A cowboy names Pierre Perret
Somewhere in the West, the small town of Langtry lives in the legend of the glorious Roy Bean, who once, a long time ago, saved the village from the fury of the Comanche Indians. The years go by. The Comanches are still as cruel, the adventurers as unnatural, but with a load of honors Roy Bean has aged. He became a judge in Langtry, a rather unusual judge who operates the town's only saloon under the same roof as his court. The good ones from Langtry: of course, Victoria, lady patroness of her estate and in principle almost the entire group of lovely teenage girls whom she chaperones and guides on the sacred paths of salvation. The bad ones: Black Bird in the lead, the great, the dark, the redoubtable dreaded Black Bird followed by his brigands. The “picaros” otherwise catalog of “thirstless driftwood” and “lazy barflies”; old Picadilly dreaming of ending his life in a comfortable London house; the seductive and cowardly young Antonio; the skinny and gigantic Slim, a soldier by vocation.
But did not God say: “It is not good for man to be alone.” But among all these people, there is Cat. Should she be classified among the good ones? Should she be classified as bad? She is what her era has made of her, with all the implications that the place where she lives can bring. In a word, Cat is a radiant woman, luscious, voluptuous, witty, flirtatious, intelligent, and depending on the day…virtuous. But what can a weak woman, even the niece of “the Magnificent” Roy Bean, do in a society dedicated to vice and violence? No doubt exactly what Cat said, certainly tired of wearing blue jeans even if they were made from zebra skin! Appropriate, in the very feminine hope of dressing in more vaporous finery, the two boxes stuffed with gold dollars is stolen from the naive of this dazzling western, the delicate, the famous Buck Carson.
And it is from this theft that madness will seize Langtry, that we will see the unfortunate Buck Carson, first condemned to a fine for not having taken off his hat in front of a lady, finally dragged into the coldest and most sinister of prisons. It is from this flight that Cat will become more and more enigmatic for the people of Langtry and in love with the imitable Black Bird. It is from this theft that Black Bird's gleaming and golden super saloon will be built opposite Roy Bean's humble saloon. It is from this theft that the thief will be robbed, that radiant with feminine delicacy, Cat will think of taking revenge on one by the other and reversibly, without ever sinking into sugary abandonment (I love this sugar...) of love. It is also from this flight that terror will reign through Black Bird interposing on the little people of Judge Roy Bean. It is from this theft, again, and finally that the village will seem to rest on a powder magazine, that the judge will judge himself and that Victoria, the Quaker, will judge herself about this same judge without whom things are no longer what they were. But Roy knows well that it has been written that “ungratefulness is the nectar of heroes.” The dollars are searched for in vain in the cemetery are found by a miracle, in the closets of the courts, magistrates will take the marquis, not to live there as bandits of honor, but as repentant sybarites.
Leaving the wicked, the cruel, the ungrateful, the lovers will take to the road, because, deep inside, Cat is not a lost girl. The seed of the little blue flower was still waiting in her heart for the spring of germination. And what brighter sun than that diffused by Buck Carson could better make it blossom.
“And there was evening and there was morning, and it was the sixth day”
Never in all the fabulous history of the West have we known adventures as extraordinary as those of the small town of Langtry and its judge Roy Bean, the legendary and glorious savior, free drinker and inveterate gambler.
GENRE
French color film by Jean Girault, based on the work of
Morris, with: Pierre Perret, Robert Hossein, Silvia Monti, Xavier Gelin, Angelo
Infanti, Francoise Girault, and Christina Gaioni. Director of photography Mario
Fioretti. Produced by Maurice Jacquin for Comacico
[submitted by Michael McQuarrie]
No comments:
Post a Comment