Sam Peckinpah’s Westerns serve as autobiographies for a man out of time

UW Cinematheque celebrates the maverick director’s centennial throughout March with three Saturday features that kick off with “The Wild Bunch” on March 8.

One of Hollywood’s last great directors of the Western, Sam Peckinpah was a larger-than-life character whose outlaw persona often threatened to overshadow his body of work. Though his name is synonymous with graphic violence, Peckinpah was capable of much more than mindless bloodshed. Hiding behind drunken exploits and signature mirrored sunglasses, he was an intuitive, obsessive artist who struggled to work within the confines of the Hollywood system.

To honor Peckinpah’s centennial birthday, UW Cinematheque is presenting three Westerns made at the height of his powers on three consecutive Saturdays in March—his masterpiece The Wild Bunch (1969), screening on DCP on March 8 at 7 p.m., a 35mm print of The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970) on March 15 at 7 p.m., and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973), screening in a newly reconstructed version on March 22 at 7 p.m.

Peckinpah’s Westerns focus on the death of the mythical Wild West, as rugged frontier individualists struggle to adapt to changing times. Filled with breathtaking landscapes and incredible performances from weathered character actors, his films bridge the gap between the romanticism of the Classical Hollywood Western and the New Hollywood movement’s gritty revisionism.

Born into a California family of lawyers and ranchers, Peckinpah grew up steeped in the mythos of the Old West. Writing and directing for TV westerns like Gunsmoke, he quickly earned a reputation as a gifted storyteller with an eye for authenticity. His second film, Ride The High Country (1962), was a surprise hit with critics, who praised its emotional power and realism despite the studio’s decision to dump it onto a double bill with an Italian viking movie.

After making the disastrous Major Dundee (1965) and getting almost immediately kicked off the  production of The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Peckinpah was deemed too difficult and erratic for Hollywood. The surprise success of his teleplay Noon Wine (1966) and support from film critics like Pauline Kael helped the director mount a triumphant comeback a few years later with The Wild Bunch, the film that cemented his reputation as a master filmmaker.

Set in 1913, The Wild Bunch follows the adventures of a gang of amoral, cutthroat criminals led by aging outlaw Pike Bishop (William Holden). After a railroad office robbery goes awry, Bishop leads Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), Tector and Lyle Gorch (Peckinpah regulars Ben Johnson and Warren Oates), and Angel (Jaime Sánchez) across the Mexican border pursued by bounty hunters, including Bishop’s old partner Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan). Desperate to retire after one last score, Pike agrees to hijack a shipment of US Army rifles for General Mapache (Emilio Fernández), but the bunch soon realizes there’s no room for old-fashioned outlaws in the 20th century.

Sprawling and ambitious, The Wild Bunch was vindication for Peckinpah’s improvisational, obsessive working style. Encouraged by the death of the Production Code in 1968, Peckinpah wanted to make a film that realistically depicted violence. Cutting between multiple camera angles and slow-motion footage with rapid-fire editing, Peckinpah and editor Lou Lombardo created action sequences that are visceral, kinetic, and unrelenting.

The Wild Bunch‘s shootouts aren’t supposed to be glamorized or cool, but rather to accurately reflect the split-second horror of violence. Working amidst the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and social unrest of the late 1960s, Peckinpah wanted The Wild Bunch‘s violence to be so overwhelming that it would be anti-violence (he would later concede that this didn’t work as intended). Later cited as a major influence on directors such as John Woo, Walter Hill, and Kathryn Bigelow, The Wild Bunch was a revolutionary step in the development of the modern action film. Cinematheque will show The Wild Bunch in the director’s-cut version, which restores some violence that was cut to avoid an X rating. The cut also includes flashbacks that further contextualize Bishop and Thornton’s relationship.

Filmed shortly after The Wild Bunch, The Ballad Of Cable Hogue is a much gentler Western with a light, bawdy touch. Abandoned to die in the desert, grizzled prospector Cable Hogue (Jason Robards) miraculously discovers fresh water near a stagecoach route. Selling water to travelers, Hogue builds up his two-acre oasis while patiently waiting for revenge on his former partners who betrayed him. Hogue is determined to make it on his own, but he’s joined by prostitute Hildy (Stella Stevens) and itinerant preacher Joshua Sloane (David Warner), who both recognize something special in the man who “found water where it wasn’t.”

A personal favorite of Peckinpah’s, The Ballad Of Cable Hogue was an attempt to show his sensitive, romantic side and prove he was capable of more than just blood-and-guts extremities. Unfortunately, audiences weren’t especially interested in seeing a non-violent Peckinpah film, and Cable Hogue‘s failure led him to increasingly work as a director-for-hire throughout the 1970s. While largely forgotten, it’s an atypically warm, humanistic entry in Peckinpah’s filmography, with charming performances from Robards and Stevens.

Peckinpah’s final Western, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid is an existential retelling of one of the Old West’s most famous stories. Hired at the behest of the powerful Santa Fe Ring, former outlaw Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is forced to hunt down his old friend Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson). As they circle each other across the New Mexican landscape, Billy knows he should flee to Mexico but is compelled to stay. In the meantime, Garrett’s regret at trading freedom for security eats away at his conscience.

Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid is best remembered for the acting debut of Bob Dylan as the enigmatic Alias. Dylan also recorded the film’s soundtrack, writing his hit “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” after viewing Slim Pickens’ haunting death scene. Peckinpah surrounded Dylan and Kristofferson with an ensemble cast of veteran character actors including Pickens, Chill Wills, and Jack Elam to help ground the inexperienced rock stars’ performances. Peckinpah liked to throw his actors off-balance to elicit more realistic performances, at one point enraging R.G. Armstrong to the point where Kristofferson became genuinely scared during the filming of a jailhouse scene. 

The filming of Pat Garrett was turbulent even by Peckinpah standards. The director fell deathly ill and drank heavily while he fought a studio intent on undercutting him. Infamous for his battles with producers, Peckinpah finally met his match in MGM president James Aubrey, a Zaslavian figure nicknamed “The Smiling Cobra” for his ruthless cost-cutting measures. Aubrey and MGM expected another action-packed adventure like The Wild Bunch, but instead ended up with a meandering, atmospheric film full of strange tangents. Peckinpah’s usual working style was to “destroy” the script and rebuild the film piece by piece in his head, but the pressures of Pat Garrett started to unravel this already chaotic method. 

Eventually Peckinpah walked away from the project, and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid was edited without his approval and rushed into theaters. The new 50th anniversary cut, inspired by a rough preview version Peckinpah had smuggled out of the studio, attempts to reconstruct the original vision. It restores crucial scenes including the film’s introduction, which intercuts between the story’s beginning and Garrett’s decades-later assassination by the same cattle barons who hired him to kill Billy. 

Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid was a heartbreaking failure for Peckinpah, and signaled the beginning of the end for his career. While he would continue working until his death in 1984, poor health and decades of alcoholism had greatly diminished his artistic powers. Peckinpah admitted in interviews that all his films were autobiographical, and it’s easy to see the sides of his personality in his Western’s characters—the stubborn dreamer Cable Hogue, the gruff Pike Bishop leading his men into battle, and the self-destructive sellout Pat Garrett drinking himself into oblivion. Like Peckinpah himself, his heroes are men out of time, watching their way of life fade away into irrelevance.