By Dean Treadway
For years, I had not seen Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in full. I had caught bits of it on TV, or maybe at the drive-in, where my mom and dad had carried me along to check it out. I’m sure my dad liked it–most dads adore The Wild Bunch–but my mom was sickened by the violence in movies at the time (both Bonnie and Clyde, with its bullet-riddled climax, and M.A.S.H., with its comedic treatment of medical gore, had similarly made her ill). For my own part, I found the movie dull, even as a pretty with-it kid; somehow, Peckinpah had not gotten his hooks in me (I now see that The Wild Bunch is a movie that doesn’t work best on the young). It wasn’t until its 1995 restoration and re-release, when I was approaching my 30s, that I finally did my duty and caught it on the big screen, at a four-wall theater, as it was meant to be seen. I could’ve kicked myself afterwards for not previously understanding what a powerhouse masterpiece it was, for Peckinpah’s film finally bowled me over, as it did almost everyone who saw it in the late 60s/early 70s. From its very first scene–a staccato credits sequence which captures the titular bunch riding past a group of joyful kids cackling as thousands of fire ants overtaking two deadly but hapless scorpions–The Wild Bunch aims to encapsulate the brutality of man and, simultaneously, man’s longing to return to some modicum of innocence, honor and compassion. In its dichotomies, it’s a film like no other.
In it, William Holden (coming back from an alcohol-induced career slump) is the aged, tired Pike Bishop, a former Army man now leading a group of neer-do-wells through a series of bank and train hold-ups. Alongside of him: the unfailingly loyal Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine); the filthy Brothers Gorch, Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector (Ben Johnson); Angel, the handsome Mexican bandit (Jaime Sanchez); and Edmond O’Brien as Freddie Sykes, the grizzled, tobacco-dribbling horseman. Most of the rest of the bunch–including Bo Hopkins as the too-briefly-seen Crazy Lee–are dispatched in the film’s first big showpiece: the robbing of the bank in a sleepy Texas town too busy railing against the evils of drink to notice that they’re all about to get shot to pieces (gotta love a movie where the first real actor you see with a speaking line is the inimitable Dub Taylor).
It’s the bunch that starts the gunfire, but it’s Deke Thornton’s gang of money-hungry buzzards that escalates it, looking to get every penny they can, even if it means shooting total innocents and robbing their pockets, or the shoes off their feet. Thornton is played with a world-weary sadness by Robert Ryan; it’s clear that his character is not enjoying this assignment. Even though he and Pike ended their relationship on bad terms (in a flashback that was added into the movie only in its re-release), he still sees more honor in his work with Pike than he does with the drunken trash he’s riding with now (L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin are extremely memorable here as the dirtiest of Thornton’s crew, complete with slightly homosexual undertones and loud bickering over the corpses they pick clean). But railroad man Harrigan (a mustache-twirling Albert Dekker) has the hammer down on Thornton: “30 days to get Pike or 30 days back to Yuma. You’re my Judas goat.”
The opening scene has long been called a ballet of blood and for justified reasons. Louis Lombardo’s superb editing here ratchets up the tension until it literally explodes in a cataclysm of shotgun lead, trampled townspeople, frightened children (they’re almost endless shots of babies and kids all throughout the film), bloodied henchmen, falling bodies, crumbling storefronts, rearing horses and crushed dreams. There is just simply nothing like it in cinema history, and any filmmaker who tiptoes near it is immediately accused of ripping off Peckinpah’s mastery (only Walter Hill has gotten away with aping the Peckinpah style in his wonderful The Long Riders). This scene is no less than the introduction of a more modern depiction of violence in movies: a violence fraught with horrible consequences. It’s the chief aspect of this film that shook cinema in 1969; even after Bonnie and Clyde, absolutely no one was ready for this. But Peckinpah was tired of the bang-bang-you’re-dead cleanliness of westerns and–seeing that the genre was near the end of its run–he needed to put the final exclamation point on his view that bloodletting had to be seen in all its pointless goriness in order to be understood and, finally, perhaps vanquished (only problem is, on-screen violence continued to get more graphic; surely the cynical Peckinpah could’ve seen THAT coming).
After discovering that the bounty from the bank robbery is not what they thought it was going to be, in a scene that underlines both the fissures in the bunch’s alliance and the good humor that cements their bond, it’s up to Pike to find them something honorable–and profitable–to chase (he admits to Dutch that he‘d like to make one big score and then retire). Taking refuge in Mexico, it’s Angel that leads them to this mission, after he suggests they go take a rest in his idyllic village (photographed in smoky blues and greens by Lucien Ballard, who does the best work of his long career here). In the village, the bunch reconnect with innocence and heroism, dancing with the senoritas while drunk with joy and passion (one of the village elders responds to their abandon when he says, in one of the film‘s key observations: “We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all.”) In the film’s most moving scene, this bunch, this wild bunch are given a warm send-off by the villagers, who sing the mournful “La Golondrina” in tribute to their new mission: to find the General Mapache (Mexican film director Emilio Fernandez), who recently raided the village, killed their leaders, and stolen their women, including Angel’s paramour. I adore this scene; it really makes me weep, as it’s the final tribute to a group of men who’ve probably done nothing worth paying tribute to in their whole lives. It’s their awakening; it’s the memory they take to their graves (that’s why the scene is called back in the film’s final moments).
The screenplay, by Peckinpah, Roy Sickner and Walon Green, is unusual in numerous ways, one of which is its second-act shift from western genre territory into almost war movie-land, with Mapache (under the thumb of some slimy German consultants) conducting his federales against the revolutionaries, and the bunch–all US veterans–agreeing to heist a trainload of American guns for his use against them. Pike’s men are to split a cache of gold coins as payment, but Angel–bitter over the subjugation of his village and the theft of his woman (whom he’d rather see dead than with Mapache)–asks for a crate of guns and ammo instead of gold, so that his village can fight against the general. Angel’s compatriots see this as a risky though honorable trade-off, and so they agree. This leads us to the brilliantly tense train heist scene, which Peckinpah slyly directs with almost no dialogue or music cues. Only the rhythmic sounds of the train appear on the soundtrack, heightening the strain of this enormously entertaining sequence which culminates in one of the hugest stunts ever seen on film: the rigging and explosion of the bridge, with Deke Thornton’s men on it (the resultant blast is so massive–by Peckinpah’s design–that its shockwave visibly stuns Holden on-screen).
There are so many moments I love in The Wild Bunch–moments that the many rabid fans of the movie will be very familiar with: William Holden’s insanely great first line (“If they move, kill ‘em,” which not only became the title of David Weddle’s authoritative biography devoted to the self-destructive Peckinpah, it also is the line on which Peckinpah’s freeze-framed director’s credit appears, as the capper to one of the most energetic credits sequences ever); the way the temperance league members can’t–or won’t– quite follow Dub Taylor’s pledge of alcohol abstinence; Pike and Dutch’s little comedy routine (Pike: “Get up, ya lazy bastard”); Lyle Gorch being schooled in what the term “in tandem” means; Pike’s regretful realization that Crazy Lee is actually Freddie Sykes’ grandson; Dutch burning his fingers on and then spitting out Freddie’s awful coffee; Lyle complaining about being set off from the decision makers at the Mapache headquarters, and then disdainfully leering at the sodden general (“Well, look at him–ain’t he the one?”); Lyle and Tector cavorting in both wine and water with two rather portly Mexican women; the almost unfailingly ridiculous Mapache trying to fire a bulky machine gun on his own; the wacky scene with the bunch sharing a single bottle of hooch; Alfonso Arau as one of Mapache’s deputies, sent to negotiate with the bunch, pleading with Pike to “Please…cut the fuse.” And maybe my favorite single exchange in the film: where Pike finally looks around the Mexican brothel where he’s had his last woman, where he’s feeling bad for himself, feeling bad for the good-hearted man they left behind, feeling sorry for who he’s become and, with Ballard’s luminous lighting catching his blue eyes, then saying to the rest of the gang simply “Let’s go.” And Lyle’s answer: “Why not?” Both Holden and Oates would never match their career-defining moments here (though Oates had quite a colorful filmography ahead of him).
Thus begins their final march–a march towards immortality, a victory march, a death march and a march for freedom. These iconic actors–this iconic moment–this stroll–improvised on location–toward Agua Verde, set to Jerry Fielding’s terrific brass-and-percussion-driven score (seasoned heavily with Mexican folk songs), and a final showdown with Mapache. After this unbelievable denouement–this incredibly bloody climax, emotional and desperate, with its quicksilver editing, copious gunfire, exquisite choreography, hundreds of bodies (mostly dead or dying), fleet moves and slow-motion movements–after this, nothing in movies would ever be the same. The Wild Bunch is not simply the westerns to end all westerns; it’s one of the ultimate examples of pure cinema. That’s how landmark great it has always been, and how mesmerizing it still is.
Pike Bishop: We’re not gonna get rid of anybody! We’re gonna stick together, just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can’t do that, you’re like some animal. You’re finished! We’re finished! All of us!
