does have a handful of priceless moments to appreciate. The stand-alone episode with Katy Jurado, Slim Pickens and Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door is audio-visual poetry. The couple’s elegiac farewell by the river is in itself worth the price of admission, so good that we don’t care that it’s a reprise of the finale of  Ride the High Country. We wish that Peckinpah had dropped a cookie cutter bang-bang scene or two, and instead expanded the ‘Sheriff & Mrs. Baker’ story thread.

The Final Preview Cut begins and ends with a nifty framing flash-forward rendered in a sepia-like monochrome, showing Pat Garrett’s murder by the Santa Fe Ring three decades later. Peckinpah’s clever cutting games work well here — the 1909 ambush is intercut with the chicken-shooting scene, so that Pat is first hit by a bullet fired 28 years earlier. It’s editorially brilliant.

Pat Pretense and Billy the Symbol?

But Peckinpah pays a high penalty for pretentious details. Billy’s surrender while assuming a Christ position isn’t all that offensive, but having Pat shoot his own reflection in a mirror feels lazy. It worked the first time in The Wild Bunch because it was one detail in a flurry of action. The last straw is Peckinpah’s eye-rolling cameo as a coffin maker, encountered by Garrett on the way to keep his appointment with destiny. Sam utters the worst drivel spoken in all of the 1970s:

“So you finally figured it out, eh Pat?”

True, even The Wild Bunch skirts with trite ‘meaningful’ dialogue here and there, but this unexpected pomposity is the shape of things to come in Peckinpah. Even the best of his later films ( Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and  Cross of Iron) labor mightily under the weight of an ‘auteur’ straining for significance.

We say this knowing that we still admire much of Pat Garrett and look forward to seeing it again. Criterion’s essayist makes the case that this is Peckinpah’s best movie, which to us is quite a stretch — maybe we haven’t yet ‘finally figured it out.’  If Pat Garrett best expresses Sam’s personality and world view, the portrait painted is unflattering in the extreme.

The Criterion Collection’s 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a much-anticipated disc event that will not disappoint Peckinpah fans. It’s the first disc rendering since a 2006 DVD.

The handsome new 4K remastered versions have been attractively re-timed. The digital tweaking of day-for-night scenes is a big improvement. In 4K we can now see some of the image defects that plagued the film. Most of the emulsion scratches seem to have been buffed away, but there are still occasional shots made with a bum lens that didn’t focus properly. MGM’s execs went ballistic over the flawed dailies, even though the lens problem was promptly corrected.

Bob Dylan’s acoustic and electric music is still a major asset. His laconic ballads blend nicely with Billy’s laid-back song-singing during his jailbreak. When the movie played in theaters, Dylan’s hit song Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door had audible lyrics. In the 1988 Preview/Turner cut it played without vocals, so we assumed that Peckinpah preferred an instrumental-only version. Dylan’s voice is back for the 50th Anniversary Recut, and we still like it. Unless one is dead set against hearing the folk singer in a Peckinpah picture, it adds greatly to the moment.

Two versions of the film are present on separate 4K discs. The first carries the 1973 Original Theatrical Version. This may be the first time the original theatrical version has appeared on disc.  ^*   The second 4K disc has a revised and remastered version of the ‘2005 Fine Cut,’ now called the 50th Anniversary Release.

For viewers new to the movie, the ’50th Anniversary Release’ is the one recommended to see first. Criterion’s liner notes describe it as editor Paul Seydor’s refinement of the 2005 Fine Cut with additional fixes and adjustments by Roger Spottiswood and Robert L. Wolfe, close Peckinpah associates. Corrections to the sound and retimings of the color are part of this third new version. The liner notes say that the second act was tightened — perked up by ending several meandering scenes a few seconds early, rather than allowing their energy to peter out.

Two Blu-ray discs are included as well. A first gives us the two versions just mentioned in HD. A second Blu-ray disc has Criterion’s video extras, plus the fascinating Final Preview Cut, previously called the “1988 Preview/Turner Cut,” the one that had its ‘premiere’ on the ‘Z’ Cable Channel. Its source is a print rescued from the cutting room when James Aubrey forced Peckinpah from the movie. It’s faded and has various film-related scratches and dings, but plays quite well, with polished opticals for the opening and closing sequences.

This ‘Final Preview Cut’ was the last version that Peckinpah personally approved. It is very different from James Aubrey’s Theatrical release version, with scenes left longer and arranged in a different order. The opening and closing sequences set in 1909 lend a satisfying flashback structure to the body of the film, set in 1881. The Preview Cut ends with a dark text message about Pat Garrett’s demise at the hands of the Santa Fe Ring.

No Flashback, just a very good Prologue.

Everybody is going to have their own idea of what scenes should be kept and which should be deleted from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The 50th Anniversary Release is very close to ideal. It retains the nice scene with Pat Garrett’s wife Ida (Aurora Clavel). First seen in a television version, it depicts a typically lousy Peckinpah male-female relationship, adding to our understanding of Coburn’s character. Plain common sense favors retaining Dylan’s vocal of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door — dropping a well-known Bob Dylan song is commercially unthinkable.

The 50th begins with the 1909 sequence in a rich sepia-like monotone, but it ends with the standard theatrical finish. Paul Seydor’s commentary tells us that seeing Pat ride off pelted by horse dung is the better of the endings. We tend to think that the rights holders just didn’t want to open the Pandora’s Box of altering the original title and credit sequences, which could conceivably incur a drawn-out negotiation with Guilds, etc..

Criterion’s extras don’t access those on the old DVD release, so don’t toss it. They’ve instead sprung for a new commentary by the talent that assembled the 50th Anniversary Cut. Paul Seydor and the other value-added producers/contributors explain that their 50th Anniversary recut is intended to carry out Peckinpah’s cutting notes. These fellows knew the director well, making their changes less experimental than the late ’90s recut of Orson Welles’  Touch of Evil.

Longtime Peckinpah documentarian and superfan Mike Siegel puts forth his best actor and filmmaker video interviews for his 50-minute Passion and Poetry documentary. The choice of material to use shows good judgment. Nobody wanders off in tangents and self-promotional gab is kept to a minimum, even if actor L.Q. Jones insists on an interview background of ad material showing off his career highlights. The great R.G. Armstrong comes on strong, like one of his Peckinpah characters. The testimonials praise Sam’s great talent but also express some wariness about the man — or tell anecdotes that hint at the loose cannon described by his enemies. We also hear some audio interview bits from Peckinpah, that Criterion says are presented for the first time.

Also worthy is a smart and compact piece on Bob Dylan’s experience on the movie, the way he became an actor and a first-time soundtrack composer. Clinton Heylin gets into interesting detail on that subject. It says a lot about Sam Peckinpah’s culture aura, that the legend Bob Dylan came a-runnin’ to be in one of his movies.

The video extras round off with an older interview with James Coburn, that has more than a few insights about his director and personal friend. Steve Erickson’s essay on the folded insert makes for excellent liner notes. We can’t knock his celebratory take on Pat Garrett — warts and all, it’s still a very important western post- The Wild Bunch.

Think we’re too critical?  I’m sure that I am. See  Mark Throop’s level-headed assessment of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Mark Throop rules.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
New audio commentary on the 50th Anniversary Release with Seydor, Spottiswoode, and critic Michael Sragow
Interview Dylan in Durango with Clinton Heylin about the film’s soundtrack
Documentary Passion & Poetry: Peckinpah’s Last Western by Mike Siegel (49 minutes)
Archival interview with actor James Coburn
Trailer and TV spots
Insert pamphlet booklet with an essay by Steve Erickson.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: Three 4K Ultra HD discs + 2 Blu-rays in card & plastic holder in card box
Reviewed: July 18, 2024
(7158garr)

^*  There’s always a new ‘wish list’ restoration project to dream about with Peckinpah: how about a 4K remaster of The Wild Bunch that reinstates the extra bits and Intermission break of the 70mm 6-track stereophonic international release version?  And we of course have heard about a few last-minute trims performed on the movie, after Peckinpah finished his work…

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