I should have said more second world war two films 
Whatever the case, the version of “Convoy” that was released was undoubtedly not as good as what was shown to a few lucky individuals as a pre-release cut where at least Peckinpah was still at the reins.
Yeh - “Cross of Iron” is a staggeringly good film. I can only put the common criticism leveled by American reviewers as a case of reviewers just following each other without properly appraising the film. In Europe, it seems the reception was rather more favorable - and rightly so.
That’s a surprise, I guess most people would pick as their favorite Peckinpah film one of his Westerns. I re-watched Cross of Iron yesterday, and yes, I agree, it’s a fine film indeed, much better than I had remembered it. Of course, you have to be willing to accept that – some – Wehrmacht soldiers are depicted in an ultimately heroic way, basically a WWII Wild Bunch. When my father, who turned ninety-four this year and had the misfortune to be conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1941 and sent off to the Eastern Front the following year, saw the film in 1977, I remember that he dismissed it as a work of pure fiction. As such, it is an entertaining, well-made war-adventure movie, whose homosexual subtext(s) would be worthy of further discussion.
I read an article once, in which it was sustained that The Wild Bunch was a war movie as well.
I guess that article’s argument was that it metaphorically deals with the Vietnam War.
I guess so, but the author also referred to the weapons used, notably the machine gun
It’s always difficult to say whether it qualifies as a western when a movie is in the grey area (and most movies dealing with the Civil War or the Mexican revolution are), but to me The Wild Bunch definitely qualifies as one. The dominant theme is the End of the West (not the revolution), that already was the dominant theme of Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country, and was one of the dominant themes in westerns during this period (including Peckinpah’s own westerns). In that sense it’s even more a ‘western’ than some other movies set in Mexico, like for instance Companeros, The Mercenary or A Bullet for the General, that were dealing more with the revolution or revolutionary ideas in general.
Are they heroic?
They kill to survive, and that’s all they can do, apart from deserting. At the same time they serve of course the 3rd Reich by doing so, but not because they are interested in politics. Only as a side effect. That makes them morally dubious, but aren’t most of Peckinpah’s protagonists doing dubious things?
Cross of Iron, despite being made by a non-German, contains some typical cliches of Geramn war films, but at the same is a war film which often undermines typical war film cliches.
Calling it pure fiction is a bit exaggerated, but calling it a realistic film would be also an exaggeration.
I think they are (depicted as) heroic to the same extent as Pike Bishop and his bunch. As spectators we’re clearly invited to sympathize (maybe identify) with them, their moral ambiguity notwithstanding.
I agree with you, but you know how excessively nitpicky war veterans criticizing fictionalized accounts and depictions of their respective wars can be: one unauthentic uniform button, and the entire film is nonsense in their eyes.
I’ve never seen it. Has a good copy of it turned up? Sorry, I’ve just re-read your post 149.
I’m of the same opinion.
Well I am glad I posted in this topic a few days back, as some interesting discussion has come up. Forgot how many people who have an interest in Peckinpah
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Still hero seems to be the wrong word for me, or at least they don’t do real heroic things.
Actually the TCM preview version (aka “Peckinpah rough cut”) of “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid” is a pretty good contender too. Peckinpah made so many great movies it’s actually pretty hard to rank them to be honest. It’s just a shame his preferred cuts were often sabotaged.
I think the only version that has been found of the Peckinpah cut of the “Osterman Weekend” is the one on the old Anchor Bay DVD. It’s very poor quality but still watchable. A few years back I posted these comments on the sampeckinpah.com forum about the original version:
One thing that I really don’t understand is why when Sam’s cut was re-edited, they completely destroyed one of the best sequences of the movie. In Sam’s version, the main characters are introduced in a brilliant sequence that cross-cuts between Tanner’s three friends and Tanner on his TV show. In the re-edited version, this cross-cutting is removed for a more chronological sequence that is simply boring by comparison (and also removes the introduction of Chris Sarandon’s character). It’s mind-boggling to me how anyone could have thought the re-edited version better and more likely to appeal to the public.
[At the end of the film - SPOILER ALERT] The theatrical version removes that clever cut where we see Fasset raising his gun on the screen and we expect to cut to Tanner being at the door about to shoot him, but instead we cut to reality with Tanner opening the door to find his wife and kid.
[Regarding the intro sequence] I’d still take the Peckinpah one over the theatrical one. It is more sexual but less gruesome (not sure why this would make it less palatable to audiences??), and while the distortion doesn’t look great, at least it adds a certain level of intrigue.
In terms of directors who have passed away, I would take Leone and Peckinpah over anyone else. In terms of living directors, I have to go with Giuseppe Tornatore (hence my avatar of Tim Roth).
We had a similar discussion before, concerning the Eastwood characters’ status as hero or antihero or no-hero-at-all in Leone’s Westerns, and the problem seems to be a terminological one. You use “hero” as moral category, for me it’s more a designation of a book’s or a film’s protagonist, defined by the way in which this figure is presented to readers or spectators. For example, the Wild Bunch are clearly depicted as the film’s heroes in terms of close-ups, given screen-time, story-focus, point of view; but the spectators’ expectation conforming to filmic conventions is undermined by the Bunch’s amorality. So, filmically they are the heroes, morally they are not. That distinction caused a lot of confusion and rejection when antiheroes became very popular on the silver screen in the 1960s.
But the hero should be a more positive figure, not necessarily a clean white hero, but one who dominates the situations. For me there can be a huge difference between a hero and a protagonist. And I think one should use the words which fit the definitions. Same goes for the anti-hero, which is one who does not have the ability or the will to be a hero, one who never dominates any situation.
Leone’s films have heroes, Peckinpah’s mostly not.
Your position is similar to Mary Lea Bandy and Kevin Stoehr’s, taken up in their Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2012). They write:
“[In The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah] has taken the villainous gangs from traditional Westerns […] and given them a point of view around which an entire narrative is constructed. But transforming villains into protagonists with a perspective does not turn them into heroes, even if it appears this way on the surface of things. […] Are the members of this wild bunch anything more […] than overgrown children enjoying games of death and violence for their own profit and pleasure? Peckinpah’s film invites the viewer who finds heroism and entertainment in the actions of these men to ponder a similar question.” (p. 233)
I think The Wild Bunch, as a film, raises questions more complex than the one concerning the protagonists’ moral stance, thereby subverting a traditional understanding of good and evil actions, of a dualistic perception of morality. Richard Slotkin’s Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman/OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998 [1992], pp. 591–613) provides an excellent discussion of the film, by the way.
Re-watched it yesterday, and yes, the first thirty minutes of it are the best. The rest is mostly silliness, boring silliness at that. Arguably Peckinpah’s least interesting film.
I have an old German DVD of The Osterman Weekend, which doesn’t include the director’s cut. Will have to get a newer release.
It’s this one which is over a decade old now: http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1146ost.html.
Here’s what I posted a while ago at the sampeckinpah.com forum:
Looking at the old captures from the Peckinpah cut on DVD, I noticed that it hasn’t been cropped as heavily on the width as you’d expect for a full-screen version, but has actually been opened up quite a lot vertically instead. Given that many of the changes between the Peckinpah and theatrical cuts involve different cutting orders as much as new content, and that there isn’t a huge amount of new content anyway, leads me to an idea…
Could someone perhaps re-cut the theatrical version to match the Peckinpah cut as closely as possible and then use scenes from the Peckinpah cut where additional content is needed? Of course the quality of those scenes/shots will be very significantly compromised, but they did something of this nature for the extended cut of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America and while the added scenes do stand out (some more than others), it is still a great thing to have.
There is also a German Special Edition DVD. Better picture quality and in widescreen. Probably the same master as the Anchor Bay DVD, but unlike that one it does not contain the Peckinpah cut, but only all the scenes missing from the theatrical version as bonus feature.
So who can tell me why “Junior Bonner” has never been given a decent release? My understanding is that the best version is still the old American MGM DVD which has great picture quality but is non-anamorphic so the quality is destroyed when you zoom in.