MUBI

A Western starring Jean-Pierre Leaud as Billy the Kid, shot on harsh rocky landscapes dubbing in for the American West, recorded in deliberate mis-matched American English seems like a cinephile’s dream. It exists. Luc Moullet is among the least known of all the Cahiers du Cinema critics to turn film-makers. He specialized in Fuller, Ulmer, Lang as a critic and his films have a sly B-Movie style, told with a wild anarchic spirit and a great sense of humour totally against the grain of serious portentous French cinema.

This film is frequently hilarious as a western and it often looks as if Salvador Dali supplied the production design but Moullet manages to create a film with it’s own personal sensibility that transcends the jokey premise to create a great comedy on sexual manners and a first rate hommage to the Westerns of Anthony Mann and Nicholas Ray.