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Director
Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH, released in June 1969, stands as
one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Indeed, thirty years after
the film first appeared, the Library of Congress chose it for preservation
in the National Film Registry as a "culturally, historically or
aesthetically" significant motion picture. The movie starred a truly
talented cast, including William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine,
Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Jaime Sanchez, Edmond O'Brien, Strother
Martin, Emilio Fernandez, Albert Dekker, and L.Q. Jones. Set in
Mexico and along the Texas border in 1913, the epic Western depicted
the waning days of a band of deadly desperadoes, led by Pike Bishop
(Holden). Peckinpah brilliantly depicted the griminess and violence
of their daily existence. Indeed, when many critics saw the film,
its savagery appalled them, especially the ultraviolent finale.
For instance, CUE critic William Wolf denounced THE WILD BUNCH as
an "ugly, pointless, disgustingly bloody film." And Rex Reed, writing
in HOLIDAY, assailed it as a "pretentious piece of throat-slashing
slobber…exploiting and glorifying violence to the happy jingle of
box office coins." Other critics, however, including Roger Ebert
and Richard Schickel, deemed Peckinpah's effort a "masterpiece."
And William Holden angrily responded to those reviewers who lambasted
the film for its brutality. "I just can't get over the reaction
here," the actor declared. "Are people surprised that violence really
exists in the world? Just turn on your TV set any night. The viewer
sees the Vietnam War, cities burning, campus riots. He sees plenty
of violence."
Austin resident W.K. Stratton, a member of the prestigious Texas
Institute of Letters and author of such books as BACKYARD BRAWL:
INSIDE THE BLOOD FEUD BETWEEN TEXAS AND TEXAS A&M (2002) and FLOYD
PATTERSON: THE FIGHTING LIFE OF BOXING'S INVISIBLE CHAMPION (2012),
has written an outstanding account of the controversial, landmark
film. Like Ebert and Schickel, he views it as a masterwork. "As
a work of art, THE WILD BUNCH deals with major themes: honor, betrayal,
love, death and dying, the end of the American West, revolution,
repression, people who have outlived their times, the dread of living
in the age of technology. It ranks with the great movies of all
time…I've never seen a better movie." Emphasizing its significance,
he continues: "With it, Peckinpah destroyed all the standard stereotypes
that made up cowboy pictures that came before it. Peckinpah's West
was a dirty, often vile place, very much like how the Old West was.
When THE WILD BUNCH was released, it placed a tombstone on the head
of the grave of the old-fashioned John Wayne Western. It changed
all the rules."
Stratton excels at providing perceptive portraits of the leading
characters in his book. Writing about the gifted, intense, hard
drinking director, for example, he observes: "Sam Peckinpah was
a rarity, a Hollywood director known for Westerns who could actually
claim to be a Westerner himself. He was an 'old Californian,' with
both his mother's and his father's families landing in the Golden
State as the fabled gold rush that began in 1849 reached its peak
in the 1850s…On a personal level, he could exhibit undying loyalty
to old friends, had a soft heart for the down-and-out, and ponied
up thousands of dollars to aid disadvantaged children. If he sometimes
seemed most at home inside the boozy, smoky, dim interiors of Nevada
[brothels], he would also weep openly at the color explosion of
a sunset high in the Sierras." Considering Robert Ryan, who played
bounty hunter Deke Thornton, Stratton contends: "Ryan was thin,
tough, and just a tad grizzled, with a deeply lined face that seemed
to be cut from boot leather. While never a major movie star, he
had time and again shown himself capable of being one of the best
actors in Hollywood." And evaluating Ernest Borgnine, who portrayed
gang member Dutch Engstrom, Stratton avers: "It's hard to imagine
any other actor owning the part in the way he did…the Nosferatu-like
grin during the train robbery, the mask of self-damnation he wears
while whittling outside the whorehouse, the demonic giggle just
before the final shoot-out-all were pure Borgnine."
Cinema enthusiasts, particularly those interested in Westerns and
in the grittier pictures of the late 1960s, such as Arthur Penn's
BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) and John Schlesinger's MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969),
should read Stratton's THE WILD BUNCH, an amazing study of an iconic
film.
Pike Bishop: "We're not gonna get rid of anybody. We're gonna stick
together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you
stay with him. And if you can't do that, you're like some animal,
you're finished."
Review by Dr.
Kirk Bane, Central Texas Historical Association
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