The Wild Bunch

(dir, Sam Peckinpah 1969)

The Western genre has a great appeal to me. It might be the only Hollywood genre that was created on a larger idea of America and its historical heritage. Other genres like crime can be said to exist for the same means, but those genres are easier to exploit for violence so actually are more likely to reflect Hollywood ideas of entertainment. The Western can only house so much violence and action before it becomes just absurd and untrue to the period. The Western has to focus on larger themes and idealizations of America because it's the only way you can relate the stories to modern audience. Stories about another century would come off as dry if a moral parable didn't exist to communicate its meaning. And because Westerns have to be semi realistic to the time period, no Western has been able to be a total style venture. That, too, would just look absurd. This hasn't made the Western impenetrable to Hollywood cliches, but it has made it the hardest genre to crack.

But the Western also has a lot of problems. Because its stories are situated in a very specific slice of history and location it means a lot of the stories are bound to repeat over again and again. The Wild Bunch deals with one of the oldest and most used stories – the tides of society changing and passing outlaws up. The story concentrate is usually on gun slingers who need to adjust to life where they can’t just rely on means of violence to exist. By 1969 this story was a relic. Butch Cassidy and the Sudance Kid signed the genre its death warrant (made in the same year) when it used the storyline to make a full fledged entertainment vehicle. That film convinced a lot of critics that the last vestige for the Western was a Hollywood route. Why just continue to repeat themes that were already common and stale? The idea that Sam Peckinpah could make the story relevant again was slim to none.

My belief is that Sam Peckinpah redefined the Western with The Wild Bunch. He didn’t do it by delving deeper into the history than any other filmmaker, but instead by fusing an age old genre with modern personal characterizations. Peckinpah aimed to make a drama that both defined him as a person and also spoke to his love of the Western and its mythical qualities. On top of that Peckinpah tried to play to a style that would not only be distinct from any other Western, but also be a testament to the themes and characteristics of the film.

But considering the film is still a historical work, Peckinpah couldn’t go about the usual routes to suggest modern ideas about man. The point is that he couldn’t wrap the film in modern situations in which to get his needed perspective. His challenge was to find a way in which to give a historical situation the necessary context in which to challenge modern audiences about their core beliefs and ideas of good and evil and what it means to be a self sufficient man.

Peckinpah’s play is that he uses the audience's familiarity of the Western against them. He first introduces the protagonists, the “Wild Bunch”, as the very definition of hateable characters. At the beginning of the film they hold up a bank only to find out they were set up because hired gun hands are awaiting their exit. The original planned exit is thwarted so they use a town parade as cover to escape. In the film a very violent episode ensues as the bunch shoot up at gunmen on the roof top. The film shows innocent men and women being mercilessly killed and scared children cowering in fear. While the violence is happening, one member of the gang is inside the bank with hostages and makes a rape play at one of the women. The purpose of the scene is to shock the audience. The film was very controversial when released and the early scene still stands up at painting a believable idea of true ruthlessness.

Then the perspective of the bunch suddenly changes. When arriving in Mexico they come to a small village and hear about their plight because of a regional General. One member of the bunch is from the village and a revolutionary supportive of the cause for uprising. The village sanctify the bunch when they head off as their hope to reclaim all the things they lost. In the matter of a few minutes the bunch goes from outlaws to being projected as potential heroes. I believe Peckinpah wanted the shift to be sudden so the audience could be aghast at what they were meant to feel for characters that just mere minutes before they reviled. The film introduces a subplot with the Mexican ordeal and the village, but it isn’t meant to be a true subplot. We aren’t suppose to know all the details of the Mexican rendezvous. Peckinpah never adds subtitles to the Spanish language portions. No concrete details are given about the small war going on. It exists in the background, but for the purpose of the bunch, it mainly exists to add greater context to their characterization.

The Mexican situation carries the rest of the situation. It puts the bunch into strenuous situations and tests their resolves. Some of the plot is customary to most Western adventures, but some are not. Numerous scenes are about the bunch intermingling and experiencing life at a social level with partying, sex and reminsciencing. Many criticize the film for being unnecessarily long with the scenes of drunkenness and partying, but all the scenes really are needed. The laughter and fun that these men have is the context they need to make for a dramatic picture. They go through dramatic situations and have their resolve tested in different ways, but they also live life with a certain flair for the promiscuous. As the plot goes along the bunch is being moved into hero territory, but Peckinpah complicates the viewpoint by having the men continuing to flaunt their excesses and be more concerned about money instead of family (just one example) to show that the lines about who they are isn’t cut down the middle.

Peckinpah does use a lot of standard adventure storyline devices through out the film, but the important thing is that he extends the personal scenes between the characters so much that those scenes begin to cloud the action scenes. The final shoot out is the most memorable thing about the film, but the film is dominated by small scenes of interaction between the characters. One of the major themes in the film is remembrance of better days. In some way all the characters deal with the past looking brighter than the future. A consistent element in the film is the awareness all the characters have of their precarious situation and the feeling that mortality could be looming its dangerous head toward them at any time. Nobody can really identify with outlaws and their situation, but people can identify with the idea of friendship and respect for someone else and how that can be something that won’t last forever.

Peckinpah transforms enough of the story to be a personal take on the bunch that he is able to connect some deeper themes to the audience. Modern audiences also identify more with the bunch because none of them are perfect and they seem driven by fears and greed. Any serious modern story would have to account for everyone’s faults. In the Western genre that mainly didn’t exist because the portraits were standard black and white ones.

Later filmmakers carried on the personal element to genre stories. Martin Scorsese officially made a gangster film with Mean Streets, but so much of the film is about personal experience in the streets and living as a small time hoodlum that there is little recognition of the genre. The crux of the film exists on the personal experience element the story has going with it. I believe the major development in films after 1969 is that they began to care less for standard plot and structure and allow themselves to be given over to character and theme. The Wild Bunch is a historical film about another time, but it has so much personal element to the character design that it feels like an extended comment about man’s relationship with violence and excesses when in a situation where just doing the right thing is the hardest thing to ask for someone.

Akira Kurosawa is one of cinema’s most important dramatists and has made numerous war films, but never based the extent of his drama on whether good defeated evil, but whether the would be good could get over its problems to just make the right decision. This basis in character element in film decisions still lasts to this day. Peckinpah continually referenced Kurosawa and his work with Seven Samurai when making The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah saw the film as a dramatic and filmic challenge to take on.

The filmic challenge had to deal with the complicated editing system Akira Kurosawa instituted with Seven Samurai. That film proved to be revolutionary because it was the first action adventure that believed it could express the action and dramatics in the story through editing that cut into all the scenes. Kurosawa wanted to bring the viewer closer through editing and composition angles instead of just filming around locales. To watch films old Hollywood actioneer works like Errol Flynn adventures is to watched filmed postcards of great scenery and sword fighting. Kurosawa imagined a format for the action film that could give it a level of cinematic drama.

Peckinpah also wanted to create a style that cut into the action, but he also wanted to add a deeper level to it. The style in the film is famous for its quick cuts and slow pace of the action scenes. It’s dramatic showmanship, but it’s also meant to pin point more so on the characters around the violence. In the opening gun fight there is the showing of brutality with men dying everywhere, but because all of the action is slowed down that also means the images of innocent civilians and children reacting to the violence becomes more prominent. In a normal action scene there are always reaction shots of innocent victims, but because the scenes are few and the action is quickened the audience never remembers the shots of innocent victims or don’t feel the effect they as civilians feel. In the Wild Bunch the glaring imagery is with the collision of innocent children reacting to violence around them. Sergei Eisenstein believed in a language based on collision of images that opposed each other. Peckinpah extended it to include intricate action sequences. And not only is the style startling, it is also very exciting. The children in the film are horrified during the violent moments but share in the excitement of violence later on by playing make believe guns with each other. Some great filmmakers stay away from highly designed action sequences because they know it plays into Hollywood wants, but Peckinpah designed his sequences to fit into the themes of duality with violence in the film. The characters and audience are tormented because of their attraction and relationship to violence.

When Peckinpah made Straw Dogs, he made an exciting film for him because it was a modern story that allowed him to explore his psychological ideas about man’s attraction to violence. When he did interviews for the film he went to great detail to explain how his ideas did have real basis. I’ve seen all of Peckinpah’s films before The Wild Bunch and its obvious Peckinpah should have started promoting his interest in psychological study with the Wild Bunch. It probably just wasn’t trendy for a Western to be a vehicle for such an effort, but the film really was.