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Universl^ Micionlms International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8404557 Holt, Jerry George PECKINPAH’S FAMILIES: A STUDY OF SEVEN FILMS The University of Oklahoma Ph.D. 1983 University Microfilms internetions!soon, zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE PECKINPAH’S FAMILIES: A STUDY OF SEVEN FILMS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By JERRY GEORGE HOLT Norman, Oklahoma 1983 PECKINPAH'S FAMILIES: A STUDY OF SEVEN FILMS A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PECKINPAH’S FAMILIES: A STUDY OF SEVEN FILMS BY: JERRY G. HOLT MAJOR PROFESSOR: JACK JORGENS, Ph.D. This was an auteurist study of the films which American director Sam Peckinpah made beginning with The Wild Bunch in 1969 through Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia in 1974. The attempt was made to bring these films together as a sequential body of work through the unifying theme of family, actual and surrogate. Through the use of biographical criticism, historical criticism and myth criticism, the study established that Peckinpah does in fact work out his theses on the human condition through examination of actual traditional family groups such as the ones found in Junior Bonner; through ex­ amination of marriages, as can be seen in Straw Dogs or The Getaway; and through examination of the unsocialized "bunch," as reflected in The Wild Bunch, or Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. More than one variety of "family," moreover, may appear in a single film: a situation which the director uses for purposes of comparison. The study also dealt with the loss of faith in family which seems, for the director, to inevitably accompany the passage of time from the nineteenth to the twentieth century and then, in a concluding chapter, the study examined ways in which the director has returned to the theme of family in a recent film. The Osterman Weekend, after a five-year absence from the screen. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter I. INTRODUCTION............. 1 II. THE WILD BUNCH........... 52 III. THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE . 83 IV. STRAW DOGS............... 103 V. JUNIOR BONNER and THE GETAWAY 123 VI. PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID 152 and BRING ME THE HEAD OF AL­ FREDO GARCIA VII. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND....... 192 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................... 209 111 ONE; INTRODUCTION I. Now that almost a decade has passed for reflection, it begins to appear that the late 1960’s and early 1970’s will emerge as a period of extraordinary creativity in the history of American film-making. To be more specific, the period beginning with Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 and continuing through Robert Altman's Nashville in 1975 was one fertile enough to bring forth many motion pictures which have already achieved a "classic" status: Nichols' The Graduate; Altman's M .A.S.H.; Coppola's Godfather films; Boorman's Deliverance--these are films which are regularly considered in academic settings, and films which are used as standards against which to weigh more recent products. It has also become known as a time of the director's cinema: a time when committed Americans made, to overstate the point, committed films about America. There was, of course, a supreme collision of influences which made such a cinema possible. The influence of the Vietnam war cannot be denied here: though the Hollywood studios tended to be queasy abbut making films directly con- 1 cerned with the war during the war (John Wayne's 1968 The Green Berets is the exception and it, predictably, is hawkish), they had no reservations about approaching the subject alle­ gorically. Thus the films, like the music of those times, always had a reference point; market research pinpointed the audience as relatively young, and therefore the films reflected the spirit of youth protest alive in the country. American films of those years, whatever else they were, tended to be supremely about something: they were charged with a moral fervor; a strong purpose. In addition, the auteur concept of moviemaking was allowed to flourish as it has virtually never been allowed to flourish before or since. Into the early 1960's, the system of studios employing "contract" directors was still very much in effect: international influences and the equal­ ly influential commentary of director-oriented critics like Andrew Sarris had persuaded film followers that, most of the time, it was proper to see directors as the architects of cinema--but directors were also still paid employees: few beyond a Hitchcock had really achieved autonomy. But, in 1969, when it became clear that a $350,000 project like EaSy Rider could gross $30 million before it ever left this country, studios got the message: Dennis Hopper, the direc­ tor of that film, was, until Easy Rider, untried. Clearly, it became economically feasible to give the creative sector a freer hand, to gamble on unknown quantities--and to invest in directorial commitment. Such commitment was, after all, selling tickets. Now, in the 1980's, it becomes clear that much of this period is marked by excess: Easy Rider itself looks terribly dated today. There is a virtual graveyard full of names which held great promise all those years ago; names which were going to revolutionize communication--now all but for­ gotten. If names like Michael Same, Sidney J. Furie, Robert Downey, or Monte Heilman seem now lost, other names such as Arthur Penn or Dick Richards or even Coppola, in present day, seem no longer associated with lofty ideals; no longer looked to for the great promise they once had. It almost seems that when the reference point went away, their crea­ tivity ceased. And another point seems almost to go without saying; When their projects no longer made money, they be­ came unbankable--and thus, in the mechanics of the film in­ dustry, unable to work. It might be quite easy to put Sam Peckinpah into both of these categories. He has, after all, not had a major film release since 1978, and he hasn't had a picture which 1 made money in this country since The Getaway in 1972. The popular association between Peckinpah and graphic screen violence tends to ground him in the war period--and some of the themes we have come to associate with him like the Territorial Imperative and his male-oriented ethics are equally linked to that era. And yet he is responsible for at least three films that now have an undisputed "classic" status, The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, and Straw Dogs, and at least two more. The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, which are close enough to such a status to continue to inspire a strong amount of critical debate. For a director whose major feature career really only spans the years 1969-1978, this is an amazing output. And it is also amazing that these films left the mark they did: Peckinpah has been credited/blamed with de­ stroying the Western genre; initiating a technique for cine­ matic violence that has now become a ground rule rather than a technique; revolutionizing the film editing process. It is lamentably easy to look at the techniques of current younger directors ranging from Steven Spielberg to Michael Cimino and see that Peckinpah technique, if not Peckinpah content, is still very much with us. Clearly, the film historian has yet to make his peace with Sam Peckinpah. There is much to blame him for--and much for which to credit him. But his strongest works still tend to make critics and audiences nervous: those who claim to fully understand The Wild Bunch tend to cite mystical revelation; Straw Dogs continues to polarize opinion: is 2 it a "fascist work of art," as Pauline Kael would have us believe, or a strong study of a marriage in trouble? "Since Peckinpah considers himself too sophisticated to tell a story," Andrew Sarris wrote in 1968, "it yet remains to be seen whether 3 he can develop a theme." Critical opinion now seems to affirm, all right, that he did develop a theme--the question currently seems to be: what was it? I do deem Peckinpah to be perhaps the most significant American filmmaker to appear in this country in the last 20 years.

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