The Missouri Breaks (Penn, 1976): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 12.10pm
This 35mm screening of a superb and rarely seen western is part of the Harry Dean Stanton season and is also being shown on September 16th (details here).
Time Out review:
A wonderfully quirky Western, brilliantly scripted by Thomas McGuane, which strips all the cute whimsy away from the Butch Cassidy
theme (outlaws on the run from a relentless lawman), replacing it with a
kind of pixillated terror. Playing the 'regulator' as a camp Buffalo
Bill with an Irish accent, Marlon Brando makes his entrance playing peekaboo
from behind his horse, and at one point even stalks his prey in a dress
and poke bonnet. But he is also a legalised killer, expert with a rifle
but preferring (as the flail of God) to use a harpoon shaped like a
crucifix. And as his gloating sadism shades into hints of bizarre
perversion when he dedicates a love song and a kiss to his horse, the
tone gradually darkens to a kind of horror. It's one of the few truly
major Westerns of the '70s, with a very clear vision of the historical
role played by fear and violence in the taming of the wilderness.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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