IMDb > The Left Handed Gun (1958)
The Left Handed Gun
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The Left Handed Gun (1958) More at IMDbPro »

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Overview

User Rating:
6.5/10   1,145 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 24% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Arthur Penn
Writers:
Leslie Stevens (screenplay)
Gore Vidal (play)
Contact:
View company contact information for The Left Handed Gun on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
26 September 1958 (France) more
Genre:
Biography | Western more
Tagline:
This is William Bonney, a juvenile "tough" from the back-alleys of New York... a teenager wanted dead or alive throughout the West. This is the screen's first real story of the strange teen-age desperado known to legend as "Billy the Kid"... more
Plot:
After his employer is murdered by rival cattlemen, a troubled and uneducated young cowboy vows revenge on the murderers, full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
NewsDesk:
(3 articles)
Director Penn Hospitalised With Pneumonia
 (From WENN. 14 July 2009, 12:11 PM, PDT)
Talkin' Westerns with A.C. Lyles
 (From The Hollywood Interview. 14 May 2009, 4:29 PM, PDT)
User Comments:
takes steps to not so much be completely revisionist but to stay truer to an outlaw than usual more (21 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Paul Newman ... Billy The Kid
Lita Milan ... Celsa
John Dehner ... Pat Garrett
Hurd Hatfield ... Moultrie
James Congdon ... Charlie Boudre

James Best ... Tom Folliard
Colin Keith-Johnston ... Tunstall
John Dierkes ... McSween
Robert Anderson ... Hill (as Bob Anderson)
Wally Brown ... Deputy Moon
Ainslie Pryor ... Joe Grant
Martin Garralaga ... Saval
Denver Pyle ... Ollinger
Paul Smith ... Smith
Nestor Paiva ... Pete Maxwell
more
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
Add content advisory for parents
Runtime:
102 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English | Spanish
Color:
Black and White
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (RCA Sound Recording)
Certification:
Australia:M | USA:Approved (certificate #18709) | UK:PG | West Germany:16 (nf) | Spain:13 | Portugal:M/12 | Canada:14A (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15
Filming Locations:
Columbia/Warner Bros. Ranch - 411 N. Hollywood Way, Burbank, California, USA
Company:
Haroll Productions more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Interestingly, the title of this movie promotes a common misconception that was proved untrue in 1986. Two almost identical tintypes of Billy the Kid were taken at the same time in 1880. The original of one tintype disappeared years ago. The second original tintype was preserved for years in the Sam Diedrick family and came to light only in 1986. Since tintypes are reversed images, the picture from the first tintype led to the myth of the left-handed gun. After the second tintype came to light, the reversed image was reversed to show the Kid as he actually posed, with a Winchester carbine in the left hand and his holstered Colt single-action on his right hip. See Utley, Robert M., Billy the Kid, A Short and Violent Life, University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Statement following page 110 alongside the picture of Billy the Kid. more
Goofs:
Factual errors: The film is about western outlaw Billy the Kid, who was in fact right-handed. more
Quotes:
Celsa: Stay here. They'll kill you!
Billy The Kid: They've been killin' me. Now I don't wait. I go first!
Celsa: What are you going to do?
Billy The Kid: I don't run. I don't hide. I go where I want. I DO what I want!
[He puts scarf around her neck and pulls her toward him in a provocative way]
more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in A Decade Under the Influence (2003) more

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User Comments

   (Comment on this title)
1 out of 3 people found the following comment useful.
takes steps to not so much be completely revisionist but to stay truer to an outlaw than usual, 15 October 2008
7/10
Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

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

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If James Dean was alive to make this... dysfunky
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