STACK #141 Jul 2016

EXTRAS

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in the ruthless editing process, it was, however, always an ambitiously flawed

project that was never totally resolved in both

script and shooting. Charlton Heston identified what was probably a crucial problem with the production when he wrote in his journal, “Looking back, I think we all wanted to make a different sort of film. Bresler and Columbia wanted a standard cowboy and Indian story. I wanted a film about the most traumatic event in American history – the civil war. And Sam... well Sam wanted the film he later got to make”.  Many film writers have

“This time we do it right!” Poster for The Wild Bunch

dialogue from this 1969 groundbreaking western masterpiece serves as a perfect metaphor for both movies. Following a botched bank robbery, a gang of outlaws methodically plan their next job – to hijack a US Army train on the Tex/Mex border. As they prepare to execute the plan, their leader turns to them and says, “This time we do it right!” Unlike the debacle that befell his Major Dundee, by writing and directing The Wild Bunch , Sam Peckinpah most definitely – this time – did it right.

perceived that Major Dundee was practically a dry run for Peckinpah’s next film, which he directed three years later – the one that elevated him into the pantheon of great American filmmakers. A line of

Major Dundee film poster for its original US release

End Notes

in 2005. The restored thirteen minutes plus a new musical score was a significant improvement that added some clarity and cohesion to the story that Sam had originally intended to tell onscreen. Hardly a “director’s cut” but nevertheless, for the many aficionados of the film, it was a welcome glimpse of what could have been.

(1971), Peckinpah received an unexpected invitation to return to Columbia to reassemble Major Dundee into his original version. Re-score, re-dub – the whole nine yards. Sam’s exacting reply to Columbia Pictures is unprintable here. However, some 20 years after Peckinpah’s death, an extended version of Major Dundee was given a theatrical and DVD release

Throughout his movie career “Bloody Sam”, as the media later tagged him, would remain a recalcitrant filmmaker who, through his inherent hatred of the “movie money men”, was always destined to clash with studio management. And yet, following the enormous worldwide critical and box-office success of both The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs

a castrated epic ruined by colossal studio interference

and directly led to MGM unfairly firing him from The Cincinnati Kid, on which he had begun pre-production. Suddenly finding himself out on the street, he desperately began phoning around the film studios in search of employment. But when no one returned any of his calls, he realised that he had been effectively blacklisted. Sam Peckinpah would remain persona non grata in Hollywood for the next three years. Yet when the film was released in Europe, it received a much kinder reception from both reviewers and audiences than it had in the US. Although European critics identified it as flawed, they admired its undeniable grandeur and lauded Peckinpah’s obvious talent as a visionary filmmaker. Over the following years, Major Dundee entered into film legend as “a castrated epic ruined by colossal studio interference.” Although the film certainly lost its cohesion

The extended version, released in 2005

JULY 2016

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