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Sam Peckinpah |
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Director / Screenwriter |
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1925 - 1984 |
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Born February 21,
Fresno, California, USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA
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Key Genres:
Western,
Revisionist Western, Action,
Action Thriller |
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Key
Collaborators: Lucien Ballard (Cinematographer), Jerry
Fielding (Composer), Ted Haworth (Production Designer), L.Q.
Jones (Character Player), Warren Oates
(Leading Character Player), Ben Johnson (Leading Character Player), John
Coquillon (Cinematographer), Slim
Pickens (Character Player), R.G. Armstrong (Character Player),
Roger Spottiswoode
(Editor) |
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Recommended: Ride
the High Country (1962)*, The Wild Bunch (1969)*, The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett and Billy
the Kid (1973)*, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)* |
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Worth
a Look: The
Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Straw Dogs (1971)*, The Killer Elite
(1975), Cross of Iron (1977) |
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Approach with Caution:
The Deadly Companions (1961), Major Dundee (1965), Junior Bonner (1972),
The Osterman Weekend (1983) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
The
Films of Sam Peckinpah ] [
Last of the Desperadoes:
Dueling with Sam Peckinpah ] [
The
High Hat Feature ] [
Authors Den Article (2004) ] [
Guardian
Article (2008) ] |
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Books: [
If
They Move...Kill 'Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah ] [
Peckinpah:
The Western Films - A Reconsideration ] [
Sam
Peckinpah's Feature Films ] [
Bloody
Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah ]
[
Peckinpah: Portrait in Montag ] [
Entered His House Justified: The Making of the Films of Sam Peckinpah
] [
Justified Lives: Morality & Narrative in the Films of Sam Peckinpah
] [
This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life: Violence and Utopia in the Films
of Sam Peckinpah ] [
Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies ] [
Peckinpah's Women: A Reappraisal of the Portrayal of Women in the Period
Westerns of Sam Peckinpah ] [
The Films of Sam Peckinpah ] |
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"His
preoccupation with the omnipresence of violence and the
ambivalence of morality made for complex characters, never sure
of their identity or their moral standing. But there was nothing
ambiguous about Peckinpah's own view of man as an ignoble beast,
though many questioned his insistence that the gratuitous gore
in his films was in truth an expression of the director's quest
for a better world." -
(The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) |
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"American director
who has made some of the most exciting gun duels and action
scenes ever put on screen. Nor was it all blood and thunder: the
human spirit was never better celebrated than in some of
Peckinpah's early work. Unfortunately, after The Wild Bunch,
things did not develop quite as one would have hoped." -
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Illustrated Guide to Film Directors, 1999) |
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"The
more that emerges on Peckinpah the man, the clearer it is that
he was in brazen pursuit of his own fantasies - and expecting
others to pay for it. A very dangerous man, because he could be
so damn good. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid makes
Clint Eastwood look like a
carpetbagger." -
David
Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)
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"The dying of the American West has been the subject of his best
efforts (Ride the High Country, 62; The Wild Bunch,
69; The Ballad of Cable Hogue, 70). Lately, however, he's
taken to projects containing mindless violence, limp plots, and
surface characters (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,
75; The Killer Elite, 75)." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"I want
to be able to make westerns like
Akira Kurosawa makes westerns." -
Sam Peckinpah |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we
haven't seen include
Convoy (1978). |
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