Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, William Holden, and Ernest Borgnine play friends to the bloody end in THE WILD BUNCH
THE WILD BUNCH (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, March 31, 8:30, and Friday, April 1, 1:30
Series runs March 31 – April 7
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
Sam Peckinpah cemented his reputation for graphic violence and eclectic storytelling with the genre-redefining 1969 Western The Wild Bunch. When a robbery goes seriously wrong, Pike Bishop (William Holden), Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), Freddie Sykes (Edmond O’Brien), Angel (Jaime Sánchez), and brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorth (Ben Johnson) set out to get even, planning an even bigger score by going after a U.S. Army weapons shipment on a railroad protected by detective Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker) and his hired gun, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who is given nothing but “egg-suckin’, chicken-stealing gutter trash” to work with, including the hapless Coffer (Strother Martin) and T.C. (L. Q. Jones). The aging Pike, who sees this as his last score, is worried about being in cahoots with the unpredictable General Mapache (Emilio Fernández), a local warlord battling Pancho Villa’s freedom forces. But at the center of the film is the cat-and-mouse game between Pike and Thornton, the latter determined to capture his former partner, who left him to rot in jail years earlier. It all comes to a head in Agua Verde, which might translate to “Green Water” but will soon be bathed in red blood in one of the most violent shoot-outs ever depicted on celluloid.
Peckinpah fills the film with plenty of drinking and whoring, and even torture, while exploring friendship and loyalty, embodied by Dutch’s selfless dedication to Pike. The Wild Bunch might be famous for its intense violence, much of it shot in slow motion, but it also has a lot more going for it, from its Oscar-nominated score by Jerry Fielding to its terrific cast and suspenseful twists and turns. (Western fans might get a kick out of knowing that Mapache’s right-hand man, Lt. Herrera, is portrayed by Mexican actor and director Alfonso Arau, who later played El Guapo in John Landis’s comic Western The Three Amigos.) The Wild Bunch is screening March 31 (introduced by Garner Simmons, author of Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage) and April 1 in the fabulously titled Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Bring Me the Head of Sam Peckinpah,” which includes all of the major movies made by the iconoclastic director, who died in 1984 at the age of fifty-nine. Also in the series, which continues through April 7, are The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Cross of Iron, The Deadly Companion, The Getaway, Junior Bonner, The Killer Elite, Convoy, Major Dundee, The Osterman Weekend, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Ride the High Country, and the unforgettable Straw Dogs, works that feature performances by such stars as Steve McQueen, Maureen O’Hara, Dustin Hoffman, Charlton Heston, Ali McGraw, Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Bob Dylan, James Coburn, Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, Kris Kristofferson, Warren Oates, Jason Robards, Susan George, James Caan, and Robert Duvall.
After screening in January at the twenty-fifth annual New York Jewish Film Festival, Projections of America will be shown on March 29 as part of the JCC in Manhattan series “CineMatters: Films at the JCC,” which focuses on works that deal with social justice and action. In Projections of America, director Peter Miller takes a revealing look at a little-known part of the U.S. propaganda effort during WWII, detailing how the U.S. Office of War Information used specially made short documentary films to show the rest of the world the positive aspects of the American way of life, particularly as U.S. soldiers helped liberate many cities and countries in Eastern and Western Europe. “The films were idealized versions of what America could be, created by politically engaged filmmakers who, while fighting tyranny abroad, wanted also to fundamentally change America itself,” narrator John Lithgow explains. At the center of it all was Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Riskin, who had written eight Frank Capra films, including It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe. Riskin, fellow scribe and chief of production Philip Dunne (How Green Was My Valley, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir), and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, and FDR speech writer Robert E. Sherwood (The Petrified Forest, Abe Lincoln in Illinois) enlisted such directors and producers as John Houseman and Josef von Sternberg and such stars as Ingrid Bergman in making such short propaganda films as Swedes in America, Cowboys, Steel Town, The Valley of the Tennessee, and Watchtower over America, which people flocked to in Europe, North Africa, and even Germany. “It all came together as the greatest collection of filmmakers working toward one common goal that we will ever see,” notes film historian Cecile Starr.
The third jewel in Universal’s horror crown (following 1931’s Dracula and Frankenstein), The Wolf Man stars Lon Chaney Jr. in his signature role, the goofily charming Larry Talbot, who just happens to have a problem on certain evenings when there is a particularly bright, full moon. Talbot has returned home to the family mansion after the sudden death of his brother, who appeared to have been mauled by some kind of wild animal. Reunited with his erudite father, Sir John (The Invisible Man’s Claude Rains), Larry quickly gets the hots for local antiques dealer Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), but when their first date involves the tragic death of Gwen’s friend Jenny (Fay Helm) and Bela the Gypsy (Bela Lugosi), Larry becomes a suspect in the murders. And when he keeps waking up with ripped clothing and blood on him, he begins to think that maybe he has indeed done some very terrible things. The Wolf Man is the only one of Universal’s three primary horror classics that is not based on a popular novel; instead, Curt Siodmak wrote a fascinating original script that delves deep into the psyche of its protagonist, whose physical and mental transformation echoes the rage inside us all. The all-star cast also features Ralph Bellamy as Colonel Montford, the town constable; Patric Knowles as Frank Andrews, Gwen’s fiancé; and the great Maria Ouspenskaya as the mysterious Gypsy woman Maleva. The Wolf Man might not have the chills and thrills of Dracula and Frankenstein, but it still more than holds its own after all these years. (Oh, and if you’re expecting the famous scene when Chaney’s face goes all hairy, that actually occurs in the sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.) The Wolf Man is being shown at 11:45 am on March 26 & 27 in the Nitehawk Cinema series “Nitehawk Brunch Screenings” and “March Midnite & Brunch: Bark at the Moon,” which also includes Joe Dante’s The Howling on March 25 & 26 at 12:15 am.
