The Wild Bunch (1969) Let's be clear......"The Wild Bunch" version I'm wishing Happy 50th to can only be Sam Peckinpah's 2 hour, 24 minute director's cut.......
That would be the version that has all the stuff Warner Brothers sliced out of the film one week after it opened.......including the flashbacks that explain how Thornton (Robert Ryan) ended up as a coerced bounty hunter, relentlessly tracking down his former friend and Wild Bunch leader, Pike (William Holden)......
And let's not forget the restoration of that grand spectacular sequence in which the film's mad, butchering villain, Gen Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) insanely faces off with the marauding Pancho Villa forces........(it does stand apart from the rest of the film in its epic sweep, looking like something out of a David Lean movie.......but no one would want to miss that interplay between Mapache and uniformed little boy messenger......it factors into the most stunning moment in the climactic bloodbath......
A trillion words have already been written about "The Wild Bunch", so BQ would just like to do a tip of that to a few of the film's generally unsung MVPs......
L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin.....as two of the stupidest, most physically repulsive bounty hunters in Western history.......like heavily armed Trump Cabinet members.......(a few years later, Martin became a sort of a reverse counter-culture icon, with his "what we have here is a failure to communicate" line from "Cool Hand Luke".....even earning a shot at hosting 'Saturday Night Live')
Edmond O'Brien Talk about an actor disappearing into a role......I was halfway into my first viewing of "The Wild Bunch" before I realized the aged, grizzled, rasping Freddy Sykes was being played by the familiar character actor I'd seen in dozens of films. Another awesome performance in a movie overloaded with them.....
Albert Dekker........in his last role as the apoplectic railroad boss who couldn't care less if his ragtag bounty hunters slaughter dozens of innocent bystanders as they shoot it out with the Wild Bunch....he dismisses the outraged citizenry, (represented by
Dub Taylor, another character actor gem) shouting,
"We represent the law!" A manic, unforgettable performance......(and who knows what demons plagued Dekker.....shortly after finishing work in the film, he hanged himself)
Lou Lombardo......the film's editor and together with director-writer Sam Peckinpah
, the ultimate MVPs.......an entire future generation of filmmakers watched the book-ended opening and closing sequences with dropped jaws.......the bank robbery gone insanely awry and what came to be known as "the battle of bloody porch" at the climax. Lombardo's editing of these scenes, shot by Peckinpah with multiple cameras set at different speeds, stood as the gold standard of action editing for decades...
Ben Johnson and Warren Oates.....as the Bunch's Gorch brothers......a double-edged sword, these two.....functioning as refreshing low-comedy relief amid the carnage and yet a constant threat to Pike's authority over the gang. with their regular attempts at mutiny. You can laugh at 'em, but deep down you know how dangerous they are.......
Of course, there's endless praise I could heap on William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and the mighty
Sam Peckinpah (this film stood as his "Citizen Kane", the very epitome of his art)
but since all that stuff's been said so many times already, here's a good place to wrap it up.....
Best way to celebrate "The Wild Bunch"s 50th.......crank up the sound on that Direcctor's Cut and let 'er rip.......forever and always a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.
No comments:
Post a Comment