What are your thoughts on Alamosa Bill?
To me, he seemed suicidal - Garrett swears him in as deputy, and next time you see him, he's having dinner with The Kid. Then he decides to enter into a duel where it looks like he figured he was going to be killed. And when he's dying from the gunshot, he's not even mad with The Kid.
I guess it's very existential. Just wanted to see what other fans' take on this scene is.
It is indeed "very existential." His actions are really all explained in Billy's question to him "The Law's a funny thing, aint it Bill?" As soon as Billy walked in on the dinner everyone in the room knew there was only one way out of the situation. The two men had to do what they did because of who they were.
It's all part of the film's meditation on the inevitability of change, loss, and death. Part of Pekinpah's thesis is that finally, and at some level, integrity and honor are the only things each of these men have left, even as outlaws, and that dying with those qualities is preferable to living a totally empty existance.
The interesting thing is exploring how each man decides where his integrity begins and ends. I love that scene in The Wild Bunch when Dutch and Pike are arguing about why Deke is chasing them. Pike says it's understandable because "he gave his word." Dutch says that doesn't matter bacause he gave it to a railroad. "It's not the word that counts, it's who you give it to."
I thought the Alamosa Bill segment was one of the most effective of the film, and Jack Elam and the rest of the fine supporting cast (Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, Jason Robards, etc.) the highlight. Overall, this felt very much a 1973 hippie-era take on the Old West, sometimes interestingly, sometimes head-scratchingly. I'm glad to have seen it, liked some of it very much, but overall it was too meandering and reflective to be the best version of this story.
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