The Wild Bunch (1969 Sam Peckinpah): Kino für Kinder nicht - The Sunday Cinema

Having recently been reintroduced to Truffaut's children (see Les Quatres Cents Coups) we now meet Peckinpah's. From the beginning of THE WILD BUNCH (1969) they witness, then burn, ants killing a scorpion. They are caught in the crossfire, then play shooting games over the massacred bodies. One is a soldier in the Mexican army. Another jumps on the body of Angel, being dragged by the General's car, and rides him. And finally, one of the little bastards shoots Ernest Borgnine in the back. (Holden is also shot in the back, by a woman.) If this film is (evidently) about male camaraderie, loyalty, and the passing of the old West, it seems also to reflect on the lost innocence of the children.

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William Holden has never been so tough and I'm reminded how much I like Ernest Borgnine, though Warren Oates' final pre-death cry leaps out at you (Peckinpah soon promoted him to lead). Emilio Fernandez (who's just taken me on a major tangent  in search of his Cannes-winning Maria Candelaria), a powerful revolutionary Mexican filmmaker and actor, must also have got on with Peck, as he appears in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Bring Me the Head (as I watch this every 14 years I'm due a rewatch; in fact I'm a year late).

Written by Sam and Waldo Green. The old-timer Edmond O'Brien was in Liberty Vallance, coincidentally watched the same day. Lucien Ballard shot in Panavision and Jerry Fielding wrote the (Oscar-nominated) music. Editing of bloody action (by Lou Lombardo) still distinctive.

Like Guns in the Afternoon it's also about growing old in the Wild West. The old-timers are talking about retiring, but you get the feeling they'd rather go down in a hail of bullets, particularly when it comes from holding on to their old values like loyalty, that seem to be becoming lost.