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Sam Peckinpah: Wild Bunch
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Known for the graphic violence and beauty of his challenging films, director Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) was a Hollywood maverick whose movies were highly controversial. He was best known for such bloody, exquisitely crafted westerns as "The Wild Bunch". Peckinpah's much-imitated films were among the first to employ highly stylized cinematic techniques to depict the extremes of human brutality.
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Sam Peckinpah 's Legendary Westerns Collection brings [F]our of the director's best films to DVD. The centerpiece of the set is a new edition of his masterpiece, The Wild Bunch (1969). The graphic ballets of violence, specifically the episodes that open and conclude the film, were shocking in their day, and the movie's reputation for gory nihilism has overwhelmed it at times. It is a violent adventure film, but along with the havoc is a poignant tale of the end of an era where manhood is defined by your word and whom you ride with. We follow a few tired souls who choose to go out in a blaze of glory, standing up for a principle rather than fading away into the dusty sunset, on a suicide mission that simultaneously shatters and secures the Myth of the West. There's poetry in those bullets ripping through flesh in slow-motion.
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After earning a reputation for writing and directing TV westerns, Sam Peckinpah began directing feature films in 1961. His first two westerns on the big screen were well-received, but Peckinpah did not get along with movie studios and for many years had difficulty finding work. With the 1969 release of The Wild Bunch (starring William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, Peckinpah was hailed as a genius and/or a purveyor of brutal screen violence. His reputation for being a self-destructive maverick nearly overshadowed his body of work, which includes Straw Dogs (1971, starring Dustin Hoffman), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973, with Bob Dylan) and Cross of Iron (1977).
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Sam Peckinpah was a man born out of time. He was born at the end of an era, an era he could only ever see as it receded, forever, into non-existence. Peckinpah waxed nostalgic for a time of frontier-free America, a West still wild and unconquered, a natural world dominant and strong, where a man was still pure and unadulterated and constantly challenged by the rigors of nature. Peckinpah might have fantasized as a child about growing up as a cowboy, but his real dreams went further back, to a time before Columbus. (It was cowboys, after all, who began the inexorable process of taming the West.) Peckinpah dreamed of the pre-civilized world of the Indian Brave and, whether Peckinpah’s claims of Indian blood had any veracity or not, his affinity (remarkable for someone raised in a time that looked on half-breeds with contempt) clearly went deeper than mere boyhood fantasy. He was still making his claim publicly in later life.
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The first photo collection of Sam Peckinpah's work features hundreds of previously unpublished photographs that impressively document the creation of motion pictures like The Wild Bunch, Getaway, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, and Cross of Iron. A large number of the photos came from private archives and has never been published before. With over 900 photographs, "Passion and Poetry" illustrates the life and work of one of the most talented and most controversial film artists of the 20th century.
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After the violence of The Wild Bunch, director Sam Peckinpah shifted moods with this memorable fable -- less a tale of revenge than it is a lyrical, touching tribute to the last days of the West’s pioneering spirit. Jason Robards, Stella Stevens and David Warner lead an excellent supporting cast that ... includes L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin as Hogue’s old enemies. Special Features:
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Wild Bunch