1969 was a watershed year for American cinema. Having been on life support for most of the 60’s and being overshadowed by French new wave and Italian realism, Hollywood needed a fresh injection of energy. 1969 produced three landmark films that changed the way films were made and their subject matter. These films were Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, and The Wild Bunch.
The Wild Bunch remains one of the most influential films in cinematic history and arguably the greatest western ever made ( all respects to Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo, John Ford’s The Searchers, and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.) The Wild Bunch is, literally, THE western; a glorious, provocative, and controversial film that shocked audiences and critics alike upon its release with its graphic, savage, and unique vision of masculinity and violence. It was hailed and praised for its realistic, poetic, and uncompromising portrayal of the dying West in the early 20th century 1913 and announced director Sam Peckinpah’s arrival in film like a tsunami. This two-disc special edition contains the original 144-minute director’s cut that, upon its rerelease in 1994, was originally slapped with an NC-17 for its violence. Only after several appeals did the MPAA grant it an R.
The wild bunch in mention is a group of aging, worn, hard-edged outlaws who are bound by a code of honor, a past, and a friendship. But, as the film opens in 1913 at the onset of World War I, they are sensing that their era and their world (the old west) is coming to an end. “We’ve gotta start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast,” remarks the leader of the bunch Pike Bishop (William Holden) to his men Dutch (Ernest Borgnine,) brothers Lyle (Peckinpah regular Warren Oates) and Tector (Ben Johnson) Gorch, Angel (Jaime Sanchez,) and Sykes (Edmond O’ Brien.)
The film is book ended by 2 gorgeous, balletic shootouts. As the film opens, the bunch (posing as U.S. cavalry soldiers) rides into a small southwestern Texas town to rob a bank. Unbeknownst to them, an ambush awaits them in the form of corrupt railroad boss Harrigan (Albert Dekker) as well as a group of “gutter trash” bounty hunters (Peckinpah regulars Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones chief among them) reluctantly led by Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) - who used to ride with the bunch. In truth, he still longs to ride with them, but is forced to hunt and kill his former friends or else be sent back to Yuma prison. After entering the bank, Pike throws the senior bank teller across the room and barks out one of cinema’s greatest lines to his men “If they move, kill em.” Peckinpah’s directorial credit then appears on the freeze framed shot of Holden’s face thus completing the greatest directorial credit sequence ever.
As the bunch are stuffing their bags with loot, Angel notices men with rifles on the rooftop and alerts the bunch. Pike uses an oncoming temperance movement as cover to escape. The shooting kicks off when Pike throws out a clerk onto the street. Both sides (the bunch and bounty hunters) care nothing for the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. It is an amazing, exhilarating sequence (some shot in slow motion) that show the bullets hitting their targets; smashing bone and chunks of blood and flesh being torn apart. Each death has its own finality. This sequence, along with the ending, is shot as a prolonged, insane, orgiastic ballet of violence. There is a shameful sense of exhilaration and pleasure that is taken in these scenes as you see bodies being torn apart in a majestic fashion.
It’s important to note that during the opening credits and immediately after the aborted robbery, Pike and the bunch pass a group of children who take sadistic pleasure in torturing a scorpion by placing it in a bed of ants. Children, and their images in the film, are key to understanding one of Peckinpah’s themes: the code by which these men live by (a code of violence and killing) is being passed to a younger generation that kills and commits violence more coldly and without reason.
After Pike and the bunch escape the ambush, Thornton is reminded by the low-life Harrigan that he has 30 days to catch the bunch or he’s going back to prison. The bunch discovers that the loot they stole was actually worthless metal washers. Pike desperately wants to make “one last score” so he can “back off.” He figures the best thing to do is to head for the border and rob one of the American garrisons stationed there to defend the borders against Pancho Villa. On the way to the border, the bunch stop at Angel’s village to spend the night. Angel learns that the warlord and self-appointed General Mapache (Peckinpah regular Emilio Fernandez) led a brutal attack that left Angel’s father dead and his girlfriend Teresa in the arms of Mapache. Angel swears revenge but Pike warns him that “Either you learn to live with it or we’ll leave you here.” This visit to the village, while seemingly unimportant, serves as a turning point for the bunch and a reminder of the different lives they could have led.
As they push on to the border, they arrive at Agua Verde, where Mapache has his compound. For the first time they see a car (a symbol of advancing technology) and an airplane (to be used in the upcoming war.) After Angel finds and kills Teresa in a fit of insanity, the bunch is forced to do business with Mapache. For 10,000 in gold, Pike agrees to steal a shipment of guns and ammo from an American army munitions train for Mapache on the stipulation that he release Angel to him. Pike then promises Angel that he will allow him to take one case of weapons for his village. This leads to another showdown with Thornton and his crew that contains the famous slow motion bridge sequence. Pike and the bunch escape with the guns. Mapache discovers Angel’s theft and Dutch, being outnumbered, is forced to abandon Angel to Mapache. Pike offers Mapache half his gold in exchange for Angel. Mapache drunkingly refuses as he, as well as the children in his village, are quite content watching Angel being dragged around the dirt by the car.
After the battle is over, Thornton and his men ride in to see what’s left. Thornton, having fulfilled his obligation to the law, stays behind as the bounty hunters ride off with the bodies of the bunch. As Thornton rests against the entrance to the compound, Sykes comes riding in with some of the now-armed villagers of Angel’s village. After informing Thornton that the bounty hunters have been killed, Sykes asks him if he wishes to join the new bunch. “It ain’t like it used to be but, it’ll do,” he says. Laughter, which is also important in the film, precedes the final glorious shot of the bunch riding out of Angel’s village from earlier in the film and into legend status.
This would be Sam Peckinpah’s crowning film, earning him the dreaded Bloody Sam nickname, and influencing generations of directors. He would never again be able to put it together like he did here. Whether it was distrustful/ignorant film executives re-cutting his films or his own self-destructive behavior and penchant for excess which led to poor choices in his later work (The Killer Elite or Convoy anyone?), The Wild Bunch would be his only undisputed masterpiece. The screenplay by Peckinpah and Walon Green is complex, involving, and demands complete attention. The legendary dialogue with its endless quotable lines still remains potent. Jerry Fielding’s score is sweeping, exhilarating and raises the tension during the action sequences. The performances are all superb. Holden, Borgnine, Ryan, O’ Brien, Oates, Sanchez, and Johnson all put their stamps on their respective characters. The restored footage sheds important light on Pike’s and Thornton’s past that grounds them in our eyes. It’s impossible to imagine the film having the same emotional impact at the end without this footage. The subject of cut footage would be a recurring one in Peckinpah’s career with several of his films, most notably Major Dundee (1965) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) being butchered and ruined by the studios.
Warner Brothers does a superb job of filling out the extras in this two-disc set. The first disc, containing a spectacular widescreen transfer of the film, also contains the insightful and highly entertaining commentary by the Peckinpah scholars Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons, and David Weddle and a Peckinpah trailer gallery. Disc 2 contains 3 fascinating documentaries and some cut footage. The additional scenes are really just 8 minutes of extended footage set to the film’s score. The documentaries include the Oscar nominated The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage, Sam Peckinpah’s West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade, and an excerpt from A Simple Adventure Story: Sam Peckinpah, Mexico, and The Wild Bunch.
The Wild Bunch remains one of American cinema’s greatest works of art and director Sam Peckinpah’s signature film. With its many universal themes, metaphors, and unforgettable images and characters; the film is an ultra violent, masculine ode to the best and worst that lies inside man. This two-disc special edition is a must buy for any film lover.
The Wild Bunch – The Original Director’s Cut (Two Disc Special Edition) is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD’s database for more information.
The two-disc DVD is also part of the Sam Peckinpah’s The Legendary Westerns Collection now available at Amazon . As of yet, the set has not been released in the UK. Visit the DVD set’s database for more information.
Your Talkback on this Story