what an idiot, haha
[quote=“Silvanito, post:10, topic:729”]Re: The Wild Bunch
Maybe this film doesn’t borrow anything in particular from spaghetti westerns, but still I always thought the overall violent content and the setting in the Mexican revolution was an inspiration from spaghettis?[/quote]
It’s possible that he even hasn’t seen one SW at the time (early 68) when he was preparing The Wild Bunch. In all books I have read about Peckinpah there were several inspirations discussed (like Kurosawa for example), but nothing about Leone, he is not even mentioned.
And Slow Motion violence combined with spurting blood was seldom used in SWs, even after The Wild Bunch.
No, no Peckinpah and Leone were both brilliant filmmakers, but they were also completely different artists in terms of style, themes, cultural background etc.
Even the presentation of violence is completely different. SWs are about killing, Peckinpah’s films are about dying.
For comparison I’ll give you a Top 10 list compiled by members of the British Film Institute in 1988:
- High Noon
- The Searchers
- Stagecoach
- Shane
- Red River
- The Wild Bunch
- OUTW
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Rio Bravo - Ride the High Country
Not that great a difference!
With Josey Wales being the only surprise.
Leone is an exception though… Maybe not so much in the Dollars-trilogy but if there’s a movie about “Dying” its Once Upon a Time in the West
[quote=“stanton, post:22, topic:729”]It’s possible that he even hasn’t seen one SW at the time (early 68) when he was preparing The Wild Bunch. In all books I have read about Peckinpah there were several inspirations discussed (like Kurosawa for example), but nothing about Leone, he is not even mentioned.[/quote]I’m not sure if Peckinpah was actually inspired by Leone but I remember reading somewhere that Peckinpah have said himself that he couldn’t have made Wild Bunch without Leone’s films which changed the style of westerns.
maybe what he meant was generally the change in portraying western protagonists not as clean and tidy shiny heroes, but dusty, wrecked, brutal men and shoot in southern locations, as opposed to filmic elements
Don’t you think Peckinpah at least was aware of the wave of violent westerns being produced in Europe at the time?
In retrospect people claim he was inspired by Kurosawa rather than Leone or any other SW-director, simply because SWs weren’t held in high regard artistically speaking?
I think spaghettis in general, and the Dollars-trilogy in particular, are not just about killing, but more about Death, often in a sardonic and humorous way.
It’s very easy to lose ones life in the violent spaghetti western-world, and Leone always has a lot of symbols of Death in his films.
OUATITW is definitely also about dying and the end of an era.
You are right. OUTW is different (but it was made at the same time as The Wild Bunch). It is not only about killing, but also about dying. And it is about the end of an era, also a bit about unchanging man in a changing time, using several symbols for the progress of civilization like all the other (american) twilight westerns did, and therefore was maybe partly inspired by … Ride the High Country!
OUTW and (to a greater extent) My Name Is Nobody could also be watched as part of the cycle of the many, many twilight westerns, which were dominating the american westerns in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. And Ride the High Country influenced all these films (up to Heaven’s Gate) much the same way as FOD influenced the SWs.
And Ride the High Country was praised in the year of it’s release for the realistic approach of western motives.
IMO the Dollar trilogy is mainly about killing (in a sardonic and humorous way). And most, if not all, of the other SWs are definitely only about killing. But that’s OK.
As I said above, I’m not sure if Peckinpah was aware of SWs. I don’t know when the 1st SWs arrived in the USA, but the Dollar films didn’t made it before 1967. At least I have never read a statement from him about SWs or Leone in particular.
And again, consider that SWs were viewed for a long time by american critics and filmmakers only as a bad joke.
You know this famous dialogue between John Ford and Burt Kennedy in January 69?
K: Have you seen any of these Spanish or Italian Westerns?
F: You’re kidding?
K: No, they have them and a few have been popular.
F: What are they like?
K: No story, no scenes. Just killing.
[quote=“stanton, post:28, topic:729”]As I said above, I’m not sure if Peckinpah was aware of SWs. I don’t know when the 1st SWs arrived in the USA, but the Dollar films didn’t made it before 1967. At least I have never read a statement from him about SWs or Leone in particular.
And again, consider that SWs were viewed for a long time by american critics and filmmakers only as a bad joke.
You know this famous dialogue between John Ford and Burt Kennedy in January 69?
K: Have you seen any of these Spanish or Italian Westerns?
F: You’re kidding?
K: No, they have them and a few have been popular.
F: What are they like?
K: No story, no scenes. Just killing.[/quote]
Yes I know this, and this is exactly my point, Peckinpah could easily have known and seen some SWs even if they weren’t released in the US at this time, they were after all huge in Europe. But he didn’t want to confess that he had been inspired by these low-budget movies, not even some years later since spaghettis even then were considered a bad joke by Americans.
Where else did the inspiration for the extreme violence in The Wild Bunch come from if not from spaghettis, even if Peckinpah did his own twist with the slo-mo scenes?
If you look close at major american westerns, there was always a tradition of dirty looking ones with unshaved even brutish heroes since the days of silent films. And anti heroes and anti westerns (like The Ox Bow Incident) were always part of the their development. A development that explodes in the late 60s, and Leone was sort of a catalyst. But also was Peckinpah.
In 1964 the studio had cut out most of the blood and all of the slow motion violence Peckinpah had shot for Major Dundee, but 4 years later it was the studio who wanted more violence in The Wild Bunch.
Maybe without Leone Peckinpah couldn’t have made The Wild Bunch the way he did it. But maybe he could have done it the same way a few months later.
Leone only accelerated a development which would have come anyway. Both, Leone and Peckinpah, changed the way of filming violence and were very influential, but only in the sense of being the first.
If Bonny and Clyde or The Wild Bunch hadn’t used slow motion, somebody else would have done it, only a few months later.
The fast development of cinematic violence was unstoppable in the 2nd half of the 60s.
[quote=“Silvanito, post:29, topic:729”]Yes I know this, and this is exactly my point, Peckinpah could easily have known and seen some SWs even if they weren’t released in the US at this time, they were after all huge in Europe. But he didn’t want to confess that he had been inspired by these low-budget movies, not even some years later since spaghettis even then were considered a bad joke by Americans.
Where else did the inspiration for the extreme violence in The Wild Bunch come from if not from spaghettis, even if Peckinpah did his own twist with the slo-mo scenes?[/quote]
He, he, Silvanito, now we have posted nearly at the same time.
My previous posting is in parts an answer to your then unread post.
Yeah it’s possible that he knew about Leone’s films, but it remains speculative.
It’s likely that Major Dundee could have made a similar impact like The Wild Bunch, if the studio hadn’t interfered. Peckinpah was always interested in the depiction of “realistic violence”, but the time and the society wasn’t before. In his first film The Deadly Companions a scene was cut out where the hero shoots down a man without giving him a chance.
And he had used slo mo in one of his TV shows in the early 60s.
The violence in Bonny and Clyde was a major step prior to The Wild Bunch. And in the USA far more discussed than Leone. By the way Penn had used a slow motion shot of a falling man already in 1958 in The Left Handed Gun.
Kurosawa had used a few slow motion scenes in The 7 Samurai, and a few scenes of extremely spurting blood in Yojimbo and Sanjuro.
You’re a real movie-expert stanton!