Sam Peckinpah

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Sam Peckinpah (born February 21, 1925 in Fresno , California , † December 28, 1984 in Inglewood , California) was an American director and screenwriter .

Life

David Samuel Peckinpah was born in Southern California in 1925 to lawyer David Edward Peckinpah . The Peckinpahs (previously Peckinpaugh, originally Beckenbach) come from German immigrants who immigrated to the USA towards the end of the 18th century. He studied dramaturgy and received his Master of Dramatic Arts from the University of Southern California (USC) . He then took jobs in various film studios and worked in the theater. He later met Don Siegel , for whom he rewrote some dialogues for the screenplay for the science fiction film Die Demonischen (1956).

In the 1950s, Peckinpah first worked for television, including as a screenwriter for the western series Rauchende Colts . He also developed concepts for the series The Rifleman ( West of Santa Fé , 1958) and The Westerner (1960), for which he also wrote several scripts. In 1958, he first directed a Rifleman episode.

In 1961 and 1962 he made his first films Companions of Death and Sacramento . The latter marked the transition from classic western to late- western with John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance . In this early work, Peckinpah already dealt with one of his later favorite topics: aging western heroes in changing times.

In 1965 Peckinpah made his first big-budget western with Sierra Charriba (Major Dundee) . Producer Jerry Bresler had the film edited contrary to the director's intentions, whereas Peckinpah resisted and subsequently got on an unofficial "black list", which is why he received no further orders. His scripts for The Glorious Horsemen and Pancho Villa Rides have been modified and given to other directors. During the filming of Sierra Charriba , Peckinpah often appeared on set very drunk or left drunk, so that Charlton Heston had to step in for the directing work. This film also became a financial failure.

After the script by Ring Lardner (a McCarthy victim), Peckinpah began work on the black and white film Cincinnati Kid , but after a few days Peckinpah's script changes were rewritten and the project was handed over to Norman Jewison , who was making a color film with Steve McQueen in the lead role. which had nothing to do with Peckinpah's original concept. According to the producers, the reason for the director's dismissal was Peckinpah's intention to shoot a nude scene with Sharon Tate and to vulgarize the story.

The television producer David Melnick gave Peckinpah a new assignment for television in 1966. For the adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's novel Noon Wine Peckinpah wrote the screenplay and directed. Actors were Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland and LQ Jones in a supporting role. The work was well received, including by the play's author, and Peckinpah received several awards for the work.

This gave him the opportunity to film The Wild Bunch in 1969 . This film is often counted among the greatest westerns in film history. Peckinpah himself said of his work: "When I think about what happened to me in Hollywood, I wish I were a bit like my heroes". The script, written by novice screenwriter Walon Green based on an idea by Roy N. Sickner , was revised by Peckinpah. Green, Sickner and Peckinpah each received an Oscar nomination, as did the music by Jerry Fielding.

The Wild Bunch , like Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 , changed the representation of violence in mainstream American cinema. The film is controversial, some critics like Roger Ebert again praised it as a masterpiece. Peckinpah was given the charmless nickname Bloody Sam . His next film Abrechnung wird zum Ende (1970) was designed as a counterpart to the previous film, which contains elements of a western comedy as well as a romance film. The melancholy late western was not a hit with the public.

Originally intended as a director for the film Deliverance , Peckinpah shot initially with Dustin Hoffman in England in 1971, Who Sows Violence , was then not commissioned to adapt James Dickey's novel. Susan George's rape scene was particularly controversial . Peckinpah was therefore decried as a misogynist and Pauline Kael even called the film a “fascist work of art”.

Peckinpah set his next film Junior Bonner (1971) with Steve McQueen in the rodeo environment. However, the melancholy character study was not well received by either the audience or the critics.

The commercially most successful film of his career turned Peckinpah 1972 again with McQueen: Getaway was a film adaptation of a novel by Jim Thompson . However, the author was disappointed with the adaptation.

The subsequent 1973 film Pat Garrett Chasing Billy the Kid was a significant turning point in Peckinpah's career. This is his last contribution to the western genre. The film was severely cut and re-edited by the producers, much to the director's disappointment. The original editor, Roger Spottiswoode , created a new cut version of the film in the 1990s, which should come closer to Peckinpah's original intentions. Bob Dylan wrote the soundtrack, including the famous Knockin 'on Heaven's Door .

Disappointed with the Hollywood system, Peckinpah made his most personal film, Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia in Mexico in 1974 . Leading actor Warren Oates was the "Peckinpah in front of the camera", the bar pianist Bennie, who gets caught in a vortex of violence after a bounty hunt. However, it was not a success with the public, and apart from Roger Ebert, the critical reception was consistently negative. Michael Medved included the film in his book On The Worst Movies Of All Time.

The film Die Killer-Elite (1975) was Peckinpah's attempt to recommend himself for new assignments with a commercial, undemanding film. The film was well cast with James Caan and Robert Duvall , but lacked the intensity of his earlier work.

Steiner - The Iron Cross was Peckinpah's first war film in 1977. For this German co-production, shot in Yugoslavia, Peckinpah refused to direct the films Superman and King Kong . But health problems overshadowed his work. The director was meanwhile addicted to drugs and alcohol. Convoy (1978) was to be his last directorial work for years, but the action-packed road movie became a cult film. After filming was finished, Peckinpah suffered a heart attack and he retired to Montana .

Peckinpah's friend Warren Oates died in 1982, the composer Jerry Fielding and his assistant Gordon Dawson ended long-term collaborations. He made his last film in 1983 with the mission Ludlum film version The Osterman Weekend , .

Sam Peckinpah died on December 28, 1984 at the age of 59 from complications from a stroke.

Main themes

Peckinpah's main theme as a director is dealing with violence and morality . Regarding his film The Wild Bunch , he said: “America closes its eyes to hunger and violence, you have to open your eyes to this America!” In his films he not only wanted to show violence, but also to analyze its origins.

The focus is often on people who stand between two worlds or two epochs. This is already evident in his early work Sacramento , which tells the story of two old Westerners and is considered a classic of the late Western . This becomes particularly clear in his other late wests, Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid and The Wild Bunch, in which, on the one hand, the border between the USA and Mexico is discussed, and, on the other hand, modernity (with cars, machine guns, politicians, law and capital) against the Freedom of the individual is provided. The adaptation to modern times usually ends tragically for the protagonists. In his perhaps most personal, but commercially most unsuccessful film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia , it is an American pianist in Mexico who stands between cultures and fails. Especially the works The Wild Bunch and Sacramento made Peckinpah the director of the swan song for the era of the western. His contribution is often underestimated in view of the famous Spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci .

Peckinpah also implemented the equally strong western theme of morals in his road movies The Getaway and Convoy . To do this, he used the visual language of the Western, in particular the slow-motion and masculine manners that are typical for himself . Thanks to these two films, Peckinpah's work is a typical example of the genre relationship between westerns and road movies .

Visual style

Peckinpah's films are characteristic in their handling of time and their staging of violence. Peckinpah shows violence very explicitly, often in slow motion and close-up. The scenes are often complex and composed of many individual shots. An example of this is the showdown in The Wild Bunch , which consists of several hundred shots. This style still shapes famous directors like John Woo and Quentin Tarantino today.

"Stock Company"

Sam Peckinpah has at times been referred to as the "bastard son of John Ford " mainly because of his cinematic work. Like his role model, Peckinpah surrounded himself with a fixed circle of actors who repeatedly appeared in his productions, the director's so-called “stock company”. Even in the years of his TV westerns, he began putting together a group of actors who were connected to him.

These included James Coburn , who initially played a supporting role in Major Dundee and later played the title role in Pat Garrett (1973) and Wehrmacht Sergeant Steiner (1977). Equally famous was Warren Oates, who played important supporting roles in the three great Peckinpah westerns of the 1960s and then shone as Bennie (1974) in Alfredo Garcia . Also worth mentioning are LQ Jones in as many as five westerns (1962, 1965, 1969, 1970 and 1973) as well as RG Armstrong , whom Peckinpah cast three times as a religious fanatic. In addition, Kris Kristofferson often played (as Billy The Kid as well as in Alfredo Garcia and in Convoy ) and Strother Martin or Ernest Borgnine , David Warner and Gig Young .

The same colleagues always worked behind the camera: as composer Jerry Fielding, who received two Academy Award nominations, as cameramen Lucien Ballard and John Coquillon , in editing Lou Lombardo , Roger Spottiswoode and Robert L. Wolfe , as personal assistant and friend Katherine Haber and as Writer, producer and assistant Gordon T. Dawson . Towards the end of his career, the regular cast was gradually replaced. The Western Stock Company last played in 1973 in Pat Garrett Chasing Billy the Kid .

Filmography

R: director, P: production, D: actor, DA: screenwriter, CD: collaboration on the script

literature

  • Frank Arnold, Ulrich von Berg: Sam Peckinpah - An Outlaw in Hollywood . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-548-36533-7 .
  • David Weddle: “If they move… kill'em!” The life and times of Sam Peckinpah . Grove Press, New York 1994, ISBN 0-8021-1546-2 .
  • Stephen Prince: Savage Cinema - Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies . University of Texas Press, Austin 1998, ISBN 0-292-76582-7 .
  • Paul Seydor : Peckinpah: The Western Films - A Reconsideration . University of Illinois Press, Urbana / Chicago 1999, ISBN 0-252-06835-1 .
  • Jörn Glasenapp : Beyond the Rio Grande: Mythical structures in the American Mexican west. In: Manfred Engelbert et al. (Hrsg.): Markets, media, mediators. Case studies on the intercultural networking of literature and film . Wallstein, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-415-3 , pp. 355-386.
  • Mike Siegel : Passion & Poetry - Sam Peckinpah in Pictures . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89602-472-8 .
  • Michael Bliss (Ed.): Peckinpah Today: New Essays on the Films of Sam Peckinpah. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale 2012, ISBN 978-0-8093-3106-2 .

Trivia

In My Name Is Nobody , in a cemetery scene, one of the tombstones has the name Sam Peckinpah. He had previously refused to work with Sergio Leone on this film.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edwin T Brace, Atha Peckenpaugh Brace: Peckinpaughs Pickenpaughs Beckenbaughs Peckinpahs and Peckenpaughs: Descendants of Johann Adam & Anna Maria Beckenbach. Gateway Press, 1975.
  2. ↑ Benjamin Maack: Crazy Flops in Film History: Schaulaufen der Rohrkrepierer ; Spiegel-Online “one day”, March 16, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Peckinpah, Sam
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peckinpah, David Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Fresno , California , United States
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1984
Place of death Inglewood , California , United States