Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
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.
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."'
Jeans vs. the Suits
Peckinpah was descended from early settlers in California who became ranchers and mill owners. His father and grandfather were judges, but Peckinpah grew up on a ranch. The independent spirit of his background and upbringing infused his entire life and career. As a teenager, Peckinpah was such a troublemaker that his father sent him to military school to try to rehabilitate him. Peckinpah served in the U.S. Marines during World World II.
After the war, at Fresno State College, Peckinpah became involved with Marie Selland, who was active in theater groups. He enrolled in drama classes, started directing plays, and married Selland. Their marriage lasted 15 years and produced three daughters and a son.
After earning a master's degree in drama from the University of Southern California, Peckinpah took a job handling props for network television. He was fired from the musician Liberace's TV show for refusing to wear a suit on the set. He next worked as a dialogue director and occasional writer for movies. As an assistant to director Don Siegel, Peckinpah helped write the script and had a small acting role in the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He then returned to television, working on scripts for such westerns as Gunsmoke. By 1960, Peckinpah was writing and directing his own TV series, The Westerner, but it was cancelled after 13 episodes.
Even in his early days in Hollywood, Peckinpah's fascination with violence made for a rocky career. He once offered a script to Disney studios, which rejected it with the criticism: "Too many shootings, not enough animals." The first film Peckinpah directed was The Deadly Companions, a 1961 western with a fresh and audacious viewpoint. But it had a limited release and earned little attention. The following year he received more acclaim for another cowboy movie, Ride the High Country, which starred Joel McCrea as a former lawman trying to regain his lost integrity. "This movie celebrates a hero of self-control," noted critic Michael Sragow. "But each frame is energized with a sense of what that self-control has cost the man in love, friendship and glory."
Peckinpah's prickly personality and his penchant for creative disagreement got him fired from a job directing The Cincinnati Kid, and he feuded with his producer over his next film, Major Dundee. As a result, the film was extensively edited over Peckinpah's objections, and it failed at the box office. Peckinpah had become almost an outcast in Hollywood. Unable to find another directing job, Peckinpah wrote the scripts for the films The Glory Guys and Villa Rides, a film about Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. He also continued to work in television as a writer and director.
"When he was making movies it felt, for some of us, as if we were watching an ongoing street accident," recalled critic Pauline Kael in an interview for a 1999 Peckinpah retrospective. "We felt helpless; he was determined to be doomed. He liked the helplessness of it all; the role he played was the loser. And though the competition is keen, he's probably the greatest martyr/ham in Hollywood history." In Kael's view, Peckinpah was largely to blame for his legendary battles with studio executives: "He needed their hatred to stir up his own. He didn't want to settle fights or to compromise or even, may be, to win. He wanted to draw a line and humiliate the executives. He simply wasn't a reasonable person."
The Wild Bunch
In 1969, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch was released. At the first screening, dozens of people walked out during the film's first ten minutes. This landmark film had a mixed but profound impact on audiences, many of whom came into theaters expecting a mainstream western and felt themselves challenged at every turn. On the surface, the story concerned what critic Sragow called "grizzled outlaws escaping railroad bounty hunters and barging into the Mexican Revolution." But it was much more than that. Writer Charles Ramirez Berg termed the film a "frontal assault to cinematic sensibilities." After a European release, it did poorly at the box office in the United States, and the studio cut eight minutes from every American print of the film.
The Wild Bunch marked a dramatic departure for Hollywood in its depiction of violence, away from what Berg called the "sanitized, 'bang-you're-dead' movie convention-no splattered blood or contorted body spasms" to a more terrifying, in-your-face hyper-reality. The film's carefully choreographed, slow-motion bloodletting would be much imitated in years to come by directors from Martin Scorcese to Quentin Tarantino. To admiring critics, Peckinpah's approach to violence in the The Wild Bunch was visionary. "Peckinpah's treatment of individual acts of violence is electrifyingly ambiguous," asserted Sragow. "Peckinpah cuts among speeds-and between parallel displays of mayhem-as he shifts perspectives. The results challenge a viewer's powers of perception and empathy."
More than any Hollywood movie made up to that point, The Wild Bunch seemed designed to rile audiences. "The idea was challenge," wrote critic Louis Black. "The intention was confrontation. The essence was conflict." Kael said Peckinpah's own attitude toward his goals in the film was ambivalent. "I remember his talking to me, when he was planning The Wild Bunch, saying that he was going to make a picture so ferocious that it would rub people's noses in the ugliness of violence. They would never want to see anything violent again. But when the picture came out and there were insensitive people who cheered the bloodshed, he seemed delighted, he acted vindicated."
The Wild Bunch divided Peckinpah's audiences and critics into two camps: those who adored the moral ambiguity and technical daring of his work, and those who abhorred his obsession with violence and considered his skills overrated. For The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah received his only Academy Award, for best original screenplay.
Feuds and Furor
Peckinpah's next film, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, suffered editing cuts by producers after more feuding between the studio and the director over its contents. Next, Peckinpah went to England to film Straw Dogs, starring Dustin Hoffman. Released in 1971, it was a brutal story about rape and revenge, filled with what seemed to most critics as gratuitous violence. It was attacked by many for its unflinching portrayal of sexual violence but hailed by Peckinpah fans for its uncompromising attitude.
Peckinpah's notoriety had grown to the point that he had become a magnet for social critics. Straw Dogs especially called attention to Peckinpah's often crude and degrading portrayals of female characters in his films. "Peckinpah on screen was a terrible misogynist," wrote biographer David Thomson. "His women are bitches, whores, whore-saints, sluts, betrayers, naive madonnas— they are also riveting. [T]hese women are so passive, so silent, so fit for male paranoia."
Teetering between cult status and controversy, Peckinpah softened his hard-edged style when he agreed to direct two top Hollywood stars of the era, Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw, in the romantic action thriller, The Getaway . This film, more accessible and less offensive to mainstream audiences, was his biggest box-office hit. Having paid some bills, Peckinpah returned to his more adventurous mode with Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, a beautiful but obtuse western that was severely cut by MGM Studios during the usual post-production disputes that dogged Peckinpah's efforts. Thomson called Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid "one of the great American films, entrancing, perplexing, the beauty redeems the boorish attitudes."
Most of Peckinpah's fans were disappointed with his later work, including his grisly mid-1970s films Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, —a story of a man carrying a decapitated head— The Killer Elite, and Cross of Iron. These movies lack the vitality and freshness of his earlier work and seem to show a frustrated director who is stewing in his own juices. With his career on the decline, Peckinpah next directed a knockoff comedy called Convoy, a film based on a pop song. His final effort was the ill-received The Osterman Weekend, a creative but unfocused work released in 1983.
His Own Man
Throughout his career, Peckinpah's efforts to bring his uncompromising vision to the screen were constantly thwarted by studio executives who blanched at the excesses of his style and content. The battles were the stuff of Hollywood legend. Peckinpah's approach always took on the dimensions of a director-against-the-world crusade. "His anti-authoritarianism went beyond radical chic," Sragow wrote. "He curried favor with no one, whether movie mogul, ideologue, or tastemaker."
Peckinpah's turbulent personal life mirrored the macho images he put on screen. He was a hard-drinking, rugged individualist who refused to follow many of society's social conventions. Following a divorce from Selland, he married Mexican actress Begonia Palacios, and they had a daughter together before divorcing. Peckinpah next married an Englishwoman, but that marriage was short-lived. He returned to Palacios; they again married and again divorced.
Black noted how the director's screen protagonists seemed to represent his own frustrations: "Peckinpah cherished failure, celebrating it as an act of defiance. Peckinpah's heroes were aggressive losers, men out of time who were proud of it, who wouldn't have it any other way, as though they knew that there would never be a really good time for such dreamers, such visionaries." Thomson agreed, pointing out that the plots of his movies, though usually set in the dying days of the American frontier, seemed to mirror the director's own predicaments: "Through Peckinpah's work there is the theme of violently talented men hired for a job that is loaded with compromise, corruption and double-cross. They strive to perform with honor, before recognizing the inevitable logic of self-destruction."
Self-destruction was a constant motif in Peckinpah's life. He battled alcoholism and a rash of illnesses and physical limitations. Because of the excesses of his lifestyle, Peckinpah developed heart disease. He eventually had to wear a pacemaker.
In December 1984, a blood clot was discovered in Peckinpah's lung and he was flown from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to Los Angeles, for treatment. He died at the age of 59 in a suburban Los Angeles hospital, with Palacios at his side.
Battles over his work continued beyond his death. When a "director's cut" of The Wild Bunch was released in 1994, restoring sections edited out by studio executives in 1969, the Motion Picture Academy of America slapped an NC-17 rating on it, even though the original film had been rated "R." The rating doomed the re-release, because most major theater chains and some video retailers refused to carry NC-17 movies. Long after his death, it seemed, Peckinpah still had the power to incite controversy.
Books
Thomson, David, A Biographical Dictionary of Film, Knopf, 1994.
Periodicals
Atlantic Monthly, June 1994.
New York Times, December 29, 1984.
Time, January 7, 1985.
Online
"Sam Peckinpah," All Movie Guide,www.allmovie.com.
"The Passion of Sam Peckinpah," The Austin Chronicle,http://www.auschron.com/issues/dispatch/1999-10-22/screens-feature.html. □
Peckinpah, Sam
PECKINPAH, Sam
Nationality: American. Born: David Samuel Peckinpah in Fresno, California, 21 February 1925. Education: Fresno State College, B.A. in Drama 1949; University of Southern California, M.A. 1950. Family: Married 1) Marie Selland, 1947, four children; 2) Begonia Palacios, 1964 (divorced), one child; 3) Joie Gould, 1972 (divorced). Military Service: Enlisted in Marine Corps, 1943. Career: Director/producer-in-residence, Huntington Park Civic Theatre, California, 1950–51; propman and stagehand, KLAC-TV, Los Angeles, then
assistant editor at CBS, 1951–53; assistant to Don Siegel, from 1954; writer for television, including Gunsmoke and The Rifleman, late 1950s; worked on scripts at Walt Disney Productions, 1963. Died: Of a heart attack, 28 December 1984.
Films as Director:
- 1961
The Deadly Companions (Trigger Happy)
- 1962
Ride the High Country (Guns in the Afternoon) (+ co-sc,uncredited)
- 1965
Major Dundee (+ co-sc)
- 1966
Noon Wine (+ sc)
- 1969
The Wild Bunch (+ co-sc)
- 1970
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
- 1971
Straw Dogs (+ co-sc)
- 1972
Junior Bonner; The Getaway
- 1973
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
- 1974
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (+ co-sc)
- 1975
The Killer Elite
- 1977
Cross of Iron
- 1978
Convoy
- 1983
The Osterman Weekend
Other Films:
- 1956
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel) (role as Charlie the meter reader)
- 1978
China 9 Liberty 37 (Hellmann) (role)
- 1980
Il Visitatore (Paradise) (role)
Publications
By PECKINPAH: articles—
"A Conversation with Sam Peckinpah," with Ernest Callenbach, in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Winter 1963/64.
"Peckinpah's Return," an interview with Stephen Farber, in FilmQuarterly (Berkeley), Fall 1969.
"Talking with Peckinpah," with Richard Whitehall, in Sight andSound (London), Autumn 1969.
"Playboy Interview: Sam Peckinpah," with William Murray, in Playboy (Chicago), August 1972.
"Don Siegel and Me," in Don Siegel: Director, by Stuart Kaminsky, New York, 1974.
"Mort Sahl Called Me a 1939 American," in Film Heritage (New York), Summer 1976.
On PECKINPAH: books—
Kitses, Jim, Horizons West, Bloomington, Indiana, 1970.
Evans, Max, Sam Peckinpah: Master of Violence, Vermilion, South Dakota, 1972.
Wurlitzer, Rudolph, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, New York, 1973.
Caprara, Valerio, Peckinpah, Bologna, 1976.
Butler, T., Crucified Heroes: The Films of Sam Peckinpah, London, 1979.
McKinney, Doug, Sam Peckinpah, Boston, 1979.
Seydor, Paul, Peckinpah: The Western Films, Urbana, Illinois, 1980.
Simmons, Garner, Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage, Austin, Texas, 1982.
Arnols, Frank, and Ulrich von Berg, Sam Peckinpah: Eine Outlaw inHollywood, Frankfurt, 1987.
Buscombe, Ed, editor, The BFI Companion to the Western, London, 1989.
Fine, Marshall, Bloody Sam, New York, 1992.
Bliss, Michael, Justified Lives, Carbondale, 1993
Bliss, Michael, Doing It Right, Carbondale, 1994.
Weddle, David, If They Move, Kill'em: The Life and Times of SamPeckinpah, Grove/Atlantic 1994.
Seydor, Paul. Peckinpah: The Western Films a Reconsideration, Urbana, 1996.
Prince, Stephen, Savage Cinema, Austin, 1998.
Prince, Stephen, editor, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch," Cambridge, 1999.
On PECKINPAH: articles—
McArthur, Colin, "Sam Peckinpah's West," in Sight and Sound (London), Autumn 1967.
Sassone, Rich, "The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah," in FilmmakersNewsletter (Ward Hill, Massachusetts), March 1969.
Blum, William, "Toward a Cinema of Cruelty," in Cinema Journal (Evanston, Illinois), Spring 1970.
Reisner, Joel, and Bruce Kane, "Sam Peckinpah," in Action (Los Angeles), June 1970.
Shaffer, Lawrence, "The Wild Bunch versus Straw Dogs," in Sightand Sound (London), Summer 1972.
Andrews, Nigel, "Sam Peckinpah: The Survivor and the Individual," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1973.
Madsen, A., "Peckinpah in Mexico," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1974.
Macklin, Anthony, editor, special Peckinpah issue of Film Heritage (New York), Winter 1974/75.
Miller, Mark, "In Defense of Sam Peckinpah," in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Spring 1975.
Pettit, Arthur, "Nightmare and Nostalgia: The Cinema West of Sam Peckinpah," in Western Humanities Review (Salt Lake City), Spring 1975.
Kael, Pauline, "Notes on the Nihilist Poetry of Sam Peckinpah," in the New Yorker, 12 January 1976.
Humphries, R., "The Function of Mexico in Peckinpah's Films," in Jump Cut (Berkeley), August 1978.
Fuller, Sam, "A Privilege to Work in Films: Sam Peckinpah among Friends," in Movietone News (Seattle), February 1979.
Jameson, R.T., and others, "Midsection: Sam Peckinpah," in FilmComment (New York), January/February 1981.
McCarthy, T., obituary, in Variety (New York), 2 January 1985.
Murphy, K., "No Bleeding Heart," in Film Comment (New York), March/April 1985.
Bryson, J., "Sam Peckinpah," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), April 1985.
Engel, L.W., "Sam Peckinpah's Heroes: Natty Bumppo and the Myth of the Rugged Individual Still Reign," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), January 1988.
Roth, Paul A., "Virtue and Violence in Peckinpah's The WildBunch," in Post Script (Jacksonville, Florida), vol. 7, no. 2, 1988.
Sharrett, Christopher, "Peckinpah the Radical: The Wild Bunch Reconsidered," in CineAction! (Toronto), no. 13–14, 1988.
Rouyer, P., in Positif (Paris), Hors-série, January 1991.
Jopkiewicz, T., "Na Krawedzi koszmaru o filmach Sama Peckinpaha," in Iluzjon, January-March 1993.
Garcia Tsao, L., and J. Kraniauskas, "New Mexican Tales: Stepping over the Border," in Sight and Sound (London), vol. 3, June 1993.
Kullberg, U., "Samhället som hot mot individen. Männens utanförskap," in Filmrutan (Sundsvall, Sweden), vol. 37, 1994.
Remy, V., "Avec moi le chaos," in Télérama (Paris), 3 November 1993.
* * *
It is as a director of westerns that Sam Peckinpah remains best known. This is not without justice. His non-western movies often lack the sense of complexity and resonance that he brings to western settings. He was adept at exploiting this richest of genres for his own purposes, explaining its ambiguities, pushing its values to uncomfortable limits. Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, and The Wild Bunch are the work of a filmmaker of high ambitions and rare talents. They convey a sense of important questions posed, yet finally left open and unanswered. At their best they have a visionary edge unparalleled in American cinema.
His non-westerns lose the additional dimensions that the genre brings, as in, for example, Straw Dogs. A polished and didactic parable about a besieged liberal academic who is forced by the relentless logic of events into extremes of violence, it is somehow too complete, its answers too pat, to reach beyond its own claustrophobic world. Though its drama is entirely compelling, it lacks the referential framework that carries Peckinpah's westerns far beyond the realm of tautly-directed action. Compared to The Wild Bunch, it is a onedimensional film.
Nevertheless, Straw Dogs is immediately recognizable as a Peckinpah movie. If a distinctive style and common themes are the marks of an auteur, then Peckinpah's right to that label is indisputable. His concern with the horrors and the virtues of the male group was constant, as was his refusal to accept conventional movie morality. "My father says there's only Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, with nothing in between. But it's not that simple, is it?" asks Elsa in Ride the High Country. Judd's reply could almost be Peckinpah's: "No. It should be, but it isn't."
In traditional westerns, of course, right and wrong are clearly distinguishable. The westerner, as Robert Warshow has characterised him, is the man with a code. In Peckinpah's westerns, as in some of his other movies such as Cross of Iron, it is the code itself that is rendered problematic. Peckinpah explores the ethic rather than taking it for granted, plays off its elements one against the other, and uses his characters as emblems of those internal conflicts. He presents a world wherein moral certainty is collapsing, leaving behind doomed variations on assertive individualism. In some modern westerns that theme has been treated as elegy; in Peckinpah it veers nearer to tragedy. His is a harsh world, softened only rarely in movies like The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner. Peckinpah's richest achievements remain the two monumental epics of the 1960s, Major Dundee and The Wild Bunch. In both, though Major Dundee was butchered by its producers both before and after shooting, there is ample evidence of Peckinpah's ability to marshall original cinematic means in the service of a morally and aesthetically complex vision. It has become commonplace to associate Peckinpah with the rise of explicit violence in modern cinema, and it is true that few directors have rendered violence with such horrific immediacy. But his cinema is far more than that: his reflections upon familiar western themes are technically sophisticated, elaborately constructed, and, at their best, genuinely profound.
—Andrew Tudor