Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia

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Movie
German title Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia
Original title Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Country of production USA , Mexico
original language English
Publishing year 1974
length 112 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Sam Peckinpah
script Gordon T. Dawson ,
Sam Peckinpah,
Frank Kowalski
production Martin Baum ,
Helmut Dantine ,
Gordon T. Dawson
music Jerry Fielding
camera Alex Phillips Jr.
cut Dennis Dolan ,
Sergio Ortega ,
Robbe Roberts
occupation

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is an American - Mexican film directed by Sam Peckinpah from 1974.

action

The Mexican landowner El Jefe reacts angrily when his daughter is impregnated by a stranger. He breaks her arm, whereupon she finally names the homeless Alfredo Garcia as the father of the unborn child. El Jefe puts a million dollar bounty on Alfredo Garcia. He means it literally, because he demands the presentation of the head as proof of the execution of the murder assignment.

A group of American gangsters want to earn the reward and go in search of Alfredo Garcia. For $ 10,000, the rundown bar pianist Bennie agrees to find out Alfredo's whereabouts. He learns from his girlfriend Elita that Alfredo was killed in a car accident and was buried in his home village. With a machete in their luggage, Bennie and the unsuspecting Elita set off for the grave the next day, not knowing that the suspicious professional killers have hired two local crooks to keep an eye on Bennie.

While the couple breaks off the trip for a picnic and dreams of a future together, they receive an uninvited visit from two shady motorcyclists. While one of the guys is holding Bennie in check with a revolver, the other pounces on Elita. Bennie overpowers his guard and shoots the two scoundrels. Elita learns the reason for their trip together, but out of love for Bennie she stays with him.

Eventually the two of them reach the cemetery where Alfredo Garcia is buried, and at the grave they meet his relatives. Elita is getting more and more scruples and Bennie is not untouched either. But since he hopes for a better future with the bounty that has been suspended, he sticks to his plan. During the night they both go to the cemetery again. Bennie opens the grave and picks up the machete. Elita doesn't want to watch the following and walks away. When Bennie opens the coffin, he is hit on the head. He wakes up a little later lying on the coffin, barely buried, Elita next to him. When he gets up, he finds that Alfredo Garcia's head is missing and Elita is dead. Bennie is so shocked that he loses control of himself.

When he was washing himself at a public pool of water, he learned from two Mexicans wandering around that two strangers with a green station wagon had buried him and Elita. He's going to find the guys and settle accounts with them. A few hours later he catches up with the men and kills them in a shootout. The head you are looking for is actually in your car.

The head, swirled by flies, lies in the passenger seat. Bennie is no longer sane and begins to talk with the rolling head and insult him. Six men and an old woman pursue Bennie. It's Alfredo's family. They find the station wagon and the two bodies, but after a brief examination they drive on.

Bennie takes a break in a small village. A child discovers the sack with his head and points out the flies to Bennie (“Oh, he means flies”). While Bennie is getting some ice cream, the pursuers drive through the village unnoticed by him.

Bennie drives on. Suddenly a stranger stands across the street. He can brake just in time. Alfredo Garcia's relatives surround him. The Mexicans understand that it's about money. He gets out and offers them all of his cash, which is not accepted. The Mexicans take their heads. At this moment, the two homosexual killers Quill and Sappensly appear on the scene, who have been notified by their now dead henchmen and have come to meet them to receive the head. Bennie pretends to show the "gringos" the way and discreetly informs them that the head is in the car. Quill then reaches for the submachine gun and kills the entire Garcia family with the exception of the grandfather. Quill missed one of the armed Mexicans, however, and he shoots the unsuspecting killer before he is killed by Sappensly himself. Sappensly also wants to kill Bennie, but he is faster and shoots his opponent down. Bennie takes his head, leaves the disturbed grandfather and continues his journey.

He makes one last stop at a filthy hovel before he reaches his temporary destination. He reports to the hotel where the Americans have stayed and wants to give them his head. In fact, however, he is obsessed with taking revenge on the killers and their employers for Elita's death and learning the background to the whole story.

That's why he smuggles a pistol into the room in the basket with Alfredo's head, which the doorman didn't properly control out of disgust. When the arrogant leaders of the troops want to get rid of Bennie and even threaten him openly, he suddenly pulls his gun and shoots around. Only one of the Americans can escape while Bennie learns from the dying leader who put the price on Alfredo's head.

The grandson's baptism takes place at the El Jefe hacienda . Bennie shows his head at the gate and is then let in. El Jefe is holding the grandson in his arms when Bennie stands in front of him with his head in the sack: “I have everything I wanted. I have a grandson. "Bennie is supposed to throw the head away and is given a suitcase full of money, but he is not satisfied with that and replies:" Sixteen people died because you put a price on this head. But one of these people was worth more than all of you put together. ”Thereupon he shoots all the bodyguards in the room and then aims indecisively at El Jefe. His daughter hatefully urges to continue, whereupon Bennie also shoots El Jefe. Then he takes his head and the money with the words "Alfredo, we're going home" and leaves the house. He drives to the gate, but the butler informs the guard by phone. Bennie also dies in the shooting that follows.

background

Sam Peckinpah directed Alfredo Garcia a year after the horror-like production of Pat Garrett Chasing Billy the Kid . Before it was released, the film studio changed this western from his point of view to such a negative point that Peckinpah threatened to have his name removed. The director was in poor health, his consumption of alcohol and, for the first time, marijuana during the filming of Alfredo Garcia rose steadily and not only endangered himself, but also the production.

Alfredo Garcia was, according to Peckinpah, the only film that he could shoot and edit the way he wanted it, but commercially perhaps the biggest flop of his career. Almost all of the US film reviews called the film a disaster. Roger Ebert alone described it as a “bizarre masterpiece”, an opinion that is generally accepted today. The film achieved cult status , thanks in part to cult actor Warren Oates . For many it was the director's last big film, others saw the beginning of the end, others even a low point.

In 1974 the Munich District Court confiscated the film. Michael Kunczik criticized this decision in his work Brutalität secondhand (1978, pp. 98, 29 f.) As inconsistent, because Shakespeare dramas are even more cruel, and classical scholars “always have one leg in prison with the translation of Homer's Odyssey ".

genre

Alfredo Garcia is a special film in the work of director Peckinpah. In addition to the classic road movie , action and thriller elements also appear in the film. What is unusual for Peckinpah is that, despite some misogynistic elements in Isela Vegas, Elita shows one of the strongest female roles in his entire work. In addition, the work itself exists as a melodrama and love story, for a short time it even shows characteristics of a black comedy. The film is also considered the director's homage to Mexico, which he portrays from both a violent and dirty perspective, as well as from a perspective of disturbing beauty.

criticism

"A realistic-brutal, but undoubtedly critical examination of the mechanisms of violence that is typical of Peckinpah."

- Lexicon of international film

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Kniep: “No youth release!” Film censorship in West Germany 1949 - 1990 , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, p. 204 f.
  2. ↑ Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used