The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Wild Bunch: 1969, dir. Sam Peckinpah. Seen on DVD (Warner Bros “restored director’s cut”).
The Wild Bunch is one of those movies that sucks you in and holds you tight and you know it’s going to be a long ride and you may not like all of it but it doesn’t matter, there you are, in the grip of the movie for nearly 2.5 hours.
However, it would have been even more absorbing if I’d seen it in the right order and without the annoyances caused by a poor DVD.

Mind you, this is supposed to be a very nice DVD—properly letterboxed, the edit that Sam Peckinpah approved for European distribution in 1969, accompanying serious documentary on the DVD, and so forth. Sounds all prestigious and high-quality, right? Wrong.
The big problem I had was that the DVD was mislabeled. I swear. Either that or something is going strangely wrong with my DVD player, and I will check it out tomorrow, but somehow I doubt it. And when you play Side B, it doesn’t start with a menu, or with any indication that this is a continuation, the movie just up and starts.
Now, traditionally, of course most movies start with credits and an exposition and all that. But I hadn’t seen this movie, I knew it was groundbreaking and Peckinpah liked to do things differently and there are in fact movies where you don’t get credits beforehand, or there’s a bit of action before the title displays, so I think it is in fact not implausible that I would watch 10 minutes of the movie before wondering if this was in fact the beginning. I was a little wary at first, but after 10 minutes I picked up the phone and called my baby brother, who wasn’t entirely sure himself (although he’d seen the movie) until I described the scenes I’d been watching and he confirmed that yeah, the bit with the weapons on the wagon is definitely not the beginning of the movie. He also had some rather negative things to say about Warner-produced DVDs, and he’s not the first person I’ve heard say such things, either. (Plus, my brother owns enough DVDs that I trust his opinion on these things.)
Once I flipped the DVD and saw proper credits, I felt a lot better about the movie, although not very pleased about the DVD. The sound wasn’t so hot and sometimes the picture quality was poor, too—in one scene, vertical lines are running through the frame as though we were watching a well-used print in a theater. Not to mention that I had to flip the DVD halfway through. (The DVD gives you no instructions on this, just stops.)
DVD issues aside, I’d like to see a restored print of The Wild Bunch in a good movie theater, because I suspect my little TV screen didn’t do it justice. All the same, it was a very good film. Well, you knew that. I like seeing movies from around 1962-72 to see what was censored and what was not.
I was about to go into a long rant on the effect this movie had on the Western genre and how Peckinpah used a cast of seasoned actors who were best known for their work in Westerns, and then proceeded to make an extremely violent anti-heroic movie, but you probably knew that, too. I’m sure there are tons of essays on this topic.
Lots of children appear in this film, and I suppose that ties in with the central message, and also adds to the effect of disturbing the audience. (Not only did we just see this nasty bloody thing, but children saw it too! How shocking.) However, I thought this was a little overdone.
I hadn’t seen any movies with the older William Holden in them until earlier this year, when I saw Network for the first time. I always think of him as the actor in Sabrina, Sunset Blvd., and maybe Born Yesterday. It always seems to odd to see him all craggy and jowly, but then he kicks butt in the role and I stop caring about his looks. (Well, other than that I don’t particularly find him attractive and wonder about the women in the movie who do, but I also feel that way about Jack Nicholson from 1980 on.)
Since this and Junior Bonner are the only Peckinpah films I’ve seen, and they’re rather different, I’d like to see some more of his movies. Must remember to put a couple on The List for next year. The Getaway, maybe, since you can never have enough Steve McQueen. (Well, I can never have enough. I can’t speak for the rest of you.)