First Impressions (Sam Peckinpah Edition)
The Getaway (1972, dir. Sam Peckinpah)
Steve McQueen is the coolest guy in the world. That’s not opinion; it’s science. Red States, Blue States; Christians, Atheists; Israelites, Palestinians – they all unite on this one known truth. If you want cool, you want McQueen. Of course, being a chump, I’d never seen a Steve McQueen movie before. Sure, I’ve rented Bullitt from the library once or twice, but I’ve never found myself “in the mood.” So it wasn’t until The Getaway that I’ve been able to see McQueen in action, and it’s only really under the guise of watching some Sam Peckinpah, one of the great cinematic misanthropes of our time. Oh well. Killing two birds with one stone, I guess.
Watching The Getaway I feel like I’m getting a bit of both worlds between McQueen’s smoldering coolness and Peckinpah’s ugly, compelling nihilism. The Getaway tells the story of a recently re-united married couple (McQueen and a cute as a button, but fairly wooden Ali McGraw) on the run from the law and several different baddies after a botched bank robbery. This is not new territory. Hell, it wasn’t particularly new territory in 1972 either. Bonnie & Clyde already did the anti-hero couple on the run a few years earlier and that motif has been repeated a handful of times every year since (the best was probably yet to come with Terence Malick’s 1973 debut, Badlands). But still, Peckinpah is an idiosyncratic director and he brings a few interesting tweaks to the formula with The Getaway.
One of the most intriguing things that Peckinpah does with The Getaway is that he goes out of his way to undermine McQueen’s smooth, impenetrable image. McQueen flop sweats, worries, beats his wife, falls on the ground and, perhaps most shocking of all, drives like utter shit, fishtailing like a maniac down every residential road whether he needs to or not. McQueen is almost certainly not abiding by the Tao of Steve. It’s an interesting choice for both director and actor, mutating images of masculinity and confidence, making the leading man, still stoic and humorless, fallible and prone to embarrassment. It’s a bold, possibly progressive move for a mere heist picture.
Like any good Peckinpah movie, there’s a lot of violence to be found here (especially at the film’s climax where the body count escalates at a steady clip), but through all the blood, the film’s most shocking moments (and Peckinpah is a filmmaker with a penchant for shock value) come when McQueen puts down his gun and raises his hand to McGraw. Peckinpah has certainly dabbled in male-on-female violence before, but here we’re seeing our protagonist – and most importantly, the revered Steve McQueen – losing control on the lovely McGraw. Sure, it’s in response to an act of betrayal, but it’s unflinchingly brutal and ugly. We don’t want to cheer for our hero, anymore. Later, McQueen cold-cocks Sally Struthers in the face and, presumably, all is forgiven. I actually let out an audible gasp/guffaw that carried as much approval as shock when it happened. Funny how that works. Funny how Peckinpah works.
Of course, when your protagonist is essentially a murderous, wife-beating bank robber, you need to really go the extra mile in establishing an effective antagonist. Peckinpah achieves that by establishing a parallel storyline involving rogue bank robber Rudy (a snarling, unsavory Al Lettieri). Rudy, like McQueen’s Doc McCoy, is on the road, shacking up with his cuckolding hostage (Struthers in a disconcerting role as a sexpot) and spreading nastiness and violence wherever he goes. McQueen and McGraw are murderous bad guys, but Lettieri and Struthers are really disgusting. Or something like that.
Anyway, as nasty and ugly as this film is and as illogical as so much of this movie is (Roger Ebert’s original 1972 review is a masterpiece of poking holes in a film’s internal logic), this is really a pretty terrific movie. The opening sequence, with its quick cuts and industrial rhythm, is one of the finest opening sequences I’ve ever seen – experimental and eye catching; the subtle chase on the train between McQueen and the petty thief is masterful; and the actually-kind-of-subversive ending (seriously, watch other movies of the same vain – they all end the same) featuring the glorious Slim Pickens is terrific. The film at some points is just another gritty action flick for McQueen fanatics (although there really isn’t a car chase to speak of – perhaps a deliberate move by Peckinpah), but it’s Peckinpah’s cinematic eye, subversive touches and defiant misanthropy that make it something a little bit more interesting.
Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974, dir. Sam Peckinpah)
While Peckinpah goes out of his way to make McQueen as unsympathetic as possible in The Getaway, that unpleasantness gets a steroid injection through Warren Oates in Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. While McQueen plays a temperamental, chilly, insecure, bank robbing husband with a wife whose unfaithfulness proves his only gateway to his freedom, Oates is a snarling, muttering, disgusting drunk with a prostitute girlfriend and no apparent will to live. McQueen’s vanity-free performance is surprising because of the image we have of the actor, but Oates goes the extra mile or 50 with his slovenliness.
But let’s get to the plot, which is a whole hell of a lot more fun than the “bank robbing couple on the run” trope that’s used in The Getaway. A jefe, incensed that the titular character has impregnated his daughter, demands that his head be brought to his doorstep in return for a cool million. A pair of Americans set out to find Garcia, but opt to hand the job over to another lowlife for a fraction of the reward money. Why not let some jerk do the dirty work? Enter Bennie (Warren Oates) – an alcoholic gringo who has holed up in a Mexican lounge/brothel, playing piano and living in a constant state of inebriation (also, his prostitute girlfriend has given him crabs). Bennie doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot going for him, so the prospect of making some money is enticing, especially since Bennie’s girlfriend, who was an old flame of Garcia’s, has informed him that the targeted man is no longer living – making the grisly task a whole lot less sinister. What the two Americans don’t know won’t hurt them, figures Bennie, who sets off with his girlfriend to find Garcia’s corpse and return the head for a few thousand bucks.
Of course, that plan all goes to shit as different groups look to double cross him, some random baddies (including a young Kris Kristofferson) look to rape his girl and the body count begins to rise and rise and rise. And rise. Even when there isn’t a mass amount of bloodshed taking place on the screen, the overriding death, filth and depravity casts a pall on the film as Oates rides around muttering incoherently to the fly-ridden decapitated head. There are obvious allusions to Hamlet being made here, with an eerie sense that an actual two-way conversation is taking place between Bennie and the head (“B-B-B-Bennie and the headddddddd”).
Oates’ Bennie, while a great deal less savory than McQueen’s Doc, is a real anti-hero worth rooting for, as he plows through obstacle after obstacle, body after body, to get what’s (I guess) rightly his. But during the process Bennie loses whatever hope he has for a meaningful life. Even a $1 million windfall is rendered useless after the gauntlet Peckinpah puts him through. Even in success, Bennie loses. While his survival instincts are impressive, it probably wouldn’t make too much difference if Bennie lives to enjoy his riches or not. The damage has been done. Peckinpah, of course, is as hateful as ever, exacting all sorts of unpleasantness on humanity (even during the non-violent parts) and Bennie is both his greatest victim and his willing accomplice. It’s grimy, greasy stuff, with consummate character actor Oates sputtering, wheezing and bleeding all over the place, but it’s quintessential Peckinpah. And that means it’s pretty great.