Juge et hors-la-loi

I enjoyed very much this tale of the judge Roy Bean.A story about law and justice near the Pecos River: a former outlaw who decides to build a town where the bads guys and the outlaws will be punished.But also a romantic man who has fallen in love with an actress Lily Langtry. who is writing her letters and once tried to meet her in San Antonio. A great Paul Newman who plays very well the role of Judge Roy Bean and in this cast we have goods actors such as Anthony Perkins, Ned Beatty,Matt Clark , Jim Burk and Jim McKinney, and good actresses such as Victoria Principal, Jacqueline Bisset and Ava Gardner.

Unlike other comedic Western films of this era, John Huston's THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN is based on a singular premise: that God Almighty has decided to judge men on this earth through Roy Bean, a petty outlaw and drifter. Early in the film Anthony Perkins (as the circuit riding Methodist minister the Reverdend LaSalle)recites the salient portion of Psalm 58 at an impromptu funeral he is presiding over for the deceased frontier scum that tried to kill and rob the solitary Roy Bean, (to their catastrophic destruction by Bean himself) Thia will remain the recurring theme and leitmotiv that will dominate and justify the startling and unlikely quest of Judge Roy Bean, petty criminal turned self appointed judge of Vinagaroon county Texas.

Despite the extreme rusticity of Bean's surrounding and beginnings, his quixotic position of dispenser of justice steadily grows and grows until Bean has become the most respected and influential man in that extreme outpost of civization.His position takes on a unmistakable sort of grandeur, as does his chivalrous obsession with Lily Langtry, which in the end has flowered into perhaps the last shout of true chivalry in the ancient European sense. When the corrupting forces of the encroaching outside world seem to have completely swallowed up Bean's life's work, the judge, who has been 'down the pike/' for twenty years, unexpectedly returns for a true DIES IRAE, a reckoning. The final scenes with Ava Gardner as Lily Langtry, visiting the tiny remaining outpost and museum which bear her name delivers a ending moment of surprisingly fine sentiment. I LOVED this picture, with the exception of the idiotic song that was inserted into the middle of this soaring myth (probably insisted upon by investors who thought an original song, no matter how dismal would increase the projected box office to the level of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID.

An odd, uneven and off-beat western from '71-72 that most downbeat of hippie years - incidentally coinciding with the year the modern-western, 'Pocket Money' also starring good-looking blue-eyed American superstar, Paul Newman was released. Bleak but playful and full of quirky scenarios and cameos with a cine-literate script although without the surrealism of the Italian western genre. The night-time scene when Bean travels to the theatre by train dressed in a top-hat and tails and is subsequently mugged is lyrical and timeless; while the scene when Bean accompanied by his Mexican wife Maria-Elena, played by Victoria Principal surveys the mellow golden-brown Arizonan prairieland vistas has a compelling purity of vision. The early-'70s were pioneering years and stood often for intelligent cinema. It reveals just how multi-faceted Newman's acting style was.

If you're looking for a factual account of Judge Roy Bean, this is not the film. One has still to be made for veracity. You won't find it in the old television series that starred Edgar Buchanan as the judge nor will you find it in the old William Wyler western, The Westerner, that got Walter Brennan an Academy Award for playing Roy Bean.

But if you're looking for good rollicking entertainment than this is the film for you. I have to believe that Paul Newman must have loved making this film, because it allowed him to be colorful, outrageous, and overact like a ripe Virginia ham. John Huston as director doesn't hold him in check in any way and the results are grand.

In fact the real Roy Bean (1825-1903) lived a good deal longer and had a longer career than what is shown here. He was probably more of a hell raiser than what Huston and Newman give us. He had more children than the one daughter played by Jacqueline Bisset towards the end of the film. Huston did incorporate some of the legend, it is true that he had a stiff neck as a result of a hanging attempt.

Please note that the real Bean did die in 1903 so the whole last 20 minutes or so of the film is pure fabrication. But it's great stuff.

His obsession with fabled actress Lillie Langtry is also part of the Bean legend and it is true. They never did meet, but it is a fact that Lillie as played here by Ava Gardner did visit Bean's town now named Langtry, Texas after Bean's death here and in real life.

Victoria Principal made her screen debut in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean as the woman who nurses him back to health after some unfriendly bandits nearly lynch him and who becomes his wife. It's hard to believe that this is the same woman who played a much different Texas female in Pamela Barnes Ewing on Dallas.

Huston assembled a good supporting cast for Newman besides those I've mentioned, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Ned Beatty, Roy Jenson, Bill McKinney are some of them. My favorite is Stacy Keach as the crazed Albino killer who challenges Bean. His demise at Newman's hands is the image I carry most from this film.

I think when you see The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean it will be the same for you.

This underrated/underseen Huston film is definitely worth a look. Newman is wonderful as Roy Bean, and the large supporting cast is amazing, especially Anthony Perkins as a travelling padre, Stacy Keach as Bad Bob, Roddy McDowell as a wormy lawyer, Ned Beatty as the outlaw who'd rather be a bartender, and John Huston himself as Grizzly Adams. This is not a perfect picture at all. It falls apart by the last third or so, has a terrible day-for-night process shot that doesn't really work, and a unnecessary and embarrassing "raindrops keep falling on my head"-type musical montage, but the rest of it is great fun. This is the crazy kind of script Milius used to write in the 70s, like Apocalypse Now and especially 1941. The tone is very odd, but if you like your comedy dark and your westerns satirical you'll find lots to like about this one. A very broad and dark performance by Newman, who manages to find the pathos and integrity of this western charicature. It's a nice companion/contrast to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Kind of what Rami must have been going for in The Quick and the Dead (minus the Spaghetti Western style), and the examination of the mythic hero that Roderiguez tried for in Desperado, but much better achieved by Huston (duh). Fun stuff.