This was another recommendation from my friend Tom. Tom loves this movie. It has a lot going for it, Paul Newman, John Huston, John Milius. I'm afraid though that it felt like a bit of a mess. We were talking about John Milius, who has done such great things with the series Rome. What an intersting career. Scripting Conan the Barbarian, Apocalypse Now, etc. etc. Check out his listing.
Judge Roy Bean made me think immediately of Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill. This is the era of those sort of exploitive westerns. Then it hit me, this is Don Quixote as a western. Ah, sometimes unlocking that sort of reference defuses a film. Lily Langtry is the knight's courtly love.
I didn't think this was surreal as the synopsis suggests. That seems like a bit of hand-wringing confusion. It's actually a pretty straight forward inversion of the heroic western hero. Judge Roy Bean is an anti-hero, a tall tale for an audience morally exhausted by spaghetti westerns.
Still, Victoria Principal is beautiful. Paul Newman is Paul Newman. It's a fun flick. It looks like they had a lot of fun with the bear.
But then, to think that just the year before Altman had done McCabe and Mrs. Miller which is a superior film in every way. I'm not disparaging this film. I liked it. But it light fare.