The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

 Nice Beloved Film
Had been wanting to see this again for years. What a beloved little film. Evokes a special feeling about how communities and cities flux and change and people migrate away but hope is never ending. Film was a decent transfer but considering the age of the film and graininess of film of the era, was understandable. December 21, 2007

 DVD Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
My husband had looked everywhere wanting this DVD. Leave it to Amazon to connect us to it. . it is just what we wanted. Thanks! July 12, 2007

 A classic offbeat western
This is one of my all time favorite western movies. I recommend it to Paul Newman fans and western fans. Notable for first appearance of Victoria Principal. February 15, 2007

 "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" is hard1y a milestone for Huston...
Bean rides into Vinegarroon, Texas in 1890, and is prompt1y beaten, robbed and hanged by degenerate outlaws and whores... The rope breaks, and he returns, shooting everyone in revenge... Then he declares himself "the Law West of the Pecos," makes the saloon his courthouse, and swears to uphold the honor of his ideal, the beautiful British actress, Lily Langtry...

He takes Marie, a Mexican girl (Victoria Principal), as his mistress, and administers justice by hanging men and confiscating their property to make the town (renamed Langtry) prosperous... Eventually, the community turns against him, and Bean rides out, defeated...

Twenty years later, in 1925, the town is run by Prohibition gangsters and evil oil men... Out of nowhere, Bean, now seventy, appears and purges the town by shooting the criminals...

In a sense, Newman comes full circle from his first Western, in which Billy the Kid also said, "I am the law," and fought evil by becoming judge, jury and executioner... But whereas Billy was a neurotic, pitiful adolescent, Bean is presented as an admirable, mystical character... The real Bean died in 1903, and scriptwriter John Milius presumably changed the date in order to contrast the wild individualist with impersonal twenties gangsters: even though he's a killer, he does it with style...

The film tries to make Bean another lovable character on the order of Butch Cassidy: he hangs and shoots men while quoting the Bible and delivering wisecracks, and he punctuates their deaths with punch lines...

Newman does his best with the material... His funniest scenes are with a huge bear named Bruno, who, like Bean, is grizzly, guzzles beer and deals violently with outlaws; at one point he delightfully evokes Bean's wrath by drunkenly licking Lily's poster... In William Wyler's "The Westerner," Walter Brennan as Bean upstaged Gary Cooper; here Bruno upstages Newman... In any case, the outrageous gallows humor and broad caricatures fail to disguise the fact that unlike Butch, Bean is a vicious fellow...

"The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" is hard1y a milestone for Huston, who portrayed hopeless dreamers more effectively in films like "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "The Asphalt Jungle."

November 6, 2006

 The Law West of the Pecos
Solidly entertaining, whimsical biography of the hangin' judge west of the Pecos. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN stars a growly and bearded Paul Newman in the title role, guide to the life of a legend of the Old West and host to a revolving series of guest stars.

`Whimsical' seems kind of an odd word now that I think about it. After all, it connotes a lightness of spirit, and that's a hard choice of words to use for a movie that features an on-screen hanging or five. `Whimsy' is defined as `an odd or fanciful or capricious idea,' and `whimsy' begets `whimsical', which is made of sturdier stuff that its pappy - `Whimsical: adj. Erratic in behavior or degree of unpredictability.' I'll let the word stand. John Huston's JUDGE ROY BEAN is erratic and unpredictable enough. John Milius wrote the original screenplay. With movies like `Jeremiah Johnson' and `Geronimo: An American Legend' among his credits, Milius has given ample evidence that he's a `print-the-legend' type of writer. And he takes his heroes seriously. Underneath everything - and everything piles high in this movie - there's a script that wants to make a legendary hero out of its title character.

That serious intent is subverted by Newman, whose charm is unsuccessfully buried beneath a beard and gruff exterior, and Huston, who peppers the whole thing with darkly humorous vignettes. In fact, JUDGE ROY BEAN is more or less a series of disconnected incidents, from Bean's massacre of a bar full of desperados who rolled him for his (stolen) cash and left him for dead to his circa 1920 explosive showdown with an unscrupulous eastern lawyer played by Roddy McDowell. In the interim he appoints himself judge, the law west of the Pecos, peppers the bar with posters of the beloved Lily Langtry (Ava Gardner,) adopts a black b'ar dropped off by Grizzly Adams (John Huston,) takes up with pretty young Marie Elena (Victoria Principal,) and witnesses an assortment of quirky cutthroats pass under the shadow of his well-worn noose.

If Milius wanted to plant Bean next to Geronimo and Jeremiah Johnson in the pantheon of American legends he must have cringed when Stacy Keach appeared for his twenty-minute segment. Gigged out in white pancake make-up and an Edgar Winters' fright wig, Keach plays the albino outlaw Bad Bob, who's so tough he drinks boiling coffee directly out of the pot. Bad Bob has come to call Judge Bean out, and hurls a series of insults about Lily Langtry in the attempt. I liked the darkly, surreally, humorous Bad Bob character, but he doesn't belong in a movie that's trying to keep things real. Worse, much, much worse, is the `Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' like musical interlude, also known as `Picnic with the B'ar.' Newman, Principal, and their 300-pound black bear co-star cavort along the Pecos River, accompanied by Andy Williams singing the saccharine "Marmalade, Molasses and Honey." I don't know for a fact, but I believe "Marmalade, etc." effectively killed the use of cheesy musical interludes in the middle of westerns. If it didn't, it should have.


December 4, 2005

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