Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
1973 · Sam Peckinpah · Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice how often scenes are lit at dusk, near sunset. (light)
John Coquillon shoots many of the film's key scenes at magic hour, letting figures turn into silhouettes against a fading sky rather than staying clearly lit.
Payoff: The light itself keeps telling you the day, and the era, is running out.
Listen for a modern singer-songwriter sound instead of orchestral music. (sound)
Bob Dylan's score leans on plain, contemporary song rather than the sweeping orchestral scoring most Westerns use, giving the film a modern, mournful undertone.
Payoff: The music sounds like it's remembering 1881 from decades later, not scoring it as it happens.
Notice the fences and ranch buildings crowding the open land. (setting)
Exteriors are filled with fences, ferries, and ranch infrastructure, the physical apparatus of an economy closing in on what used to be open range.
Payoff: This is what the reading calls a crystal in decomposition: an old order caught on screen in the act of decaying. In the reading: crystal in decomposition. Deleuze calls this a crystal in decomposition: an old order seen from inside itself as it rots, rather than as a scene of adventure.
Notice how many familiar faces from other Westerns keep appearing. (staging)
A deep bench of veteran Western character actors keeps turning up throughout the film, populating the frame with weathered, recognizable faces from earlier films in the genre.
Payoff: This is what the reading calls the voyage form: a string of arrivals and farewells that changes nothing about where the story is headed. In the reading: voyage / balade form. Deleuze calls this the voyage or balade form, a trip built from encounters that transforms nobody, rather than a journey that changes its traveler.
Watch how little urgency either Garrett or Billy shows. (performance)
Coburn plays Garrett as tired and morally hollowed out, while Kristofferson plays Billy as unhurried and almost serene, neither man rushing toward the confrontation the plot promises.
Payoff: Neither man is racing toward a resolution, which tells you what kind of Western this actually is.
Once you have seen it
Notice that longer cuts open with Garrett's own death in 1909. (structure)
The reconstructed versions bracket the whole 1881 manhunt inside Garrett's own murder decades later, so the entire pursuit unfolds inside a death that has already happened.
Payoff: This is what the reading calls sheets of past: time laid out as layers you move through, not a line you walk down. In the reading: sheets of past / order of time. Deleuze calls this sheets of past: the future leaning back on a present already treated as finished, rather than time moving forward in a line.
Watch the riverbank scene where a song plays out a death. (sound)
A wounded sheriff sits by the water as his wife weeps silently and 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' plays; almost nobody moves or speaks for the whole scene.
Payoff: The song finishes the scene after the actors have essentially stopped acting.
Notice how many characters exist only to say goodbye and die. (structure)
Old friends and gunfighters keep appearing just long enough to be killed or to part ways, so the film plays like a series of farewells strung together.
Payoff: By the end, the manhunt has mattered less than the goodbyes along the way.
Carry this in: Watch Garrett's face, not just the gunfights. Ask whether anything he does actually counts as acting.