| The Wild Bunch | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Sam Peckinpah |
| Produced by | Phil Feldman |
| Screenplay by | Sam Peckinpah Walon Green |
| Story by | Walon Green Roy N. Sickner |
| Starring | William Holden Ernest Borgnine Robert Ryan Edmond O'Brien Warren Oates Jaime Sánchez Ben Johnson |
| Music by | Jerry Fielding |
| Cinematography | Lucien Ballard |
| Editing by | Lou Lombardo |
| Studio | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |
| Release date(s) | July 18, 1969 |
| Running time | 143 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $6 million |
The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah[1] about an aging outlaw gang on the Texas-Mexico border, trying to exist in the changing "modern" world of 1913. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any available means.
It stars William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The screenplay was by Peckinpah and Walon Green.
The Wild Bunch is noted for intricate, multi-angle editing, using normal and slow motion images, a revolutionary cinema technique in 1969. The writing of Green, Peckinpah, and Roy N. Sickner was nominated for a best-screenplay Academy Award; Jerry Fielding's music was nominated for Best Original Score; Peckinpah was nominated for an Outstanding Directorial Achievement award by the Directors Guild of America; and cinematographer Lucien Ballard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography.[2]
In 1999, the U.S. National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the Library of Congress as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. The film was ranked 80th in the American Film Institute's 100 best American films, and the 69th most thrilling film.[3] In 2008, the AFI revealed its "10 Top 10" of the best ten films in ten genres: The Wild Bunch ranked as the sixth-best Western.[4][5]
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In 1913 Texas, Pike Bishop (William Holden), the leader of a gang of aging outlaws, is seeking retirement with one final score, namely the robbery of a railroad office containing a cache of silver. They are ambushed by Pike's former partner, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), and a posse of bounty hunters hired and deputized by the railroad. Thornton has been released from a Yuma prison to help track down his former comrades in return for a full pardon. A bloody shootout kills several of the gang. The town's citizens were not warned, so many are needlessly killed in the crossfire.
Pike rides off with Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson), and Angel (Jaime Sánchez), the only survivors. They are disappointed when the loot from the robbery turns out to be a decoy instead of silver. The men reunite with old-timer Freddie Sykes (Edmond O'Brien), and head for Mexico.
Pike's men cross the Rio Grande and take refuge that night in a village where Angel was born, and where the Mexican Revolution has taken its toll. The townsfolk are ruled by a self-styled bandido warlord named Mapache (Emilio Fernández), a general in the Mexican Federal Army, who has been stealing to feed his troops.
In the town of Agua Verde (Spanish for "green water"), a den of debauchery, Pike's gang makes contact with the general. A jealous Angel spots a former lover in Mapache's arms and shoots her dead, angering Mapache. Pike defuses the situation and offers to work for Mapache. Their task is to steal a weapons shipment from a U.S. Army train so that Mapache can resupply his troops – and appease Mohr (Fernando Wagner), his German military adviser, who wishes to obtain samples of America's armament.
Angel gives up his share of the gold Mapache has paid them to Pike in return for sending one crate of the stolen rifles and ammunition to a band of rebels opposed to Mapache. The holdup goes as planned until Deke's posse turns up on the very train the gang has robbed. They give chase, only to be foiled again by an explosive booby trap which blows up a trestle and sends the entire posse down a river.
Pike and his men, knowing they risk being double crossed by Mapache, devise a way of bringing him the stolen weapons – including a Browning M1917 machine gun – without his double-crossing them. Mapache does, however, learn of Angel's "embezzling" of a crate of guns and has him captured and tortured.
Sykes is wounded and forced into hiding after another encounter with Deke's posse. The rest of Pike's gang returns to Agua Verde for shelter. Pike tries to persuade Mapache to release Angel, who is barely alive. The general appears to comply, much to the happiness of the gang, however, as they watch, the general cuts his throat instead. Pike and the gang angrily gun him down in front of hundreds of Mapache's men. For a moment, the Federales are so shocked that they fail to return fire, causing Dutch to laugh in surprise. Pike calmly takes aim at the German officer and kills him, too. This results in a violent, bloody showdown in which Pike and his men, along with the majority of the German and Mexican troops present are killed.
Deke finally catches up. He allows the remaining members of the posse to take the bullet-riddled bodies of the gang members back and collect the reward, while electing to stay behind. Sykes arrives with several Mexican rebels, who have killed off what's left of the posse along the way. He asks Deke to come along and join the revolution. Deke smiles and rides off with them.
Director Sam Peckinpah considered many actors for the Pike Bishop role; Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Sterling Hayden, Richard Boone and Robert Mitchum were all considered before William Holden was cast. Marvin actually accepted the role but pulled out after he was offered a larger pay deal to star in Paint Your Wagon (1969).[6][7]
Sam Peckinpah's first two choices for the role of Deke Thornton were Richard Harris (who had co-starred in Major Dundee) and Brian Keith (who had worked with Peckinpah on The Westerner (1960) and The Deadly Companions (1961)). Harris was never formally approached, but Keith was, and turned the part down. Robert Ryan was ultimately cast in the part after Peckinpah saw him in the World War II action movie The Dirty Dozen (1967). Other actors considered for the role were Glenn Ford, Arthur Kennedy, Henry Fonda, Ben Johnson (later cast as Tector Gorch) and Van Heflin.
Mario Adorf was considered for the part of Mapache; the role went to Emilio Fernández, the Mexican film director and actor and friend of Peckinpah.[6] Among those considered to play Dutch Engstrom were Steve McQueen, George Peppard, Jim Brown, Alex Cord, Robert Culp, Sammy Davis, Jr., Charles Bronson and Richard Jaeckel. Ernest Borgnine was cast based on his performance in The Dirty Dozen.[8]
Robert Blake was the original choice to play Angel, but he asked for too much money. Peckinpah had seen Jaime Sánchez in the Broadway production of Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, was impressed and demanded he be cast as Angel.[9] Albert Dekker, a stage actor, was cast as Harrigan, the railroad detective. He died months after filming; The Wild Bunch was his final film. Bo Hopkins played the part of Clarence "Crazy" Lee; he was cast after Peckinpah saw him on television.
In 1967, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts producers Kenneth Hyman and Phil Feldman were interested in having Sam Peckinpah rewrite and direct an adventure film called The Diamond Story. A professional outcast due to the production difficulties of his previous film Major Dundee (1965) and his firing from the set of The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Peckinpah's stock had improved following his critically acclaimed work on the television film Noon Wine (1966). An alternative screenplay available at the studio was The Wild Bunch, written by Roy Sickner and Walon Green. At the time, William Goldman's screenplay Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. It was quickly decided that The Wild Bunch, which had several similarities to Goldman's work, would be produced in order to beat Butch Cassidy to the theaters.[10][11][12][13]
By the fall of 1967, Peckinpah was rewriting the screenplay and preparing for production. Filmed on location in Mexico, Peckinpah's epic work was inspired by his hunger to return to films, the violence seen in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, America's growing frustration with the Vietnam War and what he perceived to be the utter lack of reality seen in Westerns up to that time. He set out to make a film which portrayed not only the vicious violence of the period, but the crude men attempting to survive the era. Multiple scenes attempted in Major Dundee, including slow motion action sequences (inspired by Akira Kurosawa's work in Seven Samurai), characters leaving a village as if in a funeral procession and the use of inexperienced locals as extras, would be perfected in The Wild Bunch.[14]
The film was shot with the anamorphic process. Peckinpah and his cinematographer, Lucien Ballard, also made use of telephoto lenses, that allowed for objects and people in both the background and foreground to be compressed in perspective. The effect is best seen in the shots where the Bunch makes "the walk" to Mapache's headquarters to free Angel. As they walk forward, a constant flow of people pass between them and the camera, most of them are as sharply focused as the Bunch. The editing of the film is notable in that shots from multiple angles would be spliced together in rapid succession, often at different speeds, placing greater emphasis on the chaotic nature of the action and the gunfights.
Lou Lombardo, having previously worked with Peckinpah on Noon Wine, was personally hired by the director to edit The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah had wanted an editor who would be loyal to him. Lombardo's youth was also a plus, as he wasn't bound by traditional conventions. One of Lombardo's first contributions was to show Peckinpah an episode of the TV series Felony Squad he edited in 1967. The episode, entitled "My Mommy Got Lost", included a slow motion sequence where Joe Don Baker is shot by the police. The scene mixed slow motion with normal speed. Peckinpah was reportedly thrilled and told Lombardo: "Let's try some of that when we get down to Mexico!" The director would film the major shootouts with six cameras, operating at various film rates, including 24 frames per second, 30 frames per second, 60 frames per second, 90 frames per second, and 120 frames per second. When the scenes were eventually cut together, the action would shift from slow to fast to slower still, giving time an elastic quality never before seen in motion pictures up to that time.[15][16]
By the time filming wrapped, Peckinpah had shot 333,000 feet (101,000 m) of film with 1,288 camera setups. Lombardo and Peckinpah remained in Mexico for six months editing the picture. After initial cuts, the opening gunfight sequence ran 21 minutes. Cutting frames from specific scenes and intercutting others, they were able to fine-cut the opening robbery down to five minutes. The creative montage became the model for the rest of the film and would forever change the way movies were made.[17]
Peckinpah stated that one of his goals for this movie was to give the audience "some idea of what it is to be gunned down". A memorable incident occurred, to that end, as Peckinpah's crew were consulting him on the "gunfire" effects to be used in the film. Not satisfied with the results from the squibs his crew had brought for him, Peckinpah became exasperated; he finally hollered: "That's not what I want! That's not what I want!" He then grabbed a real revolver and fired it into a nearby wall. The gun empty, Peckinpah barked at his stunned crew: "THAT'S the effect I want!!" He also had the gunfire sound effects changed for the film. Before, all gunshots in Warner Brothers movies sounded identical, regardless of the type of weapon being fired. Peckinpah insisted on each different type of firearm having its own specific sound effect when fired.
Critics of The Wild Bunch noted the theme of the end of the outlaw gunfighter era. Pike Bishop says: We've got to start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast. The Bunch live by an anachronistic code of honor without a place in twentieth century modern society. When they inspect General Mapache's new automobile, they perceive it marks the end of horse travel, a symbol also in Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970).[18]
The violence that was much criticized by critics in 1969 remains controversial. Director Peckinpah noted it was allegoric of the American war against Vietnam, whose violence was nightly televised to American homes at supper time. He tried showing the gun violence commonplace to the historic western frontier period, rebelling against sanitized, bloodless television Westerns and films glamorizing gun fights and murder. "The point of the film is to take this façade of movie violence and open it up, get people involved in it so that they are starting to go in the Hollywood television predictable reaction syndrome, and then twist it so that it's not fun anymore, just a wave of sickness in the gut ... It's ugly, brutalizing, and bloody awful; it's not fun and games and cowboys and Indians. It's a terrible, ugly thing, and yet there's a certain response that you get from it, an excitement, because we're all violent people." Peckinpah used violence as catharsis, believing his audience would be purged of violence, by witnessing it explicitly on screen. He later admitted to being mistaken, that the audience came to enjoy rather than be horrified by his films' violence, something that troubled him.[19]
Betrayal is the secondary theme of The Wild Bunch. The characters suffer from their knowledge of having betrayed a friend and left him to his fate, thus violating their own honor code when it suits them ("10,000 dollars cuts an awful lot of family ties." However, Pike Bishop says, "When you side with a man, you stay with him, and if you can't do that you're like some animal."[20] Such complex oppositional ideas lead to the film's violent conclusion, as the remaining men find their abandonment of Angel intolerable. Pike Bishop remembers his betrayals, most notably when he deserts Deke Thornton (in flashback) when the law catches up to them; and when he abandons Crazy Lee at the bank after the robbery (ostensibly to guard the hostages).
Note that in the era of the film's release, there was a man named Bishop Pike, an Episcopal bishop who very publicly opposed the Vietnam War and was featured in mass media as such.
Vincent Canby began his review by calling the film "very beautiful and the first truly interesting American-made Western in years. It's also so full of violence –of an intensity that can hardly be supported by the story – that it's going to prompt a lot of people who do not know the real effect of movie violence (as I do not) to write automatic condemnations of it."[21] He said "although the movie's conventional and poetic action sequences are extraordinarily good and its landscapes beautifully photographed..., it is most interesting in its almost jolly account of chaos, corruption, and defeat"; among the actors, he commented particularly on William Holden: "After years of giving bored performances in boring movies, Holden comes back gallantly in The Wild Bunch. He looks older and tired, but he has style, both as a man and as a movie character who persists in doing what he's always done, not because he really wants the money but because there's simply nothing else to do." Time also liked Holden's performance, describing it as his best since Stalag 17 (a 1953 film that earned Holden an Oscar), said Robert Ryan gave "the screen performance of his career" and concluded that "The Wild Bunch contains faults and mistakes" (such as flashbacks "introduced with surprising clumsiness"), but "its accomplishments are more than sufficient to confirm that Peckinpah, along with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn, belongs with the best of the newer generation of American film makers."[22]
In a 2002 retrospective, Roger Ebert, who "saw the original version at the world premiere in 1969, during the golden age of the junket, when Warner Bros. screened five of its new films in the Bahamas for 450 critics and reporters", said that back then he had publicly declared the film a masterpiece during the junket's press conference, prompted by comments from "a reporter from the Reader's Digest [who] got up to ask 'Why was this film ever made?'" [23] He compared the film to Pulp Fiction: "praised and condemned with equal vehemence."
The film currently has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[24] The film also ranks at number 94 in Empire magazines list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[25]
Sam Peckinpah and the making of The Wild Bunch was the subject of the documentary The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage (1996) co-produced and directed by Paul Seydor. It was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Documentary Short Subject.[26]
Following its release, Peckinpah was one of ten directors receiving a nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film. The film received two Academy Award nominations, for Best Original Screenplay (Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner, Sam Peckinpah) and Best Original Music Score (Jerry Fielding) At the 42nd Academy Awards ceremony, both awards went to crew members of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (screen writer William Goldman and composer Burt Bacharach).
Decades later, the American Film Institute placed the film in several of its "100 Years" lists:
In 1999, the U.S. National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the Library of Congress as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.[27]
In 1993, Warner Bros. resubmitted the film to the MPAA ratings board prior to an expected re-release. To the studio's surprise, the originally R-rated film was given an NC-17, delaying the release until the decision was appealed.[28] The controversy was linked to 10 extra minutes added to the film, although none of this footage contained graphic violence. Warner Bros. trimmed some footage to decrease the running time to ensure additional daily screenings.[29] When the restored film finally made it to the screen in March 1995, one reviewer noted:
By restoring 10 minutes to the film, the complex story now fits together in a seamless way, filling in those gaps found in the previous theatrical release, and proving that Peckinpah was firing on all cylinders for this, his grandest achievement.... And the one overwhelming feature that the director's cut makes unforgettable are the many faces of the children, whether playing, singing, or cowering, much of the reaction to what happens on-screen is through the eyes, both innocent and imitative, of all the children.[30]
Today, almost all of the versions of the film include the missing scenes. Warner Bros. released a newly restored version in a two-disc special edition on January 10, 2006. It includes an audio commentary by Peckinpah scholars, two documentaries concerning the making of the film and never-before-seen outtakes.
There have been several versions of the film:
On January 19, 2011, it was announced by Warner Bros. that The Wild Bunch would be remade.[31]
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