Over three Saturday evenings in March, we will celebrate the centennial of Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984), one of the most-discussed, and ultimately, most mythologized directors in film history. Our three film series focuses on Peckinpah’s Westerns, the genre in which the writer and director felt most at home. Peckinpah frequently fell afoul of meddling studio executives who recut his movies for theatrical release and our screenings will include Peckinpah’s cut of his most famous film, The Wild Bunch, as well as a more complex and fascinating extended version of the director’s once-mutilated Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Peckinpah’s penchant for realistic and painful violence is countered by the lyrical and often comic Western The Ballad of Cable Hogue, shown here in an original Technicolor 35mm print.
SAT., 3/22, 7 p.m.
PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID
USA | 1973 | DCP | 117 min.
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, Bob Dylan
In Peckinpah’s haunting Western death poem, Kristofferson is Billy the Kid, the fiery gunslinger who parts ways with his companion-turned-lawman, Pat Garrett (Coburn). After Billy busts out of a New Mexico jail, a group of powerful cattlemen hire Garrett to assemble a posse and track the bandit down, along with his gang (including Dylan, who wrote the film’s music). Recently reconstructed by a team that includes original editor Roger Spottiswoode, this special edition comes closest to realizing Peckinpah’s vision than any of the previously released versions.