Billy the Kid (1930)

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• Filmat în: New Mexico

Billy the Kid is a 1930 American pre-Code Western film directed in widescreen by King Vidor about the relationship between frontier outlaw Billy the Kid and lawman Pat Garrett. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.

Production

Directed by King Vidor, the movie was filmed in an early widescreen process called Realife, a 70mm format similar to Fox Film Corporation's Grandeur used for the lavish The Big Trail the same year.

While The Big Trail, starring John Wayne, has been restored so that the 1930 widescreen process can be evaluated by modern viewers, no widescreen prints of Billy the Kid are known to currently exist and the movie can be viewed only in a standard-width version that was filmed simultaneously with the widescreen version.

In some newspaper ads, the more familiar Beery, a major star and frequent supporting player since the teens during the silent era, was accorded top billing over young Brown but not in the main posters. Within two years Beery had contractually become MGM's highest-paid actor while John Mack Brown was rechristened "Johnny Mack Brown" and demoted into B-Westerns after the studio reshot a film called Laughing Sinners with Brown originally cast as the…

This was Wallace Beery's first picture after The Big House rejuvenated his career. Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had chosen Beery for the role of "Butch" in The Big House after Lon Chaney, who had been previously cast in the part, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The Big House was a smash hit with Beery nominated for an Academy Award (which he would win the following year for The Champ).

Parts of Billy the Kid were shot in Zion National Park, as well as in Gallup, New Mexico, the Grand Canyon, and in Porter Ranch and the San Fernando Valley.

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