“Westerns, a staple since the early days of cinema, were still important in 1969. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the year’s highest grossing movie. True Grit won John Wayne an Oscar. But the world was changing rapidly, and many filmmakers were eager to move beyond simple games of cowboys and Indians, approaching the time-honored tradition with new approaches and perspectives. One notable example: Sam Peckinpah with The Wild Bunch.
“Maybe egged on by the envelope-pushing violence of Bonnie and Clyde, the stylish reinvention of the genre in Italy, disgust with the war in Vietnam, hunger to overcome recent professional failures, or some combination of those things, he made a film that was revisionist in both form and content. It was technically groundbreaking, experimenting with new lenses, filming speeds, editing techniques and even gun sounds. But since Peckinpah chose not to sanitize the gore and death of the west, many were too revolted by the bloody, high casualty shootouts to celebrate his masterful craftsmanship.
“Which was, of course, the point. The film unmasks Hollywood cliches of heroism with its regretful gunman protagonist and a tone that frequently shifts from thrilling to melancholic. Starting with the opening scene, where children gleefully feed a live scorpion to a mob of ants, Peckinpah takes aim at the brutality of humankind. Innocent bystanders, including a tuba player from the South Texas Temperance Union parade, are shot dead in the streets, caught in a greedy war between a railroad company and our team of outlaw protagonists. There are always children nearby, playing guns, riding alongside a general, smiling at the bandits’ jokes about whores, or being breastfed beneath a bandolier.
“It’s a portrait of human ugliness that hits you in the gut. Yet its band of reprobate anti-heroes manages to find some manner of honor in this world when they agree to risk it all for a friend they left behind. Somehow Peckinpah was able to cut open the western, pull out its guts, and still make a classic of the form.” ~ Vern
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