The Road to Bologna (8) - PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (Sam Peckinpah, USA, 1974), SLAP THE MONSTER ON PAGE ONE (Marco Bellocchio, Italy, 1972)

Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Fifty years on and Criterion have done a digital restoration of some quality for a movie that turned out not to be, as the distributor apparently hoped according to Criterion's Lee Kline, another Wild Bunch. Instead MGM got and hacked up, for their troubles a languid western with Dylan's beautiful soundtrack that dabbles in the power of the early robber baron capitalists and shows Billy the Kid as a total pyschopath of no redeeming virtue beyond Kris Kristofferson's blue eyes and angelic face. 

Chisum, whose name is invoked throughout is played by Barrie Sullivan, one of those given a credit at the start of the movie. Those later spotted in bit and small parts included a panoply of names that I doubt I recognised back in 1974 when I last saw the film - Katy Jurado, Chill Wills, L Q Jones, Jason Robards, R G Armstrong, Paul Fix, Elisha Cook, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, Harry Dean Stanton, Gene Evans and Dub Taylor. The Academy is going to give an Award for best casting sometime soon. If they gave one back in 1974 Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid would have been a shoo-in.

Laura Betti, Gian Maria Volonte
Slap the Monster on Page One

Marco Bellocchio filled the new/old Modernissimo cinema first with his 1972 film Slap the Monster on Page One and then for a conversation with Sergio Castellito and Gianluca Farinelli. I couldn't handle the earphone translation for the latter but the former went over a treat - a brutal tale of the manipulative capitalist press seeking to meld public opinion to its political agenda. Familiar... Bellocchio says he doesn't folds the same political opinions now as he did back then but his ability to deal with a subject with ferocity was at its peak...