50th Anniversary: The Wild Bunch!

[Walter Rego]

I only recently saw Cable Hogue. I enjoyed in immensely. I enjoyed watching Stella Stevens even more.

I was just going to mention Stella Stevens. I've had a crush on her ever since I first saw her in the original Nutty Professor.

Back to the Wild Bunch; a lot of the classic movies of the 1960's were fortunate to have the talent pool of actors that doesn't exist today. Think about the casts of The Great Escape, Magnificent Seven, Dirty Dozen and a few others. Wow

 

[Watchdog]

Even by today's standards the movie still surprises me every time I see it with the sex and violence. How it was not rated "X" fifty years ago is beyond me. It is an interesting read to see how the film rating system was undergoing an overhaul that let the film be released.

Quoting from a 2016 article by Eric Snider:

"When it was being filmed, there was no way it could be released.

Before the Motion Picture Association of America came up a ratings system to distinguish kid-friendly movies from grown-up ones, Hollywood followed the Production Code, a set of rules intended to make sure any movie released was more or less suitable for more or less any audience. (Basically, everything had to be the equivalent of a G, mild PG at most.) In place since the mid-1930s, the Production Code was starting to outlive its usefulness by the late '60s, as its archaic rules—even married couples couldn't be shown sharing a bed, for example—were increasingly out of touch with modern sensibilities.

The Wild Bunch, with its graphic violence, nudity, glorification of criminal activity, and failure to punish all of its guilty characters, violated the Production Code in about 100 different ways, and it's not clear what Peckinpah and Warner Bros. would have done had they submitted the film and received the inevitable rejection. Fortunately, it didn't come to that: By the time the film was ready for approval, the MPAA had replaced the yes-or-no Production Code with a more nuanced rating system that allowed for varying degrees of adult-ness. The Wild Bunch got the R rating it warranted."

 

[Watchdog]

It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do...

Let's go.

 

[Watchdog]

How you perceive Cable Hogue really depends on how you want to see Peckinpah as a director. I like it a lot.

Coming directly after the Wild Bunch, it shows that he does not deserve to be stereotyped as a choreographer of violence, but could handle a funny, almost whimsical and largely non-action take on the "post-western".

While the guys of the wild bunch die in an inferno of mass charges and machine gun fire, presaging WW I, Cable Hogue ends up the victim of a different 20th century horror: he gets run over by a car.

The two movies complement each other. Both mourn the inevitable end of an era. While "The Wild Bunch" made Peckinpah famous, "Cable Hogue" was reportedly one of his favorite works, at least according to what I consider his best biography.

Until you posted this, I couldn't have told you how Hogue died. I have no memory of it. I would have to watch the film again to remember it. I know I saw Convoy. And I know I saw The Killer Elite. But I have no significant memory of either. I remember liking Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, but wondered why Peckinpah threw Dylan into that mix. Billy's use of the deputy's shotgun loaded with silver dimes made an impression on me. I thought Straw Dogs was pretty much a disaster at the time.

I guess The Wild Bunch struck a nerve somehow. I liked the characters, especially Lyle and Tector Gorch...probably because they reminded me of guys I knew. Good ol' boys who only knew how to do one thing. It made me sad when all of them died at the end.

Sykes and Thornton riding off together into the sunset at the end really brought home the idea of an era that had truly come and gone. They were laughing about it, but they knew their time was over. We all have our eras that come to an end, don't we?

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6-LDKl3FOs[/ame]

 

[Absalom]

I have a tendency to read too much into movies sometimes. Too many Lit classes probably.

But one of the things that impressed me particularly, after seeing the film the first few times, was the transition in the finale of "The Wild Bunch":

When they start their walk to confront Mapache, you see the classic old West of legends: the Earps and Doc Holliday moseying to the OK Corral.

Just a little bit later, we are in the middle of dead German officers (nice touch) and uniformed soldiers suicidally charging a Maxim gun.

From Tombstone 1881 to the Somme 1916 in less than ten minutes

 

[Watchdog]

I have a tendency to read too much into movies sometimes.

The Wild Bunch almost requires that you read things into it. Especially once you've watched it enough times to get over the pleasure of just watching a great story, but then you start to watch it critically.

We all know why Pike shot Mapache. The main reason, anyway. His motives for shooting Colonel (?) Mohr are less clear (to me). Was Pike still American enough (patriot) that he didn't like the idea of Germans sticking their nose into our hemisphere? Or was it just because he saw Mohr as a blowhard and a know-it-all and simply didn't like the man? I tend to think it was the latter. The guy just rubbed Pike the wrong way, that's all. We've all met people like that.

All the main characters are motivated by one thing or another. Their different motivations pull the story line in different directions, but hold it together at the same time. Thornton needs to get Pike to stay out of prison. Pike wants one last big score. Ditto for the Gorch brothers. Angel wants guns for his village. The Germans want to establish a presence here. Mapache wants guns to fight Villa. Pike wants things to be "like it used to be." He has dreams for the future, but no real hope for it. And on and on.

Watching the film is like reading a good book for me. I'm always thinking of something new. Yeah, it's all make believe, but anyone can find real life lessons in make believe.

 

[Absalom]

....
We all know why Pike shot Mapache. The main reason, anyway. His motives for shooting Colonel (?) Mohr are less clear (to me). Was Pike still American enough (patriot) that he didn't like the idea of Germans sticking their nose into our hemisphere? Or was it just because he saw Mohr as a blowhard and a know-it-all and simply didn't like the man? I tend to think it was the latter. The guy just rubbed Pike the wrong way, that's all. We've all met people like that.
....

Actually, at that moment after they shoot Mapache and everything freezes, it has always looked to me like Bishop is just looking who to kill next to keep this thing going. That's what him and the others looking at each other and Dutch laughing is about; it's like they can't believe they just shot Mapache and everyone just stands there and nobody is coming at them, so Pike just has to keep things going, by picking another worthy target and "breaking the ice". And the mayhem commences. At least that's my take.

 

[SPEEDGUNNER]

One of my ALL-TIME favorites.

 

[dr. mordo]

The Wild Bunch almost requires that you read things into it. Especially once you've watched it enough times to get over the pleasure of just watching a great story, but then you start to watch it critically.

We all know why Pike shot Mapache. The main reason, anyway. His motives for shooting Colonel (?) Mohr are less clear (to me). Was Pike still American enough (patriot) that he didn't like the idea of Germans sticking their nose into our hemisphere? Or was it just because he saw Mohr as a blowhard and a know-it-all and simply didn't like the man? I tend to think it was the latter. The guy just rubbed Pike the wrong way, that's all. We've all met people like that.

All the main characters are motivated by one thing or another. Their different motivations pull the story line in different directions, but hold it together at the same time. Thornton needs to get Pike to stay out of prison. Pike wants one last big score. Ditto for the Gorch brothers. Angel wants guns for his village. The Germans want to establish a presence here. Mapache wants guns to fight Villa. Pike wants things to be "like it used to be." He has dreams for the future, but no real hope for it. And on and on.

Watching the film is like reading a good book for me. I'm always thinking of something new. Yeah, it's all make believe, but anyone can find real life lessons in make believe.

Along these lines, what really resonates about The Wild Bunch is the theme that honor is the essential difference between men and animals, and the fact that Pike and his men are honorable while the gang chasing them are absolute scum.

 

[Watchdog]

Actually, at that moment after they shoot Mapache and everything freezes, it has always looked to me like Bishop is just looking who to kill next to keep this thing going. At least that's my take.

I'll agree that moment is open to interpretation. One fact is clear. Pike is a killer throughout the film.

We could debate the film and its characters for years. Critics already have.

I'll say this about Pike:

He's carrying a lot of guilt around with him, and the guilt keeps piling up as the movie progresses. He'd already abandoned Thornton years before, escaping while Thornton was shot and captured. He's carrying the guilt of never having avenged the death of Aurora, the woman whose husband caught them together and shot her to death while Pike ran for it. He abandons Crazy Lee at the railroad depot, leaving him to watch the hostages, then be shot to death. He abandons Buck, who's been shot in the face with a shotgun trying to escape the town...the ultimate abandonment, he kills him to put him out of his misery which prevents him from slowing the gang down. He abandons ol' Sykes after he's shot in the leg, using the rationale that maybe Sykes might be able to hold Thornton's gang off long enough for Pike and the others to make their way into Agua Verde.

He intends to abandon Angel, but his accumulated guilt finally becomes too much for him to bear...and this leads to the final denouement.

So as much as we might like Pike as the good/bad guy (and I do), the fact is there is very little good in him, other than his determination to hold his gang together and his own personal code of honor, like when he was talking with Dutch about Thornton turning bounty hunter:

Pike: "He gave his word."
Dutch: "He gave it to a railroad!"
Pike: "It's his word!!"

In a piece of massive irony, the only people who really benefit from the Bunch's train robbery are the people of Angel's village. They got their guns and ammo.

But nobody got the $10,000 in gold, because there was no one left alive who knew where Pike and the gang had buried it.

Perhaps it's still there, buried on the side of a little hill, just outside Agua Verde.

 

[Chino74]

Great western with a fantastic cast...it's in my DVD collection! However on his other films..I never could make it through 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid' I found it about as authentic as 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' but at least that film was fun & Newman was great as always & no Bob Dylan standing around looking like he just walked onto the movie set for a cameo that never ended...