Category: The Wild Bunch

It was a really long film and I didn’t like it much at the beginning but it kind of grew on me. Close to the end of the movie, I was quite attached to the Wild Bunch and their emotions. However, it was also because of this attachment that I was frustrated, shocked and disappointed to see them leaving Angel there with the Mexicans. I had a mix feeling towards the situation. One side of me knew that it wouldn’t make sense for the whole gang to go down, while the other side of me thought “how could they have just abandoned their ‘comrade’?” However, I think they redeemed themselves at the end by taking on the suicidal mission of rescuing Angel. I was touched when the four of them marched towards their suicidal mission (at this point I already forgot they were the bad guys and I really shouldn’t be touched by their violent actions). Although overall, the movie was a bit too violent for my liking, I thought it was quite realistic and at times necessary for the message and the image that it tries to portray and deliver. I had a mix feeling about the ending of the film. I was especially bothered to see Angel being tortured like that.

To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to how they treated the women. The women were so neglected I thought the director purposely portrayed it in such a way to emphasize that the movie was about men and the historical background. The readings really helped me appreciate the movie more. If I hadn’t read the articles, I probably wouldn’t have thought as highly of the film. I like the analogies that it draws – character analogies, historical event analogies, etc.

I also really like the long pause of silence when they shot the Mexican leader. I thought it created powerful tension. I even held my breath for a bit when it happened.

In response to Miguel:
When the prostitute was insisting that the men pay her, I was confused by the woman, brushing her hair. She and the protagonist were exchanging suggestive looks or rather, looks of empathy and compassion. Yet on hearing the other prostitute in the neighboring room, the protagonist seemed to revert back to his old ways, demanding that him and the other men leave without paying. I thought this was where the men would redeem themselves and their ways. Instead, they left to reclaim their Mexican friend. This seemd to initially convey the kinship they had with the other male, aside from cultural differences, but of course this interaction turned to turmoil. I think it is interesting that of all the men in the group, the Mexican of course was claimed a traitor. Therefore, this film shows the feelings perhaps Mexico and the U.S. felt for one another? On the other hand, I would like to believe this was suppose to be a parody on a bad western film.
In response to Mario:
I did not originally think of the protagonists as anti-heros. But once you pointed out the fact that the men start fighting with the knowledge that they will die, like the anti-hero, the mens’ deaths are inevitable and therefore they decide to control the way they are going to die. It made me think of Beowulf, and how he has several battles with monsters, in which he is successful at conquering, but with each encounter the battle becomes more of a challenge. The dying culture of Beowulf is like the dying culture of the Western.

Im really curious what is going to said about this movie in class. I really want to know why this movie is considered such a classic when I thought that although had some things to offer, it didn’t have much. This is actually the first time that I have a watched a full western type movie. As like in Touch of Evil, it was focused on the relationship between Mexicans and Americans. It is pretty evident that both have a preconception of each other that is not good at all. They don’t trust each other and they think they are foolish in some sort of way. Mexicans however are presented as dumb and animal like. They don’t do what people do in a normal society, and in contrast they are just eating, drinking, and having sex. Females are presented as very inferior in comparison to men. They have no authority whatsoever and are always depicted as a pleasure object. We never really see a conversation between a man and a woman, only once where a prostitute asks for the money when the Americans do not pay. By not paying after having so much gold from the rifles sold, we see that the Americans really do not care about the Mexicans and feel they are inferior to them. So, the machismo in Mexico is another recurrent theme in this movie. I thought it was interesting how Angel’s friend just left him with the Mexicans after he found out he had stolen the rifles. The way the Mexicans treated him was even more astonishing and this showed them as savages. Overall I thought there was a lot of unnecessary killing, although its probably a common thing in western type movies.

Two things caught my attention in this movie, the apparent lack of values in everyone in the movie and the tension between the characters in most of the scenes. From the begging the wild bunch seemed to me as a group of American bandits with a code of honor that kept its members from betraying each other but with no ideological purposes.”The wild bunch” was full of drunk, violent, macho men, who mistreated women and killed innocent people. However, it was no clear to me if they attacked the American town only to get gold or if there were other reasons.

The tension between the characters was present in almost every scene. The Americans who leaded the militia seem to be in conflict all the time. I think that the battle leader was involuntarily in charge of the military and therefore his opinions were ignored by the old-town-owners. I think he was actually like the “Wild bunch” but he was imprisoned and forced to serve the police and flip sides. He was also in conflict with his soldiers because they did not have the spirit of “the warrior” and only fought for money.

The wild bunch seemed to have a lot of internal problems as well. Its members kept arguing all the time. Obviously they also had a problem with the General Mapache who seem stupid and weak to them. Finally, the General Mapache and the revolucionarios had their own war going on.

The end of the movie changed my mind about the lack of morals of the wild bunch. I thought that the wild bunch valued friendship highly and that is why they killed general Mapache. I think that the Wild bunch saw the spirit of the warriors on Angel and the revolutionaries hence when they saw little posibility to escape gloriously and their lives sourounded by cheap prostitutes and solitude they did not mind to die for Angel’s cause.

I also found interesting the theme of prostitution. I think prostitutes have appeared in every movie we have seen and I think that desire and sex work are an essential aspect of mexican culture and mexican representations. I thought that mexican women survived best being prostitutes and even when they weren’t getting paid they were trading their body for mercy, acceptance and protection.

Ah, the last of the westerns and the western hero.
Symbolically dying at the end of the film along with the genre.
Peckinpah creates a western world that is fluxuating and changing before the very eyes of these traditional cowboys.
Chased from the north and forced to go south, their aging bodies are apparent and detrimental to their survival.
It would be impossible to watch a Peckinpah film without making mention of the representation of violence within the film.
And if you’ve ever seen “Straw Dogs” you’ll know that this is a re-occuring theme.
The violence is absolutely crude and messy in “The Wild Bunch”
The visual proponent of spraying blood from bullet wounds, bodies falling off buildings and cliffs, and horses slamming into the ground are all extreme in their depiction and scarily realistic.
HIs editing style is very succinct, hardly giving longer then a second before each cut ( during the opening sequence in the town especially ).
This method of editing really rackets up the feeling of utter mayhem during the scene and lack of control.
The innocent town folk are caught up within the gunfight and are mowed down by stray bullets.
There are children clutching each other in the middle of the fight, looking scared and evidently bound to be affected their entire life by these events. During the last scene, one of the characters uses a mexican woman as a body shield to absorb any bullets that come his way.
Peckinpah also uses slow motion to add to these violent outbursts too, for example a horse crashing through a window in slow motion.
Handheld POV camera work is also used as a disorienting tactic and evokes even more mayhem.
As for the portrayal of Mexico, we are introduced to a ridiculous, indulgent military group who hire these men to steal rifles.
They are seen as untrustworthy and cutthroat, everything you need to survive in these tough lands.
The other Mexican group we see are the fighters from the village near where Angel is from, who are amazingly stealthy, calm and seem to give off a sense of earthly wisdom. It’s funny that there is no in between shown. The Mexican men are either drunk, rowdy fighters, or, stealthy, wise fighters.
Funnily enough it is Angel who the Mexican military group torture and embarrass as opposed to an American, even though there is a clear tension and dislike between the Americans and this group in the film. Perhaps this speaks to a lack of national identity at these times, keeping in mind that this is also shown through the storytelling of Peckinpah.

I don’t particularly like Westerns. They bore me and I think they’re all predictable. The only western I have liked has been High Noon. And Unforgiven, although I wouldn’t consider it a Western. This movie is no a western in essence either. It is a movie about the changing times. I have never seen a machine gun or a shotgun in a western before. And I haven’t seen such violence like in the last massacre scene either. This movie plays with your expectations, it makes you think about what is going on. These men are outlaws in a world were they are not going to be able to be outlaws anymore. They are a dying breed, and I think this reflects perfectly the Western trend in the United States.
Westerns have been popular ever since movies began. The great train robbery is one of the first films to employ parallel editing, and that was a western. So was D.W. grifith “The girl and her trust”. And up to the 1950’s westerns represented the American ideal of dominating the lands and overcoming the terrible things that happen around you. The hero (mostly John Wayne) always won. But by the 1960’s this trend was falling. People began producing more science fiction and the musical boomed, people were looking for escapism and a way to reflect the cold war era. This movie is probably one of the last true westerns.
I call this a western because it has everything you need for a western: the setting, the morally ambiguos characters that decide to fight for a change, the villains that look out of a cartoon novel, etc… Unforgiven doesn’t have that, it just has the setting. I really liked the ending, when they look at each other after Angel has died, they know they are going to die. But instead of running away or trying to make a truce, they fight back. I took this as their last chance for thrill. They look at each in a kind of Bonnie and Clyde way and because they decide to die, that makes them heroes. They might be the epitamy of an anti-hero, but the moment they go to Mexico and see all this corruption, they change into heroes.
This is an aspect I didn’t like about the film. Mexico was protrayed as corrupt and dirty and with no moral ambitions. It is because of Mexico that they change, they see it is worse than them. The characters play on stock characters, and even the only Mexican worth saving, Angel, is a deliquent in the end. Although the film was set in the Mexican revolution, that still doesn’t cut it to show them as complete monsters and non-caring. When that woman was shot, they just laughed it off. This is not the first western that shows Mexicans like this of course, but it is still offensive.

What I noticed most about this film was the portrayal of women it presented. Even though Mexican men are shown as characteristically diverse, the women in this film are not given that benefit.
Just like the excessive violence of the film which becomes somewhat ineffectual, the portrayal of women becomes cliched also. There seemed to be breasts shown bare too often so much so that it didn’t mean anything when they were. The scene when the two Americans frolick with the 3 Mexican women was quite upsetting to me too. The women were just getting thrown around and stripped by the men as if they were some inate object; It was pretty disgusting to me. The unimportance of death of women also upset me. When the Mexican’s ex lover is killed by him, and later the fact that the procession of prayers was interrupted by the drunk yells of the Mexicans and Americans shows this degradation of women. There is even a point in the last battle scene in which one of the Mexicans uses a women as a shield against bullets.
Thus far I have just given examples of how Mexiacn were are shown in action, but what I think is most important is the scene in which the Americans leave the women with the baby and do not pay them for their prostitution. This is bad enough, but I remembered how the Americans had earlier talked of spending all of their money back in America on whores. So I’m left to see the deliberate juxtaposition between the American’s tratement of Mexican women and American ones, even if they are whores. Aiding in this moral crime is the Mexican men’s inability to stand up for their fellow country people and their willingness to aid the Americans for an eventual benefit to their violent cause.

Personally I don’t have much special feeling about this moive.

It’s definitely long and the plot is huge, composed of a series of stories. All roles seem “bravo”,

and the last shootout is tremendous, so perhaps for guys, this is really exciting.

I don’t like the excessive violence in it, but I marvel at Peckinpah’s shooting and editing

techniques, with my assumption that there has no “computer artificiality” been invented to

modify and embellish the shots at that epoch. So I was always wondering how he did it when I

saw the sparging of blood and particularly the shot of the explosion of the timber bridge and the

falling down of those horses. I guess Peckinpah would be one of the pioneers of this kind of

violent action movies, and also, maybe editing plays an important role in it.

I thought that this movie was the most interesting one so far since reading break. I liked it because it wasn’t in a documentary style, and just in general, the way it was directed, it was more interesting than the movie last week.
I watched the movie with subtitles and I thought that it was weird that they didn’t translate the Spanish dialogue into English. I understand that they were in Mexico most of the time and the director probably wanted to capture as much of the culture as possible (I think that this is why I liked the movie better than last week where the culture was pretty much just shown in the beginning), so they wanted to have people speaking in Spanish. But there were entire conversations that went on for a few minutes that weren’t translated, for example when Teresa and Angel are talking, so it made me wonder who the audience was meant to be, and if all of them were expected to understand both languages. The rest of the movie seemed to aim towards Americans, language-wise, for example, when they said the word ‘gringo,’ they usually surrounded it with English so that the audience could understand them.
I also thought it was weird that the only American women in the movie were in the beginning in the Temperance Union, and the rest of the woman were Mexican, and half of them were naked most of the time. I don’t know what the movie’s trying to say, because it wasn’t really the common message that Americans are superior…Angel was Mexican and he was always part of the family to the group. No matter what country they were in, all of the groups were just looking for the “prize” whether it be money or guns, and race didn’t matter. In fact, the rich and powerful people were mainly Mexican, the General.
This wasn’t extremely obvious to me until the end, but there was a kind of layering effect that ended up being kind of humourous. Like I said before, all of the groups were looking for a prize of some sort. It ended up being a kind of chase, but each team was different. The ‘wild bunch’ was really smart,and in the bounty hunter group, there was only one smart guy and the rest weren’t as capable, and the soldiers were rich but stupid, which was obvious when they were trying out the machine gun and when they tried to convince the wild bunch to follow them to the General – in that part, the wild bunch outsmarted them. So in the end, you might have thought that the rich people would have won because they had money, and now guns, and that the bounty hunters would have continued to lose, or maybe you wouldn’t have thought that, but what happened was that for the most part the General and his followers died first, and then the wild bunch, and then for the most part, the bounty hunters. Only one person from the two bottom groups survived, and the people from the Mexican town, who were considered the weakest because they didn’t have weapons. Most of them survived, except Angel and Teresa, who had left the town to try to be something bigger.

I don’t have too many positive things to say about this movie. This film as well as Touch of Evil, both relate to a Mexican theme in a very similar way: both show how Hollywood cinema portrays Mexico and sets up relations between the US and Mexico through pseudo-imperialistic relationships; the Mexicans are the whores, the slaves, the savages, the idiots, while the Americans commandeer them, corale them, and condescendingly show them a “real” way of life. This film in particular equates the wild n’ crazy cowboys with no morals or scruples with the Mexican way of life. Beyond depicting America’s patronizing and belittling view of Mexico, this movie should not be qualified as Mexican whatsoever.
As a woman and as someone who is beginning to write screenplays, I hated this movie. I do consider myself a feminist, but not a righteous, ignorant one. I can get down to Mac Dre and listen to him rap about bitches and hos if the lyrics and/or the music have redeeming value. But considering this film had very little value for me, I couldn’t tolerate how much it equated women, especially Mexican women, as nothing but sexual objects. There was not one female character in this two and a half hour movie that wasn’t some sort of a prostitute; literal or figuratively. This made me want to vomit by the end.
As an American, I’ve grown up having Mexican friends. My dad was born in Mexico, and his siblings grew up there. In many ways I feel more of a connection with Mexican culture than with that of American. I understand how Hollywood always has portrayed Mexico as America’s bitch, but that doesn’t make me agree with this idea, especially when I’ve seen so many more, better movies in my previous Spanish classes about Mexicans trying to cross the border and seeing how harrowing that experience is.
The screenplay for this was one of the worst I’ve ever experienced. The dialogue was very much that of the time and genre, neither of which I’m generally into. Old western movies are not among my favorites, and with painfully contrived dialogue and the whole movie being violent, sexist, and racist, there was very little I found tolerable. The frequent zoom-in shots (also of the time and genre) made for the extra dated aspect.

This is my first time watching the Wild Bunch and I thought it was an excellent movie. It’s the type of movie that keeps you interested from start to finish because of the strong acting and storyline along with great action and suspense. The movie showed a lot of violence that must have been quite graphic for its time in the 60’s as the director tried to give a realistic portrayal of how they used to live in that era, which was set in the early 1900’s. From the beginning sequence when they robbed the bank to the general cutting Angels throat which subsequently leads into the graphic gun battle of the soldiers massacre and their own death at the end of the movie, there was no shortage of violence. I found an interesting element in the movie when they decide to deal with the general to steal American weapons from the train. It kind of brought to the forefront the issue of arms dealing and how it can affect a regions stability. The idea that money can impair Pike’s conscience to decide to equip an army after he has seen first hand the abuse Mapache has done to his own people such as to the villagers in Angel’s town. But also as he provides weapons to the general he does agree to Angel’s terms to allow him to take some weapons for the villagers for his share of his money as Pike sees the town’s right to defend themselves. And as the terms of the sale are spearheaded by the German advisors it shows that all parties are interested in attaining advanced weaponry to later get the upper hand in their agendas.

I read that the film used some cinematography that was advanced for its time with the use of multi-angle editing with wide angle camera lens which was central for the live action and outdoor shots, such as the scene where just after Pike threatens to blow up the weapons the camera later pans above the canyon to capture the generals soldiers ride off on both sides to retreat back to the camp. This scene captures the grand landscape in the background and the canyon below as you see the soldiers ride quickly. And also the shot of the “long walk” as they make their way back to Mapache’s to get Angel. Another element in the movie was the kind of feeling that the end of an era was upon Pike and the gang and the sense that they new it as he was looking for his last big job to call it quits. He uses a great line “We’ve got to start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast” which sums up what they are feeling and coming to the realization that times are a changin. You kind of sense it when Pike has kind of lost his touch as he tries to mount the horse he looses his footing, but also when they check out Mapache’s automobile as they inspect it with such fascination and also the new form of weaponry they find intriguing when they first see the machine gun. Along with the “old ways” was that loyalty that Pike finds so important. The way Pike decides to agree and help the general to steal the arms in order to avoid a confrontation for Angel with the general, or when the four decide to go back to save Angel from being killed, when Pike mentions Deke’s loyalty to the railroad as he pursued him and when Pike has the dream when he realizes he had dishonored his fellow gang member Deke after he leaves him behind during the raid. They all had a sort of ‘code of honor’ among them which was fading with the times.

I really disliked this movie. The plot of the film was convoluted and made little sense to me. I was not even sure until the end of the movie who the main protagonists were or whether or not I was supposed to even sympathize with them. Those characters who were followed throughout the majority of the film were never fully developed and therefore I had no feelings of attachment to them, especially when they died. In fact, I was overjoyed when one of the female characters actually managed to obtain some power; shooting one of the men a part of the grotesque group. I did have some hope for the plot at the beginning of the film, yet over time the men became less human and more monstrous. The film seemed to be influenced by a pastiche of other works, involving conquests of power and the concept of manifest destiny. The novel, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, specifically came to mind while watching The Wild Bunch, as the men are led through the unknown world of Mexico. Like Africa, which was considered the “dark continent,” when Heart of Darkness was written is like the Mexican culture depicted in the film, as the people were put on display as something enigmatic and almost primitive. Like the novel, there seems to be a split between civilization and barbarianism. Anything that is unknown and unfamiliar to the men, is emphasized as something primitive. Yet on the other hand, the unknown is also eroticized. The women are depicted as disposable, as they are extremely sexualized and seem to be only good for one thing, sex. As a result, the people are only seen as spectacles, appearing savage-like and untamed. The women merely aid the men as their foils, while the men drive the plot forward. For example, after Angel has killed his “ex-girlfriend,” he is accused of plotting the death of the leader of the Federales. However, once he makes it clear that he was just jealous and only had the intentions of killing his ex-girlfriend, everything is overlooked. The film forces the women to function within a man’s world, only as objects of their desire. The film, The treasure of the Sierra Madre also seemed to influence the Wild Bunch. Like Humphrey Bogart, the outlaws also become more coniving and hungry for power. They are corrupted by their desires and blinded by their conquest.
The Wild Bunch exploits Mexican culture, especially the cultural traditions, as they show the older women having a funeral for the ex-girlfriend of Angel. When the group of men first visit Angel’s village, the way the people were depicted, reminded me of the first film we watched, in which the culture was portrayed as peaceful and exotic, as the women were shown in their maternal roles. Throughout the film, when Mexican “culture” was shown, the Mexican fanfare would start up, indicating romance and well, drunken bafoonery. For example when some of the men from the group get together with the Mexican women, they are laughing and drinking, while the same joyous music plays in the background. The women have no objection and allow themselves to be groped and canoodled.
Some other elements of the film that caught my attention were the amount of zoom-in shots. I am not sure if these were suppose to excite the audience and cause for dramatic tension or what the director’s strategy was. Another element I noticed was how the men were always laughing, whether it was out of cruelty or pure joy. This just goes to show that comedy does often take root at someone else’s expense. In the beginning when the scorpion is attacked by the ants, perhaps this is suppose to foreshadow the mens’ destinies, as the children laugh at the scorpion’s misfortune. Overall, I thought the film had cheap entertainment value and had little to no resolution.