ABSTRACT
By way of contrast to these comic and serious portrayals, John Huston’s sprawling The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) seems to offer a rather different perspective. This portrayal of the semi-reformed outlaw, Roy Bean, provides an oblique critique of the political and social source of the judging function. Judge Roy Bean explains his law enforcement philosophy to the Reverend Lasalle (Anthony Perkins) early in the film thus: ‘I want peace-and I don’t care who I kill to get it (Halliwell’s, 2001, p 473).’ Almost hidden beneath layers of genre tribute and irony Huston makes telling points about the transience and temporal nature of something as solid and seemingly permanent as state power. In the settlement west of the Pecos, where Roy Bean takes control, there is no state. This is not unusual within the Western. The sheriff being called in from outside or the unwilling citizen being morally press-ganged into acting on behalf of civil society and paving the way for the local state is a staple in the diet of Westerns. There is a difference here, however. Huston’s hero never really comes to terms with the notion that there is an external authority. The law and order he creates is autochthonous, as Bean explains when describing the personal source of his authority to the Reverend Lasalle:
I know the law since I have spent my entire life in its flagrant disregard. In The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) Huston takes a chaotic-looking lengthy examination at the myth of the creation of the West. The film sees Bean bushwacked by the occupants of an out-of-the-way country saloon/bordello at the start of the film. They steal his goods and chattels and subsequently seek to kill him by attaching him by a long rope behind a horse and sending this off into the countryside. This is a cruel rather than teasing ploy. Fate intervenes in the shape of the rope breaking and Bean survives with the help of a Mexican woman, a young Victoria Principal. He takes revenge on his tormentors, leaving a dozen corpses scattered around the saloon. Having disposed of the previous owners of the saloon he takes to running it by his own rules. His attitude is one of strong ‘order’ aided by a dash of symbolic law in the form of a volume of the Criminal Statutes of Texas which he finds in the saloon. The source of his authority, over the land which the Mexican workers do not want, neatly subverts the convention of property ownership as the prize for physical occupation: ‘You mean I own everything if I do all the getting shot at?’ He is aided in this enterprise by a gang who offer their services as Deputies to help develop the effectiveness of Vinegaroon. They have come to the area after failing in their most recent attempts to rob the Three Rivers Flyer when the passengers shot back at them ‘for sport’. Bean is pragmatic in his treatment of these outlaws and it seems doubtful initially whether he is serious in his plans to maintain a form of ‘Law West of the Pecos’ as the sign over the saloon reads:
However, when asked whether he did much ‘judging’ he points out that he has ‘a whole graveyard of previous cases’. We soon see this is more than an idle boast when a fugitive is brought in by the new Deputies:
Do you have anything to say before we find you guilty? In addition to the copy of the Texas Criminal Statutes mentioned above, he and his Deputies swear allegiance to two ideals. One is the State of Texas which is notable by its absence in any concrete form. The other, which is at least present in picture form, is the ‘spirit of Lily Langtry’—the actress mistress of Prince Edward-with whom Bean is besotted.12 With these as guides he is able to construct a quixotic form of justice. This is, however, not some kind of despotic Khadi justice. It is harsh but it is consistent. He is asked about the Spanish speaking peasants whose houses are adjacent to the saloon. His regime is non-racist:
Similarly to the outlaw who denies a murder charge on the grounds that the deceased were merely ‘a Chinaman and his greaser wife’, Bean is firm, if lacking in political correctness:
Huston portrays the task of applying the simple rules of living in Vinegaroon as involving elements of common-sense social engineering,13 occasional personal whims14 and hints of venality as a process of social improvement without pretensions. To the suggestion that there is no formal provision covering a crime Bean explains the centrality of justice in his scheme:
Once the town develops there is a challenge to Bean’s simple approach to justice. This comes, however, from outside in the person of Roddy McDowell’s weasel-like lawyer Gass. Initially he is persuaded by the brute force of Newman’s pet bear to abandon his formal legal claim to the town. He accepts the offer of a share in the profits of the legal enterprise that involves persuading criminals to offer up their ill-gotten gain as an alternative to the widespread death penalty.15 He is able to take advantage of the rifts between Bean and the socially aspiring wives of his Deputies
when Bean’s Mexican helpmeet becomes pregnant. When she dies in childbirth Bean ups and leaves and the way is open for the formal replacement of Bean’s personally created legal fiefdom:
With Bean gone the town develops into the kind of dystopian vision of the moneydominated society encountered by James Stewart in the ‘George Bailey-free’ Bedford Falls (It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)) until challenged by Bean’s daughter. The other memorable features of the film serve to give it its rambling incoherent reputation. For example, the pursuit of the Lily Langtry cult in the town; the parody of the Raindrops sequence from Newman’s earlier film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1968) with an Andy Williams song, and the magical realist moment when director Huston himself appears. Nonetheless, overlaid as the first half of the film is by these other plot and stylistic developments, it remains a fascinating insight into the relationship between law and community and a telling illustration of the potential of Weber’s ideal type of informal irrational justice.
