The Wild Bunch
Mar 13 - Mar 19, 2009
(Sam Peckinpah, USA, 1969, 35mm, 145 min)
Opening night introduced by film critic Robert Horton
Master director Sam Peckinpah’s classic tale of aging desperados determined to forge one last stand is a feat of technical and artistic genius. The film’s extended scenes of orgiastic violence, its complex and lyrical montage, and its slow motion camerawork extend the work of such directors as Kurosawa and Arthur Penn, and its extraordinary cast of weathered tough guys—a gang of vanquished matinee kings—can be seen as an embodiment of the studio system’s decline.
About Robert Horton
Robert Horton writes about film for The Herald (Everett, Wash.) and appears weekly on KUOW-FM radio and the Seattle Channel’s Art Zone In Studio. He is the author of Billy Wilder: Interviews (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2001) and Frankenstein (London: Wallflower Press, 2009), and his obituary on the acting career of Frank Sinatra was selected for the Best American Movie Writing 1999 omnibus (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999). He is a frequent contributor to Film Comment magazine; his work has also appeared in Newsday, The Chicago Reader, and The Seattle Times. He helped run the Seattle Film Society, teaches film classes, and appears annually at the Port Townsend Film Festival. He has been hosting the monthly Magic Lantern program at the Frye since February 2005. roberthorton.wordpress.com