48-467: Dirty Little Billy is a 1972 American revisionist western film co-written and directed by Stan Dragoti and starring Michael J. Pollard and Richard Evans . Set in Coffeyville, Kansas , the film was influenced by the darker, more sinister style of Spaghetti Westerns and offered a unique insight into the beginnings of the titular notorious outlaw. It is notable for Nick Nolte 's film debut, along with
96-538: A general and provincial governor during the Gallic Wars . It fell out of use during the early Empire . In English common law , an outlaw was a party who had defied the laws of the realm by such acts as ignoring a summons to court or fleeing instead of appearing to plead when charged with a crime . The earliest reference to outlawry in English legal texts appears in the 8th century. The term outlawry refers to
144-689: A background appearance for experimental filmmaker /artist William Ault. A tough and violent portrait of a psychopathic, yet fresh-faced youth—the infamous Billy the Kid in his grimy early days. The film premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival on October 20, 1972 before opening at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco five days later. Steven Puchalski wrote in Shock Cinema magazine: This
192-453: A gasket at the very end and sparks his future. This 1970s Western film–related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to an American film of the 1970s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Revisionist western The revisionist Western is a sub- genre of the Western fiction. Called a post-classical variation of
240-455: A gunfighter is over. Shane rides away to an uncertain future, possibly to die (he is wounded), and it is farmer Starrett ( Van Heflin ) and his family who endure. Fifteen years after Stevens's Shane , Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West , a revisionist Western which completely subverts the traditional with complex characters and multiple plot devices, the key one being revenge –
288-532: A new perspective on the Western genre. Early examples of this sub-genre are Leone's A Fistful of Dollars , starring Clint Eastwood , and Corbucci's Minnesota Clay , starring Cameron Mitchell , both made in 1964. The revisionist and psychological Westerns have been carried forward from their own standard settings into the neo-Western , a notable of which is the Coen brothers ' No Country for Old Men (2007), based on
336-402: A traditional Western drifter riding across a traditional Western landscape but it is soon apparent that he has entered a complex setting which is populated by, as Kim Newman puts it, "believable characters with mixed motives". Even though rancher Ryker ( Emile Meyer ) is ostensibly the villain of the piece, he makes the point that he has striven for thirty years to develop the cattle range which
384-411: A wolf or other wild animal. Women were declared "waived" rather than outlawed, but it was effectively the same punishment. Among other forms of exile , Roman law included the penalty of aquae et ignis interdictio ("interdiction of water and fire"). Such people penalized were required to leave Roman territory and forfeit their property. If they returned, they were effectively outlaws; providing them
432-455: Is an outlaw in the second sense but not the first ( Sándor Rózsa was tried and sentenced merely to a term of imprisonment when captured). In the common law of England , a "writ of outlawry" made the pronouncement Caput lupinum ("[Let his be] a wolf's head"), equating that person with a wolf in the eyes of the law. Not only was the subject deprived of all legal rights, being outside the "law", but others could kill him on sight as if he were
480-483: Is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law , as the status of homo sacer , and persisted throughout the Middle Ages . A secondary meaning of outlaw is a person systematically avoiding capture by evasion and violence. These meanings are related and overlapping but not necessarily identical. A fugitive who
528-412: Is declared outside protection of law in one jurisdiction but who receives asylum and lives openly and obedient to local laws in another jurisdiction is an outlaw in the first meaning but not the second (one example being William John Bankes ). A fugitive who remains formally entitled to a form of trial if captured alive but avoids capture because of the high risk of conviction and severe punishment if tried
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#1733107066285576-705: Is generally agreed that there were hints of a darker perspective in some films of the 1930s such as Westward Ho (1935), directed by Robert N. Bradbury and starring John Wayne , in which the hero leads a band of vigilantes on a quest for revenge. Westward Ho is the earliest film in AllMovie 's list of revisionist Westerns. The earliest films classified by AllMovie as psychological Westerns are The Ox-Bow Incident and The Outlaw (both 1943). The Outlaw/Gunfighter sub-genre focused on outlaws and gunfighters as human beings rather than using them as stock characters, often dressed in black, as in traditional Westerns. The aim
624-481: Is not exhaustive. It includes major films labelled revisionist Western, anti-Western, psychological Western, Indian Western, outlaw Western, gunfighter Western, or spaghetti Western. By 1970, revisionism had supplanted the traditional as the predominant Western sub-genre and so the list highlights the films released until then to illustrate the development of the concept. Subsequently, revisionist themes have prevailed in Western film production. Major releases from 1971 to
672-414: Is not typical, Tinseltown western though. It's more like The Making of a Sociopath, with Michael J. Pollard starring as displaced, 17-year-old Billy Bonney, in the days leading up to his evolution into the notorious Billy the Kid ... this is the perfect role for Pollard. And though a little old to play a teenager (he was 33), he hands us a Billy who's perpetually victimized by bad luck, until he finally blows
720-411: Is now being taken over by fence-building " sodbusters ", many of whom have the mixed motives noted by Newman. Despite the complexity of its characters, Shane is nevertheless filmed in a conventional setting and ends with the hero outshooting and killing the three main villains. There is, however, an element of revisionism in the ending when the disillusioned Shane admits to Ryker that he knows his day as
768-491: The Hays Code restrictions were relaxed, that revisionism finally supplanted the traditional. Although many earlier Westerns are labelled as revisionist, the distinction between them is often blurred by variable themes and plot devices. Some are labelled psychological Westerns , which is closely related to and sometimes overlaps with the psychological drama and psychological thriller genres because of their focus on character, at
816-552: The State Opening of Parliament ), romanticised outlaws became stock characters in several fictional settings. This was particularly so in the United States, where outlaws were popular subjects of 19th-century newspaper coverage and stories and 20th-century fiction and Western movies . Thus, "outlaw" is still commonly used to mean those violating the law or, by extension, those living that lifestyle, whether actual criminals evading
864-519: The Cartagena fleet to be " piratic ", which allowed any nation to prey on it. Taking the opposite road, some outlaws became political leaders, such as Ethiopia 's Kassa Hailu who became Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia . Though the judgment of outlawry is now obsolete (even though it inspired the pro forma Outlawries Bill which is still to this day introduced in the British House of Commons during
912-679: The Queen's subjects, "whether a constable or not", and without "being accountable for using of any deadly weapon in aid of such apprehension." Similar provisions were passed in Victoria and Queensland . Although the provisions of the New South Wales Felons Apprehension Act were not exercised after the end of the bushranging era, they remained on the statute book until 1976. There have been several instances in military and political conflicts throughout history whereby one side declares
960-543: The Western as a way to represent Leftist doctrine in the second half of the 1960s, interpreting the conflict between Mexico and the U.S. through the lens of Italian politics. Leone popularized the morally ambivalent gunfighter through his representation of "The Man with No Name," Clint Eastwood's gritty anti-hero who was copied again and again in Spaghetti Westerns in characters such as Django and Ringo and which came to be one of its universal attributes. Beginning in
1008-472: The adoption of international extradition pacts. It was obsolete when the offence was abolished in 1938. Outlawry was, however, a living practice as of 1855: in 1841, William John Bankes , who had previously been an MP for several different constituencies between 1810 and 1835, was outlawed by due process of law for absenting himself from trial for homosexuality and died in 1855 in Venice as an outlaw. There
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#17331070662851056-1012: The ancient Norse and Icelandic legal code . In early modern times, the term Vogelfrei and its cognates came to be used in Germany, the Low Countries , and Scandinavia , referring to a person stripped of his civil rights being "free" for the taking like a bird. In Germany and Slavic countries during the 15th to 19th centuries, groups of outlaws were composed of former prisoners, soldiers, etc. Hence, they became an important social phenomenon. They lived off of robbery, and local inhabitants from lower classes often supported their activity. The best known are Juraj Jánošík and Jakub Surovec in Slovakia, Oleksa Dovbush in Ukraine, Rózsa Sándor in Hungary, Schinderhannes and Hans Kohlhase in Germany. The concept of outlawry
1104-427: The early 1970s are particularly noted for their hyper-realistic photography and production design. Other films, such as those directed by Clint Eastwood , were made by professionals familiar with the Western as a criticism and expansion against and beyond the genre. Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales ( 1976 ) and Unforgiven ( 1992 ) made use of strong supporting roles for women and Native Americans . This list
1152-436: The expense of the action and thrills that predominate in the traditional. Other revisionist films, in which action and adventure remain prominent, are labelled Indian Westerns or outlaw/gunfighter Westerns because, instead of the traditional hero , the protagonist is a Native American , an outlaw , or a gunfighter . The term anti-Western is generally used in reference to particularly gruesome and/or nihilistic examples of
1200-408: The film inspired goodwill to other Native American chiefs such as Sitting Bull , Crazy Horse and Geronimo – as a result, "it became fashionable for Westerns to be pro-Indian". Many of the films were produced in the 1950s during the milieu of McCarthyism and attempted to strike back against blacklisting of the film industry at that time, notably High Noon (1952) starring Gary Cooper . By
1248-445: The formal procedure of declaring someone an outlaw, i.e., putting him outside legal protection. In the common law of England , a judgment of (criminal) outlawry was one of the harshest penalties in the legal system since the outlaw could not use the legal system for protection, e.g., from mob justice . To be declared an outlaw was to suffer a form of civil or social death. The outlaw was debarred from all civilized society. No one
1296-626: The genre. The spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, not bound by the Hays Code, were strongly revisionist by presenting morally ambiguous stories featuring an anti-hero or a sympathetic villain . From 1969, revisionism has prevailed in Western film production. The traditional Western typically features a strong male lead character, often a lawman or cavalry officer, who takes direct action on behalf of supposedly civilized people against those deemed to be uncivilized ( see also : Civilizing mission ). The former are portrayed as honest townsfolk or travelers, and
1344-692: The late 1960s, independent filmmakers produced revisionist and hallucinogenic films, later retroactively identified as the separate but related subgenre of " acid Westerns ,” that radically turn the usual trappings of the Western genre inside out to critique both capitalism and the counterculture . Monte Hellman 's The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), Alejandro Jodorowsky 's El Topo ( 1970 ), Roland Klick 's Deadlock (1970), Robert Downey Sr. 's Greaser's Palace ( 1972 ), Alex Cox 's Walker ( 1987 ), and Jim Jarmusch 's Dead Man ( 1995 ) fall into this category. Films made during
1392-477: The latter as outlaws or hostile Native Americans . In the revisionist Western, the traditional format and themes are subverted by such devices as the Native American protagonist; strong female characters ; the outlaw protagonist; plots that are pre-eminently concerned with survival in a wild environment; or the presentation of a morally ambiguous storyline without definite heroes, these often featuring
1440-569: The most successful directors were Italian, resulting in these films being known by the misnomer Spaghetti Western. Leone is often credited with initiating the growth of these co-produced European Westerns as he played a seminal role due to the financial success of A Fistful of Dollars. Scholars such as Austin Fisher have begun to pay attention to how in this popular genre Italian directors such as Damiano Damiani , Sergio Sollima and Sergio Corbucci , in responding to international and national events, chose
1488-482: The motive of enigmatic gunfighter Harmonica ( Charles Bronson ). As in Shane , it is not the gunfighters who "inherit the West" but in this case the compassionate town-building ex-prostitute Jill ( Claudia Cardinale ). By the end of the film, all of the antagonists except Harmonica are dead and, like Shane, he rides away to an uncertain future. Opinion is divided on the origin of the revisionist or psychological Western but it
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1536-722: The other as being "illegal", notorious cases being the use of proscription in the civil wars of the Roman Republic . In later times there was the notable case of Napoleon Bonaparte whom the Congress of Vienna , on 13 March 1815, declared had "deprived himself of the protection of the law" . In modern times, the government of the First Spanish Republic , unable to reduce the Cantonal rebellion centered in Cartagena, Spain , declared
1584-650: The possibility of being declared an outlaw for derelictions of civil duty continued to exist in English law until the passing of the Civil Procedure Acts Repeal Act 1879 ( 42 & 43 Vict. c. 59) in 1879 and in Scots law until the late 1940s. Since then, failure to find the defendant and serve process is usually interpreted in favour of the plaintiff, and harsh penalties for mere nonappearance (merely presumed flight to escape justice) no longer apply. Outlawry also existed in other ancient legal codes, such as
1632-400: The present include: Outlaw An outlaw , in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law . In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law , the death penalty
1680-407: The so-called anti-hero or a sympathetic villain . The object is to blur the traditionally clear boundaries between "right" and "wrong" (the "good guy" against the "bad guy") by emphasizing the need for survival amidst ambiguity. The traditional Western treats characters in simplistic terms as good or bad with minimal character development . The psychological Western, which began in the 1940s and
1728-770: The time of the loosening, and later abandonment, of the restrictive Hays Code in the 1960s, many directors of the New Hollywood generation such as Sam Peckinpah , George Roy Hill , and Robert Altman focused on the Western and each produced their own classics in the genre, including Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). Meanwhile, European directors such as Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci had been making Western films unencumbered by American expectations nor Hays Code inspired censorship, and these spaghetti Westerns also provided
1776-570: The traditional Western, are nearly always the enemy of the "heroic" white settlers and cavalry. In the Indian Western, roles can be reversed with peaceful Native Americans driven to fight against white aggression. Usually, however, the Native American hero or heroine is played by brownface whites such as Burt Lancaster and Jean Peters in Apache (1954). In Dances With Wolves , the female lead
1824-417: The traditional Western, the revisionist subverts the myth and romance of the traditional by means of character development and realism to present a less simplistic view of life in the " Old West ". While the traditional Western always embodies a clear boundary between good and evil , the revisionist Western does not. Revisionist themes have existed since the early 20th century but it was not until 1968, when
1872-563: The use of fire or water was illegal, and they could be killed at will without legal penalty. The interdiction of water and fire was traditionally imposed by the tribune of the plebs and is attested to have been in use during the First Punic War of the third century BC by Cato the Elder . It was later also applied by many other officials, such as the Senate , magistrates , and Julius Caesar as
1920-574: The work of Cormac McCarthy , an author known for writing revisionist Western literature, such as the novel Blood Meridian . European countries, which had imported Western productions since their silent film inception, began creating their own versions and, in 1964, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars became an international hit initiating the spaghetti Western filone. Although they were mostly shot in Spanish locations, featured U.S. actors, and were co-produced by European and U.S. producers, many of
1968-470: Was Mary McDonnell playing a white who had been raised by the Lakota . There had been earlier films which portrayed Native Americans sympathetically, but the breakthrough for this sub-genre was Broken Arrow (1950), directed by Delmer Daves and starring James Stewart , with Jeff Chandler as Cochise . Kim Newman wrote that Chandler's performance established Cochise as "the 1950s model of an Indian hero" and
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2016-400: Was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support—to do so was to commit the crime of aiding and abetting , and to be in danger of the ban oneself. A more recent concept of " wanted dead or alive " is similar but implies that a trial is desired (namely if the wanted person is returned alive), whereas outlawry precludes a trial. An outlaw might be killed with impunity, and it
2064-502: Was also a doctrine of civil outlawry. Civil outlawry did not carry the sentence of capital punishment. It was, however, imposed on defendants who fled or evaded justice when sued for civil actions like debts or torts. The punishments for civil outlawry were harsh, including confiscation of chattels (movable property) left behind by the outlaw. In the civil context, outlawry became obsolete in civil procedure by reforms that no longer required summoned defendants to appear and plead. Still,
2112-462: Was an outlaw. If a man was accused of treason or felony but failed to appear in court to defend himself, he was deemed convicted. If he was accused of a misdemeanour , then he was guilty of a serious contempt of court which was itself a capital crime. In the context of criminal law , outlawry faded out, not so much by legal changes as by the greater population density of the country, which made it harder for wanted fugitives to evade capture, and by
2160-431: Was hugely popular through the 1950s and 1960s, prioritizes character development ahead of action whilst retaining most of the traditional aspects. For the most part, the psychological Western morphed into the revisionist Western as censorship restrictions were relaxed and removed in the 1960s. Shane (1953), directed by George Stevens , is a psychological Western. The title character ( Alan Ladd ) seems at first to be
2208-402: Was not only lawful but meritorious to kill a thief fleeing from justice—to do so was not murder . A man who slew a thief was expected to declare the fact without delay; otherwise, the dead man's kindred might clear his name by their oath and require the slayer to pay weregild as for a true man. By the rules of common law, a criminal outlaw did not need to be guilty of the crime for which he
2256-482: Was reintroduced to British law by several Australian colonial governments in the late 19th century to deal with the menace of bushranging . The Felons Apprehension Act (1865 No 2a) of New South Wales provided that a judge could, upon proof of sufficiently notorious conduct, issue a special bench warrant requiring a person to submit themselves to police custody before a given date, or be declared an outlaw. An outlawed person could be apprehended "alive or dead" by any of
2304-471: Was to examine the impact of gunfights on the participants by revealing their neuroses and redeeming characteristics. AllMovie's earliest films of this type are two silents: The Road Agent (1926), directed by J. P. McGowan and starring Al Hoxie ; and Jesse James (1927), directed by Lloyd Ingraham and starring Fred Thomson . In a similar vein, the Indian Western seeks to reverse negative stereotypes by sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans who, in
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