Bronco Billy

Director: Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood

1980 / 116min / DCP

Shot largely in Idaho’s Treasure Valley region, Bronco Billy is one of Eastwood’s warmest, gentlest, and most beauteous films, a rumination on majestic Western landscapes, shopworn American mythology, and the pitfalls and rewards of communal creative activity. Eastwood, in the title role, is an ex-shoe salesman turned cut-rate Buffalo Bill, trying to manage egos while keeping together a floundering “Wild West Show” made up of ex-cons and alcoholics—a task that becomes especially tricky when runaway heiress Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke) joins the circus. A pure expression of Eastwood’s peculiar, winning brand of national pride, which has nothing to do with puffed-up jingoism, and everything to do with a love of the unspoiled land and for the crackpot eccentrics who populate it