The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah, but the jig is nearly up and in their hearts they all know it.
In the early 1960s, Hollywood was still squeamish about showing blood: cowboys clutched the stomachs and fell to the ground. By the end of the decade, Vietnam brought carnage to the television evening news. Peckinpah put it on the big screen, in multiple angles, agonizing slow motion, and stinging vehemence. He wanted it to hurt. In the process, he revolutionized movie violence. The Wild Bunch is a landmark, but it is also Peckinpah’s masterpiece, one of the great movies of the last 60 years. Before the bullets fly the film exerts a rueful, tender melancholy as the frontier passes into history, and in their death-throes, desperadoes and renegades like Holden, Ryan and Oates accept that they are yesterday’s men.
Sunday’s Pantheon screening will feature a 20-minute introduction and talkback.
Mar 16: Intro by Christine Evans, Professor in Cinema Studies, UBC
Arguably the strongest Hollywood movie of the 1960s — a western that galvanizes the clichés of its dying genre with a shocking jolt of delirious carnage.
J Hoberman, Village Voice
The Wild Bunch is an American masterpiece, one of the greatest films ever produced in the Hollywood system.
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
It’s a traumatic poem of violence, with imagery as ambivalent as Goya’s. By a supreme burst of filmmaking energy, Sam Peckinpah is able to convert chaotic romanticism into exaltation; the film is perched right on the edge of incoherence, yet it’s comparable in scale and sheer poetic force to Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai.
Pauline Kael, New Yorker
Presented by
Sam Peckinpah
William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sánchez, Ben Johnson
USA
1969
English
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Walon Green, Sam Peckinpah
Cinematography
Lucien Ballard
Editor
Lou Lombardo
Original Music
Jerry Fielding
Art Director
Edward Carrere
Also in This Series
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
The crowning glory of classical French cinema, this sumptuous melodrama brings to life the early 19th century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, where popular audiences for mime shows and carnival rub shoulders with wealthy patrons of classical theatre.
The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut)
The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah. Peckinpah's masterpiece, a savage lament for men who believe in nothing but find respect by dying in vain.
The Ascent
During the darkest winter of WWII, two Soviet partisans venture through the backwoods of Belarus in search of food, always at risk of falling into enemy hands. In her masterpiece Larisa Shepitko zeroes in on profound spiritual and philosophical themes.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's queer costume drama -- about a painter covertly studying a young noblewoman who refuses to sit for her portrait -- was voted 30th Greatest Film Ever Made in a 2022 poll, the highest ranking film of the past decade.
I Am Cuba
Infused with a palpable love for the country and a righteous anger at the injustices of the Batista era, I Am Cuba features some of the jaw-dropping camerawork ever filmed. A euphoric celebration of Cuba, the Revolution, and revolutionary cinema.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940