The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

Roy Bean is an outlaw who is robbed and left for dead at a settlement called Vinegaroon in Texas. He comes back, kills everyone in the place and declares himself a judge. He opens a saloon, holds court in it and calls himself the only law west of the Pecos. On the wall hangs a photograph of the actress Lillie Langtry; he has never seen her and remains obsessed with her for life. John Huston directs. Paul Newman plays Bean, from a screenplay by John Milius. Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Stacy Keach and Victoria Principal are in the cast. The character has a real basis. Roy Bean lived in Texas at the end of the nineteenth century and declared himself a judge, and most of the stories told about him are exaggerated. The tone is deliberately unstable. The narrative moves between comedy and savagery and presents Bean as neither hero nor monster; it mocks the legend of the west itself. In the second half time accelerates; the oil arrives, the town grows, and the order Bean built is of use to nobody. Milius wrote the screenplay out of his own idea of the western and the film Huston made came out very different; the disagreement between them is well known. A bear is among the most cited elements. Who it is for: viewers who like late westerns and narratives that break a legend. Who it is not for: the tone is uneven, the narrative is episodic, and the women have limited function.