Peckinpah Today: New Essays on the Films of Sam Peckinpah

Dawn and Dusk

164 Dawn and Dusk Gérard Camy translated by Jean-Paul Gabert The Deadly Companions and The Osterman Weekend are respectively the first attempt and the ultimate work of an eventful cinematographic career, filled with masterpieces (Ride the High Country, Straw Dogs, The Wild Bunch, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Cross of Iron) and punctuated by Homeric battles with producers and studio companies (Major Dundee, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Convoy). Sam Peckinpah, always on the periphery and rebellious toward Hollywood ideology, is still without doubt one of the most important American directors. Throughout the fourteen films he directed, he has unfolded a reflection of the utmost depth, on both a thematic and an aesthetic level. With his six Westerns, he actively takes part in the radical questioning of the genre and of its mythology. With seven of his other films, whose action takes place between 1970 and 1983, he casts a ferocious and disillusioned glance at today’s America. Finally, in Cross of Iron, he explores the aspects of violence in its complete social dimension by diving into the inferno of World War II. Peckinpah’s work proceeds from a sensitivity in which vision and passion, romanticism and irony coexist. The world he depicts echoes his own contradictions. Good emulates Evil, and ambiguity rules. While he denounces the individual competition that is constitutive of capitalism, he keeps entire faith in man. When he debunks the absurdities of the American Dream, he often stops on the way to indulge in the romantic illusion of a final (and usually desperate) adventure. By analyzing the two films that frame his film work, my aim is not to measure the distance between them but rather, with regard to the first one, to point out the first hints at his future reflections that are more than just inklings, even if Peckinpah railed against the studios that didn’t allow him 165 Dawn and Dusk his final cut. In the second one, I try to figure out the elements that make it his final achievement, albeit not his best film (because it is not), as the movie unveils his vision of cinema, life, and the world in light of his previous thirteen experiences. The Deadly Companions: Dawn Around 1870, a former Union officer nicknamed Yellowleg (because of a yellow stripe sewn on his army trousers) saves a man about to be hanged. The latter happens to be Turk, a man who had tried to scalp Yellowleg while he was lying, wounded, on one of the battlefields of the Civil War. Yellowleg joins Turk and his friend Billy Keplinger to rob a bank in Gila City, but also—and above all—to quench his thirst for revenge against Turk. However , a gang of outlaws robs the bank before Yellowleg and his companions ever enter it. The robbers, leaving the bank, draw the trio’s fire. During the shooting, Yellowleg accidentally kills Mead, the young son of Kit Tilden, a widow and saloon hostess. Shocked, Kit plans to leave for Siringo in order to bury her son in his father’s grave. Remorseful, Yellowleg follows her in spite of her objections, and he forces his two companions to come with him. One night, Billy tries to rape Kit. Yellowleg interferes and makes him leave. Turk follows him, and both of them go back to rob the bank. Yellowleg and Kit go on to face the dangers of a long trip across Indian territory, and they end up, exhausted, in the ghost town of Siringo. Billy and Turk, following their successful robbery, brutally reappear. The three men confront one another in a gunfight. Billy shoots Turk, who then kills him from behind. Yellowleg rushes on Turk to scalp him, but Kit stops him in the act. Gila City’s militia, chasing the two robbers, arrives. Delirious, Turk is arrested, Mead is buried, and Kit and Yellowleg leave together, having found the path to love through this adventure. At the request of Brian Keith (the same actor who played Dave Blassingame in the TV series The Westerner and who now took on the role of Yellowleg), Peckinpah was hired in 1961 by Pathe America and Carousel Productions to make his first feature film after a long career in television. He accepted, hoping to improve the mediocre script that A. S. Fleischman had written. Unfortunately, the production didn’t allow Peckinpah to change anything. He then made it plain and clear that there would be nothing personal...