Today begins at Railroad Square Cinema with The Left-Handed Gun, the first of the four movies entered into the festival to honor Lifetime Achievement Recipient Arthur Penn. Unfortunately, the buzz prior to the film is all about how Mr. Penn is in the hospital ill with pneumonia and a special guest (name coyly withheld) will be accepting the award on his behalf. Speculation is rampant as to who this could be and what means we should use to extract this information from festival staff. My wife brought strawberries and some dipping options for volunteers and staff. Drat, we didn’t know enough in advance to add truth serum to these foods. What would Dick Cheney do? The rest of the buzz is all about how there’s been some sort of technical meltdown in the Railroad Square projection booth and all of the evening screenings have been shuffled in a shell game (For example, The Left-Handed Gun has been moved from Cinema 1 to Cinema 2). Woe to the festivalgoer who only knows his or her festival itinerary by venue and time—not by the film he or she is planning to see!

I had chosen to see this film because I wasn’t sure I had ever seen The Left-Handed Gun before. It turns out that I have seen clips from the film and may have watched most of the film on television many years ago. It is among the first films in which Paul Newman was the lead and it is Arthur Penn’s first feature film as a director. Both had previously done extensive work in television and they had worked together on the Playwrights 56 presentation of “The Battler.” The film was adapted by Leslie Stevens from a Gore Vidal play which had been presented on The Philco Television Playhouse in 1955 starring Paul Newman. This film provides heroic gilt to the young gunslinger William Bonney who was best-known as Billy the Kid. Most of his victims participated in the deadly ambush of Bonney’s unarmed employer, a man who had taken a paternalistic interest in the troubled young man. An amnesty—that would have kept the peace and eliminated the film’s denouement with the noble hero Pat Garrett (John Dehner)—is actually broken not by Billy, but by his witless friend Charlie Boudre (James Congdon). One should definitely not see this film as a definitive rendering of Billy the Kid’s life story. Perhaps of equal importance, the film gives voice and a face to the many writers who created the larger-than-life myths about western heroes and villains. Moultrie (Hurd Hatfield) who helps to create the popular mythology of Billy the Kid is a worm-like creation whose fictions about Billy seem part opportunism and part based on his own desire for the confidence and power he imagines that the young gunslinger must have. Newman is an attractive (that may undersell the admiring descriptors used by many fans) young actor who is still learning his craft, but clearly holds the screen as the charismatic and troubled gunslinger. The film is a functional piece of cinema entertainment that is a good representation of its time. The film was made in black-and-white. This film stock was still quite popular with filmmakers and for several years ending in 1957 there were Oscars for cinematography in both color and black-and-white. Billy has a love interest in the married Celsa (Lita Milan), but this was discreetly portrayed suitable for being shown to the broad range of filmgoers prior to the MPAA rating system. It is film that was and is still a good time at the pictures.

My final film (only two films on Tuesday!?! Yes, but what a film!!) of the day was Historias Extraordinarias. This is a long film—and, in fact, I have never gone to a film that has had as long a running time as this film. It is broken up into three segments of about 80 minutes (a full running time for many feature films) each. The film follows three primary characters—X, Z, and H—but truly has far too many story strands to describe as the film digresses to follow other characters and even the fantasies created by one of the characters about another character encountered. These wanderings through the storytelling labyrinth amusingly end with, “…but this was totally wrong.” This truly is a film that loves the way that people tell stories and has a voice-over throughout. It does, however, very effectively use silence and wonderful camera work together in key sequences to very effectively heighten the suspense. OK, I must confess that I was unable to keep everything straight towards the end as fatigue set in. However, I most definitely would like to see this film again and would like to see it with optimum visual imagery since we watched projected DVD instead of 35 mm film or the type of high-grade digital presentation we were unable to see due to technical problems at Railroad Square. Ken Eisen, one of the festival programmers, apologized in advance to filmgoers because this was his personal favorite film in the festival and an acknowledgment that selecting this film basically meant foregoing two other films—a possible source of resentment should a filmgoer end up not sharing his high opinion of the film. Ken, I don’t need your apology. I hope I have an opportunity to see the film again because this is a very rich cinematic experience.