The Left Handed Gun

1958 was a big year for Paul Newman--in addition to Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (which garnered his first Oscar nomination) and The Long, Hot Summer, a curious Western called The Left Handed Gun was released. The directorial debut of Arthur Penn, and based on a play by Gore Vidal (!) this film gave Billy the Kid the kind of psychological examination that was just starting to get popular in the late fifties.

Billy the Kid is one of those figures who belongs more to mythology then history. He was unknown in his lifetime, and his legacy was created by the man who killed him, Sheriff Pat Garrett, who wrote about him after the Kid's death. This film has just enough of the history correct to settle the nerves of a Western purist, but of course the actual truth is far less interesting. As it was said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--"Print the Legend."

Newman makes for an Actor's Studio Billy, brooding and angry. There are stories about how at eleven he killed a man who insulted his mother. He is found by a kindly English cattle driver and given a job, but when his boss is killed, Billy gets involved in the Lincoln County War. He guns down the Englishman's killers, and then escapes capture, killing two of his guards. Finally Garrett, who had been his friend, tracks him down.

Interestingly, the one thing the film gets wrong is the title. Many thought Billy was left handed because the one known photo of him shows a holster on his left side. Turns out, though, that the picture was reversed. But left-handedness serves the theme of this film, after all, for centuries those who favored their left were looked at suspiciously. The word "sinister" comes from the Latin meaning left-handed, and it's clear in this film that Billy is in a world where he doesn't belong.