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The Wild Bunch (1969)
The Wild Bunch (1969) is director/co-writer Sam Peckinpah's
provocative, brilliant yet controversial Western, shocking for
its graphic and elevated portrayal of violence and
savagely-explicit carnage, yet hailed for its truly realistic
and reinterpreted vision of the dying West in the early 20th
century. Peckinpah had earlier directed another classic western
about the West's passing, Ride the High Country (1962) and the
epic western film Major Dundee (1965). Many of the film's major
stars, including William Holden, Edmond O'Brien, Robert Ryan and
Ben Johnson, were veterans of westerns with a more romantic view
of the West. This hard-edged, landmark masterpiece of the
Western film genre was beautifully shot in wide-screen by
cinematographer Lucien Ballard.
Its unrelenting, bleak tale tells of aging, scroungy outlaws
(the 'wild bunch') bound by a private code of honor, camaraderie
and friendship, but they find that they are at odds with the
society of 1913. The lone band of men led by Pike Bishop
(William Holden) have come to the end of the line and no longer
are living under the same rules in the Old West. They are
relentlessly being stalked by bounty hunters, one of whom is
Pike's former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who would
rather side with the outlaws if it weren't for the threat of
being sent back to Yuma Prison. [The outlaws represent an
un-idealized version of the 'western' Japanese samurai warriors
in Akira Kurosawa's epic The Seven Samurai (1954) - a film that
Peckinpah used as a model. The anti-heroic 'bunch' also
represents contemporary American soldiers in the late 60s, out
of place in the jungles of Vietnam.]
The film's posters stated the theme of changing times and the
industrial revolution in the early 20th century of Texas and
Mexico, at a time when airplanes, cars, and machine guns were
being introduced into society:
Unchanged men in a changing land. Out of step, out of place and
desperately out of time...Suddenly a new West had emerged.
Suddenly it was sundown for nine men. Suddenly their day was
over. Suddenly, the sky was bathed in blood...Nine men who came
too late and stayed too long...Born too late for their own
times. Uncommonly significant for ours.
The much-imitated, influential film is book-ended by two
extraordinary sequences, both massacres. The gang of desperadoes
are first assaulted in the film's opening ambush following a
failed bank robbery in a Texas border town, and then brutally
destroyed in the film's conclusion - as united comrades in a
selfless, redemptive act - by a savage and vindictive Mexican
warlord after a double-crossing arms deal. The two scenes
include some of the bloodiest, most violent shoot-ups ever
filmed. Peckinpah choreographed each of the film's two
bloodbaths as a visually prolonged, beautiful ballet - a
slow-motion, aesthetically breath-taking, non-gratuitous,
lyrical, extreme celebration of bodies being torn apart by
bullets.
The slaughter of innocent bystanders, and the use of women as
shields (in the all-male film) were served up as counterpoints
to the media's honest display of violence during the late 60s,
with the Vietnam War, assassinations, urban riots, and other
events filling the airwaves. Due to its violence, the film was
originally threatened with an X-rating by the newly-created MPAA
(Motion Picture Association of America), but an R-rating was its
final decision. The film's lasting influence has been seen in
the imitative graphic violence of the films of Martin Scorsese,
Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, and others. [In 2004, a new version
of the film by producer-writer David Ayer adapted Peckinpah's
classic as a drug-heist thriller, and set the action in
contemporary Mexico.]
Following the film's production, it was severely edited by the
studio and producer Phil Feldman (in Peckinpah's absence),
cutting its length by about twenty minutes - remarkably, none of
the excised film was violent. The film has been restored to its
original "director's cut" length of 143 minutes, reinstating
scenes (including two important flashbacks from Pike's past, and
a battle scene between Pancho Villa's rebels and General Mapache
at the telegraph station) that depicted the underlying character
and motivations of the leader of the Bunch. With numerous,
elaborate montage sequences with staccato shifts, the film set a
record for more edits (3,643 shot-to-shot edits at one count)
than any other Technicolor film up to its time.
The film won no Academy Awards, but was nominated in two
categories - for Jerry Fielding's original musical score and for
the film's story and screenplay, a collaboration between Walon
Green and Sam Peckinpah, and based on a story by Walon Green and
Roy N. Sickner. Just two years earlier, a modern-day gangster
film, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) had also stunned
audiences with its frank, sensational violence - notably with
its "dancing" death of the two principal characters in the
film's final ambush scene. And the 60's 'spaghetti' westerns of
Sergio Leone anticipated the excessive violence. In the same
year as The Wild Bunch, which increased the acceptance and
tolerance level for violence on the screen, Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid (1969) provided quite a contrast - it was an
entertaining, popular Western with humor and lighthearted
action.
The film's opening with freeze-frame credits is brilliantly
presented with martial music. To the sound of snare drums and
cymbals, the Wild Bunch (five of them) masquerade in the
disguise of tan-colored, regulation khaki outfits as U.S.
Cavalry soldiers - good guys. They appear heroically-positioned,
riding stiffly and formally into a dusty town (San Rafael, also
called Starbuck) along railroad tracks. The frame freezes into a
black and white chiaroscuro image when each of the credits
appear, unfreezing to continue with the colorful action.
On the outskirts of the southwestern Texas town, the five ride
by a large gathering of village children who are being
entertained by toying with scorpions placed in the middle of a
caged colony of red fire ants - in reaction shots, the cruel
children watch and giggle as the struggling scorpions are
tortured and consumed by the swarming ants. [Children are often
seen throughout the film witnessing - and then participating in
- the violence.] Peckinpah's metaphoric symbolism foreshadows
the blood-red, capricious treatment the members of the Wild
Bunch (the scorpions) will soon receive in the small Texan town
by an opposing ambush of bounty hunters and amassed Mexicans
(the ants).
In the wind-blown dusty town, the men pass by a South Texas
Temperance Union revival, being held under a tent where Mayor
Wainscoat (Dub Taylor) preaches to the proper, black-clothed
audience about the sinfulness of drink, quoting liberally from
Leviticus 10:9, and Proverbs 23:31-32:
Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee
least ye shall die. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red
and when it bringeth his color in the cup when it moveth itself
aright. At the last, it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like
an adder. Now folks, that's from the Good Book. But in this here
town, it's 5 cents a glass. Five cents a glass. Does anyone
really think that that is the price of a drink? The price of a
drink - let him decide who has lost his courage and his pride
who lies a groveling heap of clay not far removed....
They dismount in front of the South Texas R.R. Administration
Offices, as two more men join them. When the leader of the group
Pike Bishop (William Holden) walks them in formation toward the
Starbuck bank, the railroad office bank, he accidentally bumps
into an elderly lady. Politely, he picks up her string-tied
parcels, his second-in-command sidekick Dutch Engstrom (Ernest
Borgnine) offers to carry them, and then Pike takes her arm to
assist her across the street. The group of soldiers are unaware
that they are hugely outnumbered - there is an ambush already
prepared by the railroad bosses. A group of ruthless bounty
hunters is waiting on a nearby rooftop, assembled by Pike's
nemesis Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker) [his name reminds one of
the notorious railroad financier, E. H. Harriman], the mercenary
organizer of the bounty hunters, with their appointed leader
Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), Pike's former partner.
Inside the bank, the senior bank clerk is heard reprimanding:
I don't care what you meant to do. It's what you did I don't
like.
After entering the bank, Pike seizes the senior bank clerk,
lifts him from his chair and tosses him across the room. Then in
closeup, he ruthlessly barks a snarling, deadly command to his
men if any of the hostages should move:
If they move, kill 'em.
The bold, final credit freezes the frame of Pike's face
espousing violence, juxtaposed with the words - "Directed by Sam
Peckinpah."
The preacher has his flock solemnly swear to abstain from all
distilled liquors, including wine, beer and cider. The
Temperance Union band plays, "We Shall Gather at The River,"
leading a parade of followers marching down the street, right
toward the bank and the getaway horses. To increase the tension
of the scene, the film is edited, inter-cutting rapidly from the
Bunch in the bank, to the bounty hunters, to the temperance
marchers. The band of robbers fill their heavy leather bags with
as much as they can carry, robbing the bank of its railroad
payroll. Angel (Jaime Sanchez), one of the alert lookouts in the
bank, observes the tips of rifles on the rooftop across the
street. Other lookouts stationed out on the street also notice
the trap that is set for them.
In the climax to the spectacular opening sequence, Pike decides
to make their break from the bank and use the oncoming
temperance union marchers to their advantage as shields and
cover. On the rooftop, one of the sleazy, trigger-happy bounty
hunters Coffer (Strother Martin) kisses his rifle in nervous
anticipation. The senior bank clerk is kicked out into the
street, a small diversion which triggers orgiastic, destructive
gunfire from all directions at the hapless victim. Both sides
appear to ignore the endangerment that they arbitrarily cause
for the town's innocent inhabitants in the chain reaction of
gunfire. In the blood ballet (partially filmed in slow motion),
many of the bullets from the armed factions strike innocent
bystanders in the crowd - men, women, and children in the parade
who are caught in the overzealous crossfire. Bullet wounds spray
gushing blood and chunks of flesh, and bodies writhe in agony
and pain. Pike, Dutch, Angel, Buck (Rayford Barnes), and the
Gorch Brothers - Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector (Ben Johnson)
shoot their way out of town. In the confusion during flight,
Pike's horse accidentally knocks down and tramples a defenseless
woman. [Outside of town, it is later discovered that the woman's
white shawl was hooked to the side of the horse and clinging to
Pike's boot.]
One of the memorable images is the slow-motion sight of one of
the escaping riders being shot from his horse, and cascading
through a store-front, glass window of a dressmaker's shop. The
yellow-raincoated gang member smashes through the glass, rolling
into three dress mannequins (female) - symbolizing more violence
to women.
Inside the bank, the half-witted Crazy Lee (Bo Hopkins), one of
the gang members purposely (or thoughtlessly) left behind to
guard hostages "until after the shooting starts," terrorizes two
bank clerks and a female customer. When the lady calls him
"trash," he punishes her by disgustingly tonguing the inside of
her ear. Then, he forces his prisoners to march around, singing
the marcher's hymn: "Gather at the River." Outside during the
gun battle, Pike looks up and recognizes Deke Thornton. Both of
them aim and shoot, but both lose their nerve and hit other
targets nearby. In the getaway, one of the gang is shot and
dragged by his horse, losing his saddlebags. Two children
clinging to each other for safety watch with an expression
mingling shock and awe. They appear delighted when another
outlaw rides by at full gallop and snatches the saddlebags from
the ground.
On the outskirts of town, the decimated gang pauses by the
children who are still playing with their captured and devoured
scorpions. The youngsters toss dry straw on the caged scorpions
and ants, setting the whole pile afire. Surveying the bloody,
human carnage, townspeople wail, as two of the scurvy bounty
hunters, Coffer and T. C. (L. Q. Jones) argue over their kills
and scurry around like vultures looking for loot. Harrigan
disdains their sloppy job: "You stupid damn fools. Why did you
shoot this employee and let the others get away?" Strong but
haggard, Thornton argues with Harrigan:
Thornton: The next time you better plan your massacre more
carefully or I'll start with you!
Harrigan: Why didn't you kill Pike when you had the chance?
One of the abandoned gang members, Crazy Lee is discovered in
the bank and wounded by Harrigan and Deke Thornton. He shouts
back at them:
Well, how'd you like to kiss my sister's black cat's ass?
Then, with a final quick-draw as he lays dying, Crazy Lee picks
off three other men like clay pigeons who are gawking at him
from the street. Harrigan finishes him off by pumping two blasts
into his body. The mayor disparages Harrigan's ruthless use of
their "town as a battlefield," but the railroad organizer
defends his bloody assault as "trying to catch a band of
outlaws...We represent the law!" In the streets among the bodies
of the dead, the children play-mimick shooting each other with
make-believe pistols with great delight.
On the outskirts of town, only Pike, Angel, Dutch Engstrom, the
Gorch brothers Lyle and Tector, and Buck, a sixth wounded gang
member, remain from the aborted raid. Buck falls from his horse,
revealing that his face is hideously covered with blood. Blinded
by blood (both figuratively and literally), Buck begs Pike to
kill him, and Pike perfunctorily and coldly complies with his
request to put him out of his misery:
Pike, is that you? I can ride, Pike. I can ride. I can't see but
I can ride. God. No! I can't ride. Finish it, Mr. Bishop.
After considering whether they should linger and give the "good
man" a "decent burial," Dutch's sarcasm and criticism of
sentimentality brings them to their senses to move on:
I think the boys are right. I'd like to say a few words for the
dear dead departed. And maybe a few hymns would be in order,
followed by a church supper, with a choir?
Relentless in his pursuit of the outlaws with a total of $4,500
reward money out for their capture or death, Harrigan orders his
scummy group of trigger-happy bounty hunters to start anew: "You
go after them in ten minutes. Get them. Get Pike and you'll be
rich! If one of you tries to quit on me, I'll pay a bonus of a
thousand dollars to the man that kills him." Deke Thornton has
been taken out of Yuma Prison by Harrigan to reluctantly hunt
Pike down within 30 days, in exchange for his parole. But he is
disgusted by the greedy, degenerate, scruffy low life characters
he has been given to work with as bounty hunters. After making a
veiled threat toward Deke to have the bounty hunters kill him if
he forsakes the chase, the manipulative railroad boss Harrigan
forces Thornton to make do with what he has been given and
become his 'Judas goat':
Thornton: Tell me, Mr. Harrigan. How does it feel gettin' paid
for it? Gettin' paid to sit back and hire your killin's with the
law's arms around you? How does it feel to be so god-damned
right?
Harrigan: Good.
Thornton: You dirty son-of-a-b---h!
Harrigan: You've got thirty days to get Pike, or thirty days
back to Yuma. You're my Judas goat, Mr. Thornton. I want all of
them back here, head down over a saddle.
As Harrigan's words play again in his mind, a rapid flashback
dissolves over his face, as he remembers a bare-backed whipping
he received at Yuma. The memory of the punishment quickly fades
in and out.
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