The Wild Bunch (1969)

Preview audiences reportedly were roused by such strong reactions to this film that many left the theater in protest. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch immediately won a reputation for its graphic violence. Because of or in spite of that, it quickly found a place on most western fans’ top 10 list. Over 40 years later, it remains a powerful and absorbing story.

Plot. Part of the impact of the story is its simplicity. Without a lot of twists and turns, it follows a gang of thieves led by William Holden from a failed railroad robbery to a successful one and then on to their deaths. In a parallel subplot, they are followed into Mexico, where most of the story takes place, by a raggedy group of hired guns, led by Robert Ryan.

That’s pretty much it.

It’s 1913 or thereabouts, and Mexican federal troops are fighting a losing battle against revolutionaries led by Pancho Villa. Holden and his gang (Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Jaime Sanchez) agree with a Mexican general to steal a shipment of arms from a train just north of the border. The train is guarded by a contingent of U.S. soldiers.

William Holden

A half hour in the middle of the film is a hold-your-breath portrayal of the train robbery and an escape with the guns across the border, Ryan and the troopers in hot pursuit. The sequence is beautifully shot and edited, with moments of both nail-biting suspense and comedy.

Character. With over two hours at its disposal, the film has time to thoroughly explore its characters, and it does. We first see the members of the gang disguised as cavalrymen. In Mexico, they gradually shed the uniforms and dress as very different individuals. From a distance you can tell them apart by the hat each has found to wear.

William Holden is especially strong as Pike Bishop (wasn’t there a famous Bishop Pike in the 1960s?), a man of easy stature who happens to be an outlaw. By the way he carries himself, you can see he has the intelligence and the experience to command this group of men. He seldom needs to raise his voice, but when he does, it keeps them in line.

Without question, he is the most admirable man in the film. His leadership of the gang is both firm and fair. When Johnson and Oates want to cut Sanchez’s share of the take, because he’s young and Mexican, Holden sets them straight. The deal was equal shares for everybody, period.

Robert Ryan

By comparison, Harrigan the railroad man (Albert Dekker), is a cheap bastard who hires Ryan to bring in Holden’s gang, but hamstrings him with the support of incompetents. The townsfolk are a pious bunch of temperance advocates. The U.S. Army troops are no more than unseasoned and disorganized young recruits. The Mexican general is a drunken, womanizing despot, and his men are no better.

Sympathy, where there is any in the film, goes to the poor villagers who are at the mercy of the Mexican federales. And we are meant to sympathize with Ryan. He and Holden are former partners in crime. Saddled with an impossible job, Ryan is threatened with being sent back to Yuma prison if he fails. From the look on his face, we know that his respect for Holden gives him feelings that are more than mixed.

Evil. Peckinpah’s wild bunch is not so much wild as they are simply day-by-day survivors in a dark and amoral world. In the opening scenes, a gathering of small boys and girls watches with fascination as two scorpions are being tormented by a swarm of ants. Far from being sweetly innocent, they’re shown as happily participating in human cruelty. 

Major Dundee (1965)

At some point, ambition has a way of overreaching itself. Sam Peckinpah’s first big-budget western is a lesson in that old observation. Its story tells of an officer in the U.S. cavalry who takes on a job of fighting Indians that is too big for him. Meanwhile, the film itself is the result of an ill-fated attempt to make an epic-scale movie against odds that nearly overwhelmed it.

Plot. Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston), with a company of U.S. cavalrymen, is in charge of a prison in New Mexico in the last year of the Civil War. It is full of Confederate soldiers, Army deserters, and civilian prisoners. From among them he gathers a contingent of volunteers to capture an Apache chief, Sierra Charriba, who has been ravaging white settlements.

They follow the Indians into Mexico where they are surprised by Charriba in an ambush and sustain considerable losses. Next they encounter troops of the French Foreign Legion, who currently occupy Mexico and object to American invaders. Heston’s men liberate a village, which throws a big fiesta in their honor. In the village, they find a beautiful widow (Senta Berger) with whom Heston becomes romantically involved.

Charlton Heston

From the start, Heston has commanded a fractious group of men, including black cavalrymen, civilians, and Confederate prisoners. Among the Southerners is an officer, Captain Tyreen (Richard Harris), who has agreed to follow Heston’s command until Charriba is captured. The celebration in the village temporarily unites the men and brings a truce between Heston and Harris, who have been at odds.

When one of the Confederates (Warren Oates) tries to escape, Harris defends him but keeps his word to obey Heston’s orders and executes the deserter himself. Berger then joins the band of Americans, having escaped reprisals in the village by the French garrisoned in nearby Durango.

Everything goes downhill for Heston when he is struck in the thigh by an Apache arrow. Treated by a doctor in Durango, Heston descends into a slough of defeat and self-pity. Berger discovers him with a whore who’s been keeping him company. Harris finds him literally drunk and in the gutter.

Richard Harris

Back on his feet, Heston rallies the men for a retreat to the border. Before leaving Mexico, they lure Charriba’s Apaches into a trap, killing many including the chief. Then they have to do combat with the French to cross the Rio Grande. In this climactic battle, fighting on horseback in the water, Harris and many others are killed. Only a couple of dozen men survive to escape into Texas, leaving behind the bodies of the dead.

Contingencies. Thus summarized, the film sounds a good deal more coherent that it is during its 2+ hours of running time. The “extended version,” released in 2005, reconstructs the film as cut by its producer Jerry Bresler. It had later been recut by the studio before its theatrical release to make it shorter. Peckinpah did not have a hand in either version.

Given the scale of the film, it is arguable that Peckinpah’s version would have run much longer. The story goes that his original budget of $4.5 million was cut by one-third before the film went into production, but he went ahead to make a $4.5 million movie anyway. There are numerous characters and plot threads, much as we find in a John Ford western. Shot on location in Mexico, in color and Panavision, Peckinpah clearly intended to produce an epic.

Senta Berger

A budget cut wasn’t the only obstacle. Many of the film’s problems can be traced to its being started with only a half-finished script. Writing while they were shooting, Peckinpah allowed the story’s central plot to shift away from its original conception. Part of that shift is due to the studio’s hiring Senta Berger, a European actress who would help the film sell in the international market. A major role not envisioned in the original storyline needed to be created for her.

Much of this behind the scenes material can be learned on the audio commentary that accompanies the DVD release of the film’s extended version. There, several film historians generally agree that Major Dundee works well during the first half, but while the second half has remarkable moments, it generally lacks coherence. The best that can be said is that learning from his mistakes, Peckinpah was able to make a much better film with The Wild Bunch, which followed in 1969.

James Coburn

The Deadly Companions (1961)

Sam Peckinpah had only a short career in TV when he directed this his first film. The finished product is a little raggedy at points, but it’s a gritty western story with an excellent cast. Maureen O’Hara, who co-produced the film, is her glowing self, and Brian Keith turns in a solid performance as the grim avenger of a vicious wrong.

Plot. Keith rescues Chill Wills from the hands of several unhappy poker players, who’ve caught him cheating at cards. He befriends Wills and a trail buddy (Steve Cochran) who have plans to rob a bank. When other robbers get to the bank first, they join the locals who open fire on the fleeing gang. The young son of a dancehall employee (Maureen O’Hara) is accidentally shot by a bullet from Keith’s gun.

O’Hara insists on taking the boy’s body across Apache territory to a town called Siringo to have him buried beside his father. The three men follow as an unwelcome escort. Keith hopes to ease his conscience for killing the boy. The other two have reasons of their own, until they overplay their hand and Keith forces them to leave. While he sticks with O’Hara, he can’t get her to warm up to him. “Are you always that stubborn,” he asks her, “or are just hard to figure out?”

Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith

The Apache make an appearance but turn out to be drunk and disorderly, fooling around with a stagecoach they’ve come into possession of until overturning it in a pond. One sober Indian, however, is more menacing as he aims some warning shots at Keith and O’Hara with bow and arrow. Found alone by him in a cave, O’Hara dispatches the Indian with a shotgun blast.

Arriving at Siringo, a long abandoned settlement, the two discover that Wills and Cochran have followed them. It’s now a showdown between the three men. Once a prolonged exchange of gunfire resolves their differences, O’Hara allows that maybe she’s underestimated Keith, and they ride off together into the sunset.

Steve Cochran, Chill Wills, Brian Keith

Twists. Brian Keith usually had such a sunny disposition in his films, it is unusual to see him so grimly and convincingly unsmiling. His character comes across as a bitterly proud man, a veteran of the Civil War, still wearing the yellow-striped pants of his Yankee uniform. His sullen attitude is underscored by a refusal to remove his hat.

Only later do we learn that he literally bears the wounds of his wartime service. At his hairline show the scars of being scalped by the Confederate soldier he’s sworn to avenge. The disfigurement is also a mark of his shame, as he regards himself unworthy of O’Hara’s affection once he’s won it.

Another twist in the casting is Chill Wills as a villain. Grizzled and dressed in cast-off clothes, he is a grimly comic figure.

Rodeo Week, Junior Bonner (1972)

It’s Rodeo Week starting Monday at BITS – reviews of five great books about rodeo. Today I’m giving y’all a heads up with a review of not a book, but one of the best movies ever made about rodeo.

I’m calling it best, maybe, because it starred two of my favorite actors, Steve McQueen and Robert Preston. True to the spirit of rodeo, it’s also a comedy. Surprisingly, it was directed by Sam Peckinpah, who was hardly known for his light touch.

Junior Bonner was one of those movies that fell "under the influence" of the early 1970s. It came in that aimless trough between Easy Rider (1969) and Jaws (1975), when Hollywood was willing to let filmmakers try about anything to hang onto a youthful audience. It was a period also more than a little challenged by the post-Vietnam years of national bafflement.

The movie grabs for this mood from the opening credits, with kinetic split-screen images showing in slow motion a disastrous ride on a bull. These are intercut with shots of McQueen driving a mud-spattered and beat up white Cadillac convertible, towing a horse trailer. Altogether it’s the picture of a man down on his luck.

Pendleton Roundup, 2004. Photo by Bobjgalingo.

Then we get a vision of an American West exhausted and resold as suburban housing developments of so-called rancheros (never mind that "ranchero" in Spanish means rancher). The marketing involves busloads of prospective buyers shepherded by young women in cowboy hats and hot pants.

McQueen's rodeo cowboy, Junior Bonner, returns to the home place outside Prescott, Arizona, to find heavy equipment operators fiercely tearing up the earth and anything that gets in their way. He stands there in his Lee jeans, western shirt and straw cowboy hat, surveying a land laid waste. Like the mood of the country at the time, the scene portrays a promising future that has seriously run aground somewhere.

But after this downbeat start, the movie becomes a kind of romantic comedy. We meet Bonner Senior (Robert Preston) rising from his hospital bed with a dream of prospecting in Australia. He’s also making a last attempt to win back his wife of many years, played nicely by Ida Lupino.

Calf roper, Pendleton Roundup, 2004. Photo by Bobjgalingo.

There is plenty of farce, including Preston and McQueen riding a horse through backyards and getting hung up on a clothesline, a comical barroom brawl, and a punch that sends a man through a front porch window. The rodeo itself is a rapid montage of graceless falls from rough stock played against turkey-in-the-straw music.

Meanwhile, Junior, as an aging, stove-up bull rider, is the calm at the center of this storm. Preston clowns, Lupino frowns, Joe Don Baker fumes, and Ben Johnson grins and cracks jokes. There’s even a girl with an eye on Junior. But he is untouched by it all.

McQueen does what he does best, reflecting a quiet cowboy reserve. Though the West is no more, Junior continues to represent a long line of western heroes holding true to the cowboy code of generosity, individualism, and toughing it out when the going gets rough. Before all is said and done, he gets the girl, but not for long, because true to form, he has to get on down the road.

Picture credits: Wikimedia Commons

Coming up: W. K. Stratton, Chasing the Rodeo

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

There are two or three versions of this film, depending on how you count them. According to film historians, it was rushed into theaters by MGM in 1973 before receiving a “fine cut.” In 1988, there was another version put together by Turner Entertainment, meant to restore director Sam Peckinpah’s vision of the film.

Then 2005 saw yet another attempt to create a definitive version. These last two of the three are currently available on DVD. If you want, you can put them side-by-side on two laptops and let them duke it out.

I saw the original in 1973 and found it unmemorable, so I can’t say today that its vision is much different from the latter two. But it’s probably safe to say that all three attempt to (a) portray the Old West realistically and (b) make an angry statement about corrupt and oppressive power structures. It was, after all, the year of Watergate.

History vs. myth. The film tells a story about Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid that is more or less accurate in some details. Billy’s breakout from the Lincoln County jail follows historical accounts fairly closely. But it shouldn’t be taken as a reenactment.

Neither should Garrett’s shooting of Billy at the end of the film. The writers had read their history, then “dramatized” it. Garrett sits outside the room where Billy has a lovemaking scene, and listens to the sound of what seems to be soul-satisfying sex. Then while Billy goes out to bring back something to eat, Garrett slips inside, where he is waiting when Billy returns.

In real-life that fateful night, Garrett and Billy happened by chance to meet in a darkened room. Garrett was probably surprised. Billy probably never knew what hit him. And he hadn’t come from lovemaking but from the nearby rooms of friends, where he’d shown up for a late night meal.

Mark Lee Gardner’s To Hell on a Fast Horse portrays both men as simply that – men whose lives took them in directions that finally converged. Billy was both a thief and a killer; Garrett as sheriff of Lincoln County had taken on the job of stopping him.

Peckinpah’s film prefers the myth. Not only is his Billy a free spirit at odds with unscrupulous cattlemen, speculators, and businessmen. Garrett is portrayed as corrupted by serving their interests. “It’s just a job,” he says, justifying himself. But to Billy (and Peckinpah, one gathers) he’s a man who has sold out.