Recently my health took a turn for the worst, and on the 17th I ended watching two different films while recuperating. One was EXECUTIVE SUITE, and the other THE WILD BUNCH. Both were shown in commemoration of the birthday of Mr. William Franklin Beedle, one of the best movie actors of the period from 1940 and 1981. Of course that birthday was given under his better known acting name: William Holden.
I have seen it mentioned that the flinty/slightly rocky tones of Holden's voice gives it a quality for honesty that few other film actors shared. He certainly sounded more modern in the film industry than the leading men of the 1930s. Their voices have a superiority in them, as opposed to the reality that Holden adds to his voice. He is able to mouth a truth with a cutting edge (frequently with bad results: witness his trying to get through to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in SUNSET BLVD. only ends in his murder).
He seemed at his best when confronting the truth. In THE WILD BUNCH he is Pike Bishop, leader of a gang of train and bank robbers who work with such military precision, that they frequently pull themselves out of hopeless traps. At the beginning of the film Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Jaime Sanchez, Warren Oates, and Ben Johnson attempt a bank robbery, not realizing it was a trap set by Albert Dekker, wherein the bank is also surrounded by an "army" under Robert Ryan. A massacre of innocent civilians results that Dekker will not acknowledge as something he'll sweat over. Also most of the men given to Ryan have been killed (Dekker is a high ranking railroad official - that's his key to settling everything and evading responsibility - and hires cheap psychotics and misfits like Strother Martin for his "army").
Peckinpaugh worked frequently on the fly - he would innovate as went along. This gives his best work it's bite. Sometimes though one wishes he would have had luck to do some plot development. We eventually learn that the smart Ryan was Holden's partner but was wounded and captured and whipped (presumably at order of Dekker) until he agreed to help end "the Wild Bunch". This explains why the two never aim at each other, and also understand each other's perfect moves. But Dekker apparently hates Holden for some incident that left him looking like an ass. It's never explained what it was - because Dekker died (in a grotesque hanging accident) while the film was being made. I suspect the plot would have pulled him in a bit more (and possibly a second type of retribution might have caught up with him). Instead, Mr. Dekker's character "Harrigan" eventually drifts out of the film. Pity.
With Rogers and his mongrel dog soldiers following Holden and his men, the latter enter Mexico. They catch up with Holden's other gang member, Edmond O'Brien. A grizzled old guy, apparently his past is as violent as the other members of the gang.
But what comes across is that Holden, Borgnine, O'Brien, Johnson, Oates, and Sanchez are more complex than just violent. They'll use violence to win or gain a point, but they have strong senses of honor. They believe in loyalty to each other. There is an early scene where Holden has to kill another member who is blind from the wounds of battle, and they don't have the time to bury the poor guy. Everyone is upset by this (they'd like to do so) but time is of the essence - so his corpse is left out for the buzzards. Another matter is their sense of right and wrong. The American Capitalists are no better in this part of the world with their armies of the creepy than the Mexican Warlords like General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez - in an interesting villain part - he wants to beat Pancho Villa, making one appreciate that notorious "murderer and bigamist."as a relative rationalist*)
*This quote on Villa is from Theodore Roosevelt, believe it or not!
It's a world of the dead, but one gets a vision that the hideousness of the world of 1916 (with Pershing's troops adding their idiocies to the mess; so do two members of the Imperial German Military Commission to Mexico - the "Zimmermann Telegram" is coming up in a year) was headed that way from way back. Peckinpaugh frequently has Holden recall "happier times" (even though Borgnine quickly wonders what was so happy about them!). They were happy because everyone was younger, and had more time to smell the roses. Violence abounded in the 1890s, when Holden was nearly shot dead with his lover by her husband (who got away with it). Justice is a vague ideal - although "the Wild Bunch" seeks it. The one who most seeks it is Sanchez, who has seen his family, friends, neighbors slaughtered and robbed by Fernandez). Sanchez is determined to destroy the warlord, and free the people. The others realize this is useless, but in the end he turns out to be the final catalyst of the conclusion of the film.
Yes, Peckinpaugh's artistic, slow motion violence is there too, but that is only technique. The issue is how the last real men of the West go out with a clean sweep of the society. And in the end they enter legend - their bodies reclaimed from the Martins and jackals who seek to use them for "proof of bounty".
I have seen it mentioned that the flinty/slightly rocky tones of Holden's voice gives it a quality for honesty that few other film actors shared. He certainly sounded more modern in the film industry than the leading men of the 1930s. Their voices have a superiority in them, as opposed to the reality that Holden adds to his voice. He is able to mouth a truth with a cutting edge (frequently with bad results: witness his trying to get through to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in SUNSET BLVD. only ends in his murder).
He seemed at his best when confronting the truth. In THE WILD BUNCH he is Pike Bishop, leader of a gang of train and bank robbers who work with such military precision, that they frequently pull themselves out of hopeless traps. At the beginning of the film Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Jaime Sanchez, Warren Oates, and Ben Johnson attempt a bank robbery, not realizing it was a trap set by Albert Dekker, wherein the bank is also surrounded by an "army" under Robert Ryan. A massacre of innocent civilians results that Dekker will not acknowledge as something he'll sweat over. Also most of the men given to Ryan have been killed (Dekker is a high ranking railroad official - that's his key to settling everything and evading responsibility - and hires cheap psychotics and misfits like Strother Martin for his "army").
Peckinpaugh worked frequently on the fly - he would innovate as went along. This gives his best work it's bite. Sometimes though one wishes he would have had luck to do some plot development. We eventually learn that the smart Ryan was Holden's partner but was wounded and captured and whipped (presumably at order of Dekker) until he agreed to help end "the Wild Bunch". This explains why the two never aim at each other, and also understand each other's perfect moves. But Dekker apparently hates Holden for some incident that left him looking like an ass. It's never explained what it was - because Dekker died (in a grotesque hanging accident) while the film was being made. I suspect the plot would have pulled him in a bit more (and possibly a second type of retribution might have caught up with him). Instead, Mr. Dekker's character "Harrigan" eventually drifts out of the film. Pity.
With Rogers and his mongrel dog soldiers following Holden and his men, the latter enter Mexico. They catch up with Holden's other gang member, Edmond O'Brien. A grizzled old guy, apparently his past is as violent as the other members of the gang.
But what comes across is that Holden, Borgnine, O'Brien, Johnson, Oates, and Sanchez are more complex than just violent. They'll use violence to win or gain a point, but they have strong senses of honor. They believe in loyalty to each other. There is an early scene where Holden has to kill another member who is blind from the wounds of battle, and they don't have the time to bury the poor guy. Everyone is upset by this (they'd like to do so) but time is of the essence - so his corpse is left out for the buzzards. Another matter is their sense of right and wrong. The American Capitalists are no better in this part of the world with their armies of the creepy than the Mexican Warlords like General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez - in an interesting villain part - he wants to beat Pancho Villa, making one appreciate that notorious "murderer and bigamist."as a relative rationalist*)
*This quote on Villa is from Theodore Roosevelt, believe it or not!
It's a world of the dead, but one gets a vision that the hideousness of the world of 1916 (with Pershing's troops adding their idiocies to the mess; so do two members of the Imperial German Military Commission to Mexico - the "Zimmermann Telegram" is coming up in a year) was headed that way from way back. Peckinpaugh frequently has Holden recall "happier times" (even though Borgnine quickly wonders what was so happy about them!). They were happy because everyone was younger, and had more time to smell the roses. Violence abounded in the 1890s, when Holden was nearly shot dead with his lover by her husband (who got away with it). Justice is a vague ideal - although "the Wild Bunch" seeks it. The one who most seeks it is Sanchez, who has seen his family, friends, neighbors slaughtered and robbed by Fernandez). Sanchez is determined to destroy the warlord, and free the people. The others realize this is useless, but in the end he turns out to be the final catalyst of the conclusion of the film.
Yes, Peckinpaugh's artistic, slow motion violence is there too, but that is only technique. The issue is how the last real men of the West go out with a clean sweep of the society. And in the end they enter legend - their bodies reclaimed from the Martins and jackals who seek to use them for "proof of bounty".