#thelefthandedgun

[rachelsophielesch]

Paulita Maxwell: The Woman, The Myth, The Legend

Paulita Maxwell: The Woman, The Myth, The Legend

Paulita Maxwell was born around 1864-5 in the town of  Mora, New Mexico. She was the daughter of Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell, a wealthy and respected landowner. The New Mexico border with Old Mexico was the haunt of the notorious outlaw, Henry “Billy the Kid” McCarty. Billy was popular with New Mexico’s Spanish community and often relied upon its hospitality. He was known to be something of a ladies…

[julesdelorme]

THE LEFT HANDED GUN

Along with my new found fixation on Film Noir, I’ve also been rediscovering my great love for classic Westerns. I started out with The Left Handed Gun, Arthur Penn’s 1958 treatment of the Billy the Kid legend. At the time of its release, The Left Handed Gun was hailed in Europe as a masterpiece, the first American Western of the anti-hero. Based on a Gore Vidal play the film bases its title on the only known image of Billy the Kid in which he seems to have his pistol holstered on the left side and holds a rifle in his right hand. As it turns out, that photograph has been shown to be improperly developed, leading to a mirror image which only made it seem like his holster was on the left side. Most of what we know about Billy the Kid today in fact suggests that he did most of his killing with a shotgun because he was such a terrible shot with a pistol. The film still has The Kid as a lightning draw and a basically good but wild and misunderstood young man. Historically that of course no longer stands up. It didn’t quite stand up then. That one picture does not show the handsome and dashing Paul Newman type, but a scrawny bucktoothed figure who was probably called Kid because he resembled a young goat. The real Kid was probably a serial killer, who shot most of the men he killed in the back or in the dark and, unlike the other so called outlaws of the time, killed for no good reason other than to kill. The film itself feels dated and much more closely related to its B movie cousins than to the modern Western. It doesn’t have the character of a Shane or Rio Bravo, or the darkness of a Oxbow Incident or the later Clint Eastwood movies. That’s not to say that it’s not a fun film to watch. It’s just fun in that Audie Murphy B Movie way. The Left Handed Gun does not seem like a masterpiece today. Paul Newman’s Billy the Kid does not seem at all like an anti-hero when compared to the anti-hero as we have come to know it. It’s a fun watch. The Left Handed Gun is just not really a classic anymore. It’s just another fun B movie Western.