Download or read book Sam Peckinpah s Feature Films written by Bernard F. Dukore and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the greatest film directors America has produced, Sam Peckinpah revolutionized the way movies were made. In this detailed and insightful study, Bernard F. Dukore examines Peckinpah's fourteen feature films as a coherent body of work. He investigates the director's virtuosic editing techniques, thematic preoccupations that persist from his earliest to his last films, and the structure of his dramatic depiction of violence. He also addresses Peckinpah's cognizance of existentialism and the substantial traces this interest has left in the films. At the heart of Dukore's study is an extensive and detailed examination of Peckinpah's distinctive editing techniques. Focusing on representative sequences--including the breakout from the bank and the final battle in The Wild Bunch, the half-hour siege that concludes Straw Dogs, the killing of the title characters of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and combat sequences in Cross of Iron--Dukore provides a shot-by-shot analysis that illuminates Peckinpah's mastery of pacing and mood. Sam Peckinpah's Feature Films demonstrates that Peckinpah's genius as a director and editor marks not only The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and other classics but also his lesser-known feature films, even those that suffered substantial cuts at the hands of studio producers. Dukore's organic approach to the feature films reveals a highly unified body of work that remains a pointed commentary on power, violence, affection, and moral values.
Download or read book Films of Sam Peckinpah written by Neil Fulwood and published by Batsford Books. This book was released on 2014-11-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed look at the work of one of America's great film directors. Sam Peckinpah helped to redefine the Western, clearing the board of genre cliches in order to present an intelligent examination of the motivation behind, and effects of, violence. The accusations against Peckinpah for making violent films, both Westerns and non-Westerns, for the sake of it as well as misogyny have become cliches themselves. Like their creator, the men who walk or ride through Peckinpah's films are deep, complex and often flawed. Technical accomplishment and the ability to draw out great preformances from his actors are only part of what sets Peckinpah's Films apart. It is their depth and intensity that make them unique. This book takes an in-depth look at the man, his early work for television, and all his films. It covers the critical reception of his films, Peckinpah's approach to film direction, his on-set behaviour, and studio interference during editing. An Appraisal of the iconography of his films plus an analysis of recurring themes and pre-occupations show that his best work was the most personal.
Download or read book Sam Peckinpah written by Kevin J. Hayes and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2008 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected interviews with the combustible director of The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, Straw Dogs, The Getaway, and other films
Download or read book The Wild Bunch written by W. K. Stratton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute. Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition. In The Wild Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew members to the movie's success. Shaped by infamous director Sam Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By 1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both domestic and international life. The Wild Bunch is an authoritative history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.
Download or read book Savage Cinema written by Stephen Prince and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other filmmaker, Sam Peckinpah opened the door for graphic violence in movies. In this book, Stephen Prince explains the rise of explicit violence in the American cinema, its social effects, and the relation of contemporary ultraviolence to the radical, humanistic filmmaking that Peckinpah practiced. Prince demonstrates Peckinpah's complex approach to screen violence and shows him as a serious artist whose work was tied to the social and political upheavals of the 1960s. He explains how the director's commitment to showing the horror and pain of violence compelled him to use a complex style that aimed to control the viewer's response. Prince offers an unprecedented portrait of Peckinpah the filmmaker. Drawing on primary research materials—Peckinpah's unpublished correspondence, scripts, production memos, and editing notes—he provides a wealth of new information about the making of the films and Peckinpah's critical shaping of their content and violent imagery. This material shows Peckinpah as a filmmaker of intelligence, a keen observer of American society, and a tragic artist disturbed by the images he created. Prince's account establishes, for the first time, Peckinpah's place as a major filmmaker. This book is essential reading for those interested in Peckinpah, the problem of movie violence, and contemporary American cinema.
Download or read book Ultraviolent Movies written by Laurent Bouzereau and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of extreme violence in movies analyzes the public response to this ever-growing phenomenon, tracing its beginnings in films such as Bonnie and Clyde and discussing how it fits into the artistic vision of filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorcese. Original.
Download or read book If They Move Kill Em written by David Weddle and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A probing biography of the enfant terrible of 1960s and 1970s film-making . . . exhaustive and endlessly intriguing.” —Booklist Written by the film critic and historian David Weddle, this fascinating account does critical justice to an important body of cinema as it spins the tale of David Samuel Peckinpah’s dramatic, overcharged life and the turbulent times through which he moved. Sam Peckinpah was born into a clan of lumberjacks, cattle ranchers, and frontier lawyers. After a hitch with the Marines, he made his way to Hollywood, where he worked on a string of low-budget features. In 1955 he began writing scripts for Gunsmoke; in less than a year he was one of the hottest writers in television, with two classic series, The Rifleman and The Westerner, to his credit. From there he went on to direct a phenomenal series of features, including Ride the High Country, Straw Dogs, The Getaway, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah was both a hopeless romantic and a grim nihilist, a filmmaker who defined his era as much as he was shaped by it. Rising to prominence in the social and political upheaval of the late sixties and early seventies, Peckinpah and his generation of directors—Stanley Kubrick, Arthur Penn, Robert Altman—broke with convention and turned the traditional genres of Western, science fiction, war, and detective movies inside out. No other era in Hollywood has matched it for sheer energy, audacity, and originality; no one cut a wider path through that time than Sam Peckinpah. “Groundbreaking.” —Michael Sragow, The Atlantic
Download or read book Justified Lives written by Michael Bliss and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book to critically examine each of the fourteen feature films Sam Peckinpah directed during his career, Michael Bliss stresses the persistent moral and structural elements that permeate Peckinpah’s work. By examining the films in great detail, Bliss makes clear the moral framework of temptation and redemption with which Peckinpah was concerned while revealing the director’s attention to narrative. Bliss shows that each of Peckinpah’s protagonists is involved with attempting, in the words of Ride the High Country’s Steve Judd, "to enter my house justified." The validity of this systematic method is clearly demonstrated in the chapter devoted to The Wild Bunch. By enumerating the doublings and triplings of action and dialogue found in the film, Bliss underscores its symbolic and structural complexity. Beginning the chapters treating Junior Bonner and The Getaway with analyses of their important title sequences, Bliss shows how these frequently disregarded pieces present in miniature the major moral and narrative concerns of the films. In his chapter on The Osterman Weekend, Bliss makes apparent Peckinpahs awareness of and concern with the self-reflexive nature of filmmaking itself. Bliss shows that like John Ford, Peckinpah moved from optimism to pessimism. The films of the director’s early period, from The Deadly Companions to Cable Hogue, support the romantic ideals of adventure and camaraderie and affirm a potential for goodness in America. In his second group of films, which begins with Straw Dogs and ends with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, both heroes and hope have vanished. It is only in The Osterman Weekend that Peckinpah appears finally to have renewed his capacity for hope, allowing his career to close in a positive way.
Download or read book Bloody Sam written by Marshall Fine and published by Miramax. This book was released on 2005 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive biography of the legendary creator of The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and The Getaway, taking an aptly no-holds-barred look at his life, his vision and his influence on modern cinema. Famed and reviled in equal measure for his no-frills approach to violent realism, Peckinpah refused to compromise his ideas for his producers, with the result that his films were decried for their apparent amoralism as much as lauded for their groundbreaking style and savage intensity. A complete look at the life and work of a modern seer.
Download or read book Peckinpah written by Garner Simmons and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2004-07-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Peckinpah is by his own admission and that of almost everyone else in this richly entertaining book a director who needs adversity to get the juices flowing. As shooting goes on complications multiply and tensions increase. The wild man fortified
Download or read book Peckinpah written by Paul Seydor and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that re-established Peckinpah's reputation--now thoroughly revised and updated! When critics hailed the 1995 re-release of Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece, The Wild Bunch, it was a recognition of Paul Seydor's earlier claim that this was a milestone in American film, perhaps the most important since Citizen Kane. Peckinpah: The Western Films first appeared in 1980, when the director's reputation was at low ebb. The book helped lead a generation of readers and filmgoers to a full and enduring appreciation of Peckinpah's landmark films, locating his work in the central tradition of American art that goes all the way back to Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. In addition to a new section on the personal significance of The Wild Bunch to Peckinpah, Seydor has added to this expanded, revised edition a complete account of the successful, but troubled, efforts to get a fully authorized director's cut released. He describes how an initial NC-17 rating of the film by the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board nearly aborted the entire project. He also adds a great wealth of newly discovered biographical detail that has surfaced since the director's death and includes a new chapter on Noon Wine, credited with bringing Peckinpah's television work to a fitting resolution and preparing his way for The Wild Bunch. This edition stands alone in offering full treatment of all versions of Peckinpah's Westerns. It also includes discussion of all fourteen episodes of Peckinpah's television series, The Westerner, and a full description of the versions of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid now (or formerly) in circulation, including an argument that the label "director's cut" on the version in release by Turner is misleading. Additionally, the book's final chapter has been substantially rewritten and now includes new information about Peckinpah's background and sources.
Download or read book The Films of Sam Peckinpah written by Neil Fulwood and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2002 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed look at both the films and the man. One of America's most intriguing directors of Westerns and films of violence, Peckinpah created a highly influential body of work, including Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and The Getaway. Illustrated with 50 stills, the book includes a biographical account of Peckinpah, including his early years in television, and a chronological examination of his films, placed in the context of their production and critical reception. There are fascinating accounts of Peckinpah's approach to film direction and on-set behavior, as well as of studio interference during editing. An analysis of the iconography of his films illuminates the director's recurring themes and preoccupations.
Download or read book A Uniquely American Epic written by Michael Bliss and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film—violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise—are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action.
Download or read book Sam Peckinpah s The Wild Bunch written by Stephen Prince and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is one of the most influential films in American cinema. The intensity of its violence was unprecedented, while the director's use of multiple cameras, montage editing, and slow motion quickly became the normative style for rendering screen violence. Demonstrating to filmmakers the power of irony as a narrative voice and its effectiveness as a tool for exploring and portraying brutality, The Wild Bunch fundamentally changed the Western, moving it into a more brutal and psychopathic territory than it had ever occupied. This volume includes newly commissioned essays by several leading scholars of Peckinpah's work. Examining the film's production history from script to screen, its rich and ambivalent vision of American society, and its relationship to the Western genre, among other topics, it provides a definitive reinterpretation of an enduring film classic.
Download or read book Goin Crazy with Sam Peckinpah and All Our Friends written by Max Evans and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost as famous for the legendary excesses of his personal life as for his films, Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) cemented his reputation as one of the great American directors with movies such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Max Evans, one of Peckinpah's best friends, experienced the director's mercurial character and personal demons firsthand. In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah's abusive behavior--sometimes directed at Evans himself. Evans's stories--most previously unpublished--provide a uniquely intimate look at Peckinpah, their famous friends (including Lee Marvin, Brian Keith, Joel McCrea, and James Coburn), and the business of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.
Download or read book Peckinpah Today written by Michael Bliss and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written exclusively for this collection by today’s leading Peckinpah critics, the nine essays in Peckinpah Today explore the body of work of one of America’s most important filmmakers, revealing new insights into his artistic process and the development of his lasting themes. Edited by Michael Bliss, this book provides groundbreaking criticism of Peckinpah’s work by illuminating new sources, from modified screenplay documents to interviews with screenplay writers and editors. Included is a rare interview with A. S. Fleischman, author of the screenplay for The Deadly Companions, the film that launched Peckinpah’s career in feature films. The collection also contains essays by scholar Stephen Prince and Paul Seydor, editor of the controversial special edition of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. In his essay on Straw Dogs, film critic Michael Sragow reveals how Peckinpah and co-scriptwriter David Zelag Goodman transformed a pulp novel into a powerful film. The final essay of the collection surveys Peckinpah’s career, showing the dark turn that the filmmaker’s artistic path took between his first and last films. This comprehensive approach reinforces the book’s dawn-to-dusk approach, resulting in a fascinating picture of a great filmmaker’s work.
Download or read book Peckinpah s Tragic Westerns written by John L. Simons and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of Sam Peckinpah represents a high point in American cinema. This text is the first theoretical and critical attempt to place Peckinpah within the 2,000-year-old tradition of western tragedy. The tradition, enfolding the Greeks, Shakespeare and modern tragedians, is represented in Peckinpah's art in numerous ways, and the fact that he worked in the mode throughout his career distinguishes him from most American film directors. Films covered include Ride the High Country, Noon Wine, The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
