The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch (1969) is set on the Texas border in 1913. An ageing gang of outlaws attempt one last robbery and walk into a trap. They escape into Mexico and agree to steal weapons for a general's men. The subject is not the robbery but what men with no place left to them will do. Peckinpah's method for showing violence changed cinema. The major gunfights were shot with six cameras at different speeds: 24, 30, 60, 90 and 120 frames per second. Editor Lou Lombardo had demonstrated the idea using a television episode that mixed slow motion with normal speed. Assembled, the action moves from slow to fast to slower still, and time becomes elastic. The opening gunfight ran twenty one minutes as shot. By removing frames and intercutting angles it was brought down to five. That editing method became the model for the rest of the film. Peckinpah's purpose was explicit: to show an audience what it is to be gunned down, against the sanitised television westerns of the era. Its censorship history is long. When Warner Bros. submitted it to the MPAA for reissue in 1993 it received an NC-17, despite having originally been rated R. The studio appealed, and the 1995 restoration reached cinemas with the cut scenes in place. It runs 145 minutes. Good for: westerns, editing technique, and film history. Less good for: the violence is extremely graphic and the final massacre is long. There are almost no women, and those present are victims or background. Most of the Mexican characters are one dimensional.