The western was very much a staple diet of American cinema . It's a genre that wasn't really popular with critics but was popular with the general public both sides of the Atlantic probably to do with the romantic ideals and values of the good guy always defeating the bad guy in a straight fight . Along comes Sam Peckinpah and turns the genre on its head
It's important to realise what was happening when THE WILD BUNCH was being produced . The Hollywood studio system had given way to " The New Hollywood " where the director was given sole creative control while The Hays Code strictly forbidding on screen sex and violence had given way to a certification system widening moral ambiguity and explicit adult themes . Director Sam Peckinpah stampedes through these new found artistic freedoms
The film gets off to a shocking opening and there's very much an influence of Eisenstein at play . As there's little internal logic to a woman remonstrating with Czarist troops in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN there's equally little logic to the temperance society members continually walking in to the crossfire between the outlaws and the bounty hunters in a gun battle lasting four minutes . The emotional impact of the scene takes preference over logic and even today this remains a potent scene
Much of this is down to the editing . No other colour film before it contained so much rapid cross cutting editing . Many scenes - most notably the bloody shoot out ending contain a shot length of less than one second . American film theorist David Bordwell calculated at the end of the century the average shot length was three to six seconds while it was becoming slightly longer , so for a film released in 1969 this type of fast paced editing style is absolutely phenomenal
Peckinpah was a master of dubious morality and THE WILD BUNCH contains the theme of this amorality . The outlaws are desperate men but they have their own moral codes . When one of the outlaws wants to dispatch old timer Sykes anti-hero Pike Bishop self righteously dictates when you ride with a man it's for keeps , and the outlaws find a mortal redemption when they sacrifice their lives as an act of revenge for the execution of Angel
The legacy of THE WILD BUNCH is that it effective destroyed the traditional western . Afterwards there were only revisionary westerns such as LITTLE BIG MAN and DANCES WITH WOLVES and anti westerns such as McCABE AND MRS MILLER and THE CULPEPPER CATTLE CO being produced but never again would the western be a long term prolific production . That's what you call radical
It's important to realise what was happening when THE WILD BUNCH was being produced . The Hollywood studio system had given way to " The New Hollywood " where the director was given sole creative control while The Hays Code strictly forbidding on screen sex and violence had given way to a certification system widening moral ambiguity and explicit adult themes . Director Sam Peckinpah stampedes through these new found artistic freedoms
The film gets off to a shocking opening and there's very much an influence of Eisenstein at play . As there's little internal logic to a woman remonstrating with Czarist troops in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN there's equally little logic to the temperance society members continually walking in to the crossfire between the outlaws and the bounty hunters in a gun battle lasting four minutes . The emotional impact of the scene takes preference over logic and even today this remains a potent scene
Much of this is down to the editing . No other colour film before it contained so much rapid cross cutting editing . Many scenes - most notably the bloody shoot out ending contain a shot length of less than one second . American film theorist David Bordwell calculated at the end of the century the average shot length was three to six seconds while it was becoming slightly longer , so for a film released in 1969 this type of fast paced editing style is absolutely phenomenal
Peckinpah was a master of dubious morality and THE WILD BUNCH contains the theme of this amorality . The outlaws are desperate men but they have their own moral codes . When one of the outlaws wants to dispatch old timer Sykes anti-hero Pike Bishop self righteously dictates when you ride with a man it's for keeps , and the outlaws find a mortal redemption when they sacrifice their lives as an act of revenge for the execution of Angel
The legacy of THE WILD BUNCH is that it effective destroyed the traditional western . Afterwards there were only revisionary westerns such as LITTLE BIG MAN and DANCES WITH WOLVES and anti westerns such as McCABE AND MRS MILLER and THE CULPEPPER CATTLE CO being produced but never again would the western be a long term prolific production . That's what you call radical