The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Western

DIRECTOR

Sam Peckinpah

WRITERS

Walon Green, Sam Peckinpah (screenplay); Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner (story)

STARS

William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Warren Oates

BEFORE

1961 Peckinpah’s first movie as director is The Deadly Companions, a classic, low-budget Western.

AFTER

1970 Peckinpah’s next movie, another Western, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, shows a change in pace with far less violence.

1977 Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron is an unflinching portrayal of a soldier’s life in World War II.

The Wild Bunch gleefully deconstructs the ethos of the traditional Western. The lines between heroes and villains are blurred, and characters are not always rewarded for doing the right thing.

Set in 1913, the story contains certain motifs of the traditional Western. The aging thieves—the “bunch”—arrange one last bank job, which inevitably goes horribly wrong. They are chased into Mexico by their old comrade Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who has reluctantly switched sides and is leading a group of hopeless bounty hunters. The old West is fast disappearing, a fact made clear by the German machine gun at the center of the final shootout, presaging the slaughter that was to come in World War I.

“We gotta start thinking beyond our guns,” one of the bandits observes; “Those days are closing.” The movie celebrates male bonding, but the sun is setting on this bunch of outsiders.

“We’re after men. And I wish to God I was with them.”

Deke Thornton / The Wild Bunch

In awe of violence

Each time a character is hit with a bullet, no matter how minor, the moment of impact is filmed in slow motion. We see the blood spurt out of the back in close-up, as the body contorts toward the ground. The sound drains out of the scene until all we hear is the character’s death rattle. Slow motion does not appear in any other context.

The violence of the old West was notorious, but The Wild Bunch is the first movie to stand back and look on it with such awe. The movie begins and ends with anarchic set pieces of violence. In each scene, innocents are caught in the cross fire as both sides shoot almost blindly at anything that moves. There is no right or wrong in these scenes, just a struggle to survive. This was perhaps a more honest portrayal of the West than the moralizing take of the previous generation of Westerns, in which the good prevail in the end. The Wild Bunch questions the motives of the law while also displaying sympathy for the outlaws, their loyalty and self-reliance. The movie’s final confrontation is set in motion by the bunch’s decision to try to save their captured comrade, Angel (Jaime Sánchez). Many of the law enforcers that trail the bunch, by contrast, are shown to be incompetent and corrupt. The movie becomes a humane exploration of the cost of living in amoral times, presenting outlaws as a product of their surroundings. It finds a compassion for its characters that the Westerns of old could not.

Tector (Ben Johnson), Lyle (Warren Oates), Pike (William Holden), and Dutch (Ernest Borgnine) walk out to save Angel. They will stick together to the end.

Sam Peckinpah was born in California in 1925. After serving in the US marines in World War II, he worked as an assistant to Don Siegel on movies including Invasion of The Body Snatchers(1956). His first movie as director came in 1961 with The Deadly Companions. Peckinpah soon earned himself a reputation for bad behavior on set. He suffered alcohol problems, and died of heart failure in 1984.

1962 Ride the High Country

1969 The Wild Bunch

1971 Straw Dogs

1974 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

What else to watch: The Searchers (1956) ✵ The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) ✵ Bonnie and Clyde (1967) ✵ Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) ✵ Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)