Arthur Penn, unintentionally or not, had a lot of movies that included an outsider or an outcast or outlaw- 'out' being the word and not really in- and The Left Handed Gun was the first. It's actually a pretty conventional movie, with a conventional story set around the iconic Billy the Kid tale and how William Bonnie (Paul Newman) goes from illiterate Texan who has a dark past to getting revenge on a sheriff and then getting into more trouble with further killings until finally meeting his maker at the hands of Pat Garrett.
Then again, it may just be conventional in light of, for most obvious example, Sam Peckinpah's Billy the Kid movie where the dynamic was 'revisionist' to the point of being a work of a total auteur. At this point, on his first film as director, Penn isn't quite there yet, and there were even some allegations from Penn that the studio meddled a bit with the script. But it still feels and comes off like a Penn picture because of the treatment of the protagonist and, this is crucial and also leads into Bonnie and Clyde years later- the supposed villain of the piece is shown at the least honestly if not outright sympathetically.
How sympathetically may depend on what you think of Billy going around and getting payback on people who killed a dear friend of his at the start of the picture, the "through a glass darkly" treatment as is described, and how he's occasionally shown to be just as his monacher suggests: a kid who isn't quite a man yet. However it's not an unfair portrait or skewed to make things black and white. If anything the real underlying revisionism is to question the straight-up Americana Old-West stuff of John Wayne pictures, and to see that supposed bad people had good in them or doubt or didn't really live up to their reputation, and that supposed good people also had doubt and (as seen in this film) didn't want to be sheriff but got pushed into it as a last resort.
While the screenplay, admittedly, isn't always top-notch, and one or two points of sentimentality are hit that don't quite meld, Penn's direction is quite strong for a first feature, and his star is top notch. Not too oddly enough considering how Billy comes off, James Dean was slated to play the part before his death, and it kind of shows. Ironically, I thought that Newman actually pulled off the James Dean type *better* than Dean himself; Billy is tough and vulnerable, but doesn't look like he'll crack and shatter at any moment like a Rebel Without a Cause. Newman also adds a good deal of humor and liveliness to the part, like when he plays the song on the 19th century version of the jukebox and goes playing around in the lobby of the hotel. And when he needs to hit those hard marks of emotion (watch him in the scene just before he gets in the shootout with the man at Pat Garrett's wedding) he hits them wonderfully. At the least, Newman puts this up a good notch, and now after his passing is a reminder of how amazing he was in his youth - and how he could properly humanize a legendary outlaw. 7.5/10
Then again, it may just be conventional in light of, for most obvious example, Sam Peckinpah's Billy the Kid movie where the dynamic was 'revisionist' to the point of being a work of a total auteur. At this point, on his first film as director, Penn isn't quite there yet, and there were even some allegations from Penn that the studio meddled a bit with the script. But it still feels and comes off like a Penn picture because of the treatment of the protagonist and, this is crucial and also leads into Bonnie and Clyde years later- the supposed villain of the piece is shown at the least honestly if not outright sympathetically.
How sympathetically may depend on what you think of Billy going around and getting payback on people who killed a dear friend of his at the start of the picture, the "through a glass darkly" treatment as is described, and how he's occasionally shown to be just as his monacher suggests: a kid who isn't quite a man yet. However it's not an unfair portrait or skewed to make things black and white. If anything the real underlying revisionism is to question the straight-up Americana Old-West stuff of John Wayne pictures, and to see that supposed bad people had good in them or doubt or didn't really live up to their reputation, and that supposed good people also had doubt and (as seen in this film) didn't want to be sheriff but got pushed into it as a last resort.
While the screenplay, admittedly, isn't always top-notch, and one or two points of sentimentality are hit that don't quite meld, Penn's direction is quite strong for a first feature, and his star is top notch. Not too oddly enough considering how Billy comes off, James Dean was slated to play the part before his death, and it kind of shows. Ironically, I thought that Newman actually pulled off the James Dean type *better* than Dean himself; Billy is tough and vulnerable, but doesn't look like he'll crack and shatter at any moment like a Rebel Without a Cause. Newman also adds a good deal of humor and liveliness to the part, like when he plays the song on the 19th century version of the jukebox and goes playing around in the lobby of the hotel. And when he needs to hit those hard marks of emotion (watch him in the scene just before he gets in the shootout with the man at Pat Garrett's wedding) he hits them wonderfully. At the least, Newman puts this up a good notch, and now after his passing is a reminder of how amazing he was in his youth - and how he could properly humanize a legendary outlaw. 7.5/10