Word: closing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...pretty patterns which Ballard was allowed to establish in True Grit are absent in The Wild Bunch since, unlike the Hathaway film, Sam Peckinpah has directed half to three-quarters of this epic in close-shot. The major exception to this rule of composition comes in the slow-motion orgies of violence which punctuate the film at various crucial points...
...style of The Wild Bunch is one which I have found myself opposed to almost as much as the set of values implied in True Grit, but here Peckinpah has forced a reevaluation. For once all those close-ups work...
...Wild Bunch is the story of a group of men whose only communal experience is killing. They whose only communal experience is killing. They are always shown alone (hence the preponderance of close-ups), divorced not only from their surroundings but from each other. Devoid of any real personal identity, they live only for the moments when they are "in action," presumably revelling in the beauty of spurting blood...
...Wild Bunch is at its worst when it is either moralizing (dialogue which nearly screams "Vietnam, Vietnam" at the audience) or when it is tentative (nostalgic close shots superimposed over the final track). But for the most part Peckinpah is honest both to his audience and himself. Rather than attempting to establish a mythical west, Sam Peckinpah has given us a segment of his own world, and it is a far more vital one indeed...
...knowing if The Hostage comes to anything like "approximating the Irish character, "but that really doesn't matter since, in any case, The Hostage is a play which refuses to be judged by any consistent set of standards. If it must be genre-ized, it would probably come fairly close to being a bawdy, Gaelic Kaufman and Hart with a bit of Brecht thrown in--a description which however enticing it might look as a publicity blurb, still ignores the fundamental fact that this play is basically an extended music hall entertainment...