Blood Cleans the Soul: The Pleasure and Purity of Violent Cinema
Sweet, sweet catharsis in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969)
There is an immense power to violence on screen. Cinema can present horrific, unspeakable acts with a stunning realism that other art forms can’t match. For many years, fierce censorship expunged anything that could be considered obscene; punches and kicks were allowed, but blood was not. These days, however, if you happen to be a sick-minded individual with a compulsion to see large volumes of blood spilled on-screen, you’re spoilt for choice. Why not pop on your slippers, snuggle up in front of the fire and enjoy one of the eight Saw films, with their delightful mix of puzzle-solving and violent body horror? The blood flows like expensive champagne at an Oxford University debating club after-party. Or perhaps you want something a little more highbrow. A bloodbath with petals. You want that sweet, gruesome catharsis, but you also want to expand your cinematic horizons a little bit at the same time. Well, you could try Psycho, of course, but you’ve probably seen it already, and if you haven’t, I feel obliged to tell you that you are an uncultured swine and that the blood (which is really just chocolate syrup) is rather disappointingly limited to one scene. You could well try one of Quentin Tarantino’s films, which combine all the horror of bloody violence with the fun of witty repartee and stylized homage. But if you want a cinematic experience that will truly test you and move you, whilst also satisfying your blood lust, you need only turn to one man: Sam Peckinpah. His most famous film, The Wild Bunch, remains a bloody masterpiece.
The Wild Bunch is a Western with a simple set-up: with a hapless posse of bounty hunters in tow, reformed outlaw, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) is tasked with bringing to justice his former criminal gang, who are now led by his old friend, Pike Bishop (William Holden). The conflict between these two men is excellently established in the opening where, within the mayhem of a gory shootout, a closeup of Pike looking up from the street is followed by a closeup of Deke looking down from the rooftop. Peckinpah repeats the two shots: there is a look of recognition from both actors and then — they fire. Neither hit their target and Pike escapes, but the visual rapport makes it clear that the fates of the two men will continue to be bound together. Later in the film, we are shown Thornton’s face in a close-up, as he sits alone: as his face fades away, we see a memory of his younger days when Thornton and Pike were at a cathouse together. But when Peckinpah fades out, it’s to Pike instead of Thornton. Then the film cuts between the two men’s older faces, both lit by the burning fire. A lesser director would have established the shared history with extended flashbacks, or clumsy dialogue, but Peckinpah does it simply and cinematically.
The film opens with a wide shot of the “Wild Bunch” riding into town. The outlaws are framed centrally, silhouetted by the sun. They ride slowly, purposefully. When they reach the town and make their way to the bank they wish to rob, Peckinpah cuts to a long-distance high-angle shot. We see the heavily armed bounty hunters waiting to ambush the gang from the rooftop opposite. Peckinpah cuts between the low-angle POV of the gang and the high-angle POV of the bounty hunters. If Peckinpah had simply shown us the gang’s perspective we would have had perhaps five seconds of surprise when the shootout began, but by cutting between the two sides we get five minutes of tense cinema. With each cut we get closer to the first gun going off. Peckinpah has lit the match and the explosion of violence is imminent, only the audience doesn’t know how long the fuse is.
Peckinpah teases us superbly by intercutting two tangential scenarios into this central powder keg. In the first, small children (metaphorically us, the audience) watch some scorpions as they are overwhelmed by a vicious swarm of red ants. Peckinpah cuts into close-ups of cute faces smiling and laughing. This is the film’s hypothesis: violence is natural, everyone is violent and, on the whole, we love it. The second tangent, a Temperance Society march, which happens to coincide with the gang’s robbery, is a more Hitchcockian device, disrupting the action and increasing the tension. The whole situation is constructed so well, the audience so immersed, that when the violence finally erupts into the shootout — a dense, quick montage where blood gushes and dust flies — the effect is heart-stopping. Peckinpah said that he intended the film to give the audience “some idea of what it’s like to be shot down.” Now, I don’t know what it feels like to be shot down, but I can tell you that this is cinema at its very best. You can almost feel the blood in your mouth and the dust on your coat. You don’t get that from Saw VII.
After this explosive opening, Peckinpah takes his foot off the accelerator. We follow the gang as they cross the Rio Grande and head down to Mexico. Entering a small village, the colour and the lighting of the film changes radically. Gone is the harsh bright sunlight and endless yellow of the desert and now in its place are luscious green trees, blue lakes and cool, dark shade. Peckinpah again shows us children but these children are more innocent, splashing in the river and playing games with string. The natural beauty of this oasis is shown in languid wide-angled shots, the camera drifts and floats. The way we are shown the gang is also different: Peckinpah dispenses with the aggressive low-angle close-ups, and now we see them in eye-level medium shots, the soft light calming their tough features. Peckinpah uses this shot/lighting combination many times throughout the film as we see the gang smile, laugh, drink and shoot together. We see that these men are not really evil, more victims of bad luck. But we know that any moment of peace is fleeting, the world of The Wild Bunch seethes with violence and chaos, and it will only be a matter of time before these outlaws are struck down…
The action in The Wild Bunch is superbly constructed. In scenes mostly without dialogue, we see Pike’s gang escape the US Army, Thornton’s bounty hunters and a vicious group of Mexican Bandits. The possibility of violence permeates every frame as Peckinpah constantly evokes the opening sequence by shifting to first-person perspective, cutting into tight close-ups and by quickening the intercutting — but, for the most part, the tension is relieved. “The Wild Bunch” seem always to live to fight another day. With each near miss, we ask ourselves: are these men going to escape this cruel, meaningless life? Or is their fate sealed?
If you are one of those bloodthirsty types, you will be pleased to hear that violence does eventually erupt again. The finale, even by Quentin Tarantino standards, is extremely bloody… But The Wild Bunch remains more affecting than any Tarantino film because Peckinpah understands the power of violence and uses it to entice, frighten and thrill the audience. At first, we are like the children crowded around the scorpions, looking on with delight. But when the film ends in blood, it’s disappointing. Peckinpah has been patient and careful to show us the truth of these outlaws’ lives. The finale robs the audience of the very confrontation that the film has promised us, and our troubled protagonists’ chance at redemption is never realised.
The Wild Bunch is a truly epic Western, and it has been worthily picked apart ever since its release over half a century ago. It remains a fascinating and powerful film, and I urge you to see it. Sit in the dark and allow yourself to be overwhelmed. Ol’ Bloody Sam Peckinpah will take care of the rest.