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Sam Peckinpah: Violence
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Born in Fresno, CA, and raised on a ranch on nearby Peckinpah Mountain by his sober mother and judge father, descendants of pioneer settlers, Peckinpah learned to ride and shoot as a child and idolized his hardy Superior Court jurist grandfather. A boozing, violence-prone troublemaker by his teens, Peckinpah spent his senior year at military school, joining the Marines in 1943 after graduation. Despite a tour of duty in China... Peckinpah never saw combat action. Enrolling at Fresno State College in 1947, Peckinpah discovered his calling when his schoolmate and first wife-to-be turned him on to drama. Relocating to Los Angeles to get his master's degree at U.S.C., Peckinpah began directing theater and took a job at KLAC-TV as a stagehand. He was subsequently fired from his menial job on Liberace's TV show for not wearing a suit.
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The way Peckinpah works, he builds up the potential for violence in each of his characters or groups of characters, then runs them into each other. The pace is ... much time he needs to bring all their kettles to a boil. The scenes of conflict are always stunningly, and primarily, visual. And if his pace is slower, you have to realize that the pace of all films was slower in that era.
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In many ways, Peckinpah's greatest legacy lies in his aggressive breaking of taboos. He allowed a new freedom to emerge in cinema, not only in the depiction of violence, but ... in editing styles, narrative choices, and the willingness to portray unsympathetic or tragic characters and stories. His notorious reputation has often overshadowed the depth of his influence on modern film.
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Heavily criticized for allegedly glorifying violence on screen, Peckinpah always maintained that his purpose was to sensitize audiences to unspeakable acts. "I'm a great believer in catharsis," he explained in one interview. "When people complain about the way I handle violence, what they're really saying is, 'Please don't show me; I don't want to know."'
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Peckinpah's films generally deal with the conflict between values and ideals and the corruption and violence of human society. His characters are often loners or losers who harbor the desire to be honorable and idealistic but are forced to compromise themselves in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality.
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Dustin Hoffman stars as an astrophysicist in this violent Peckinpah film. Before the violence starts, Hoffman's wife plays a trick on him by changing some signs (+/-) in an equation he is working with. The mathematical content of the film is primarily in Hoffman's performance: the way he looks while trying to figure out what is wrong with the equation and when he finally figures it out...that's mathematics.
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