MovieChat Forums > Rio Lobo (1970) Discussion > Hawks Jealous of wild bunch

Hawks Jealous of wild bunch

posted 17 years ago by jargonaut73
7 replies | jump to latest

I saw that Howard Hawks said that he didn't care for the Wild Bunch. What he said he didn't like was the slow motion scenes that Peckinpah used. However everything else about the film is VERY Hawksian. The focus on the values of a core group of men, The tension in the beginning between the men but then in the end they come together and are willing to die for each other. I think Hawks really saw the wild bunch as his kind of film but tried to find things about peckinpah that made him (Hawks) better. Although Hawks is my favorite director I think that his criticism is unfair. Peckinpah ALSO uses the fast cut action scene just as well as Howard. I also think that Howards use of the train scene in Rio Lobo was his attempt to make his own Wild Bunch. Don't get me wrong though......Rio Lobo is HIGHLY underrated!

[–] willson_x 15 years ago

That's funny, cause I'm a Huge fan of Sam Peckinpah. He's my favorite director. The Wild Bunch is.. Nuff' said. The Wild bunch was a monument, Hawks... was... good? but not as good as peckinpah. You lose.
Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah
you suck! you suck balls! hows that feel? can you feel the pain?
Hey, do you want some tickets to the North Pole? cause you're gonna need some ice for that BURN

[–] jargonaut73 15 years ago

You are correct about the Wild Bunch which is my favorite western. But really it's the only thing that Peckinpah ever did that's worth anything. All his other films are crap that only Quentin Tarantino could love. (though Quentin is a fellow Hawks fan....sorry Quentin).

But The Wild Bunch is probably the only perfect western. And I say that as quite a John Wayne fan.

[–] mazaldivar 15 years ago

"But really it's the only thing that Peckinpah ever did that's worth anything. All his other films are crap"

Well, that's just not true.
Peckinpah's other westerns (with the exception of DEADLY COMPANIONS) are just as good, if not BETTER, than THE WILD BUNCH.

PAT GARRET AND BILLY THE KID
RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY
BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (which is tied with PAT GARRET AND BILLY THE KID) as my favorite bloody Sam picture.
Both are flawed but still manage to be some of the greatest westerns of all time.

As far as his non western stuff, well, I haven't seen everything he's had to offer but BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA is something of a masterpiece.
And IRON CROSS is a solid war picture.

A 3-D Spaghetti Western rereleased to theatres cominatyanoir3d.com Comin' soon!

[–] pjwoodall1 14 years ago

I met Stella Stevens a few years ago, and she was fun to talk to at an antiques and collectibles show. She was charitable re Peckinpah's "demons" and enjoyed working with Strother Martin. In his review of Hannie Caulder, Larry McMurtry said "nobody can be more repulsive that Strother Martin at his best."

[–] IceboxMovies 14 years ago

You have to remember: Hawks had very limited taste. He claims that he didn't like Fred Zinnemann's High Noon because it violated his code of honor regarding the "good sheriff". How do we know he didn't REALLY just dislike the film because Carl Foreman, who wrote the screenplay, was a former Communist? Hawks also claimed that he didn't like The Godfather because he thought he himself had done the material better with Scarface. It's like Hawks didn't even bother to examine Coppola's film.

Of course Hawks' criticism of The Wild Bunch is ridiculous. If we were to compare Rio Lobo to The Wild Bunch, well, it's no contest. Besides, with Rio Lobo, Hawks knew (and admitted) that he wasn't making a very impressive film. By that point in his career he was becoming an angry old man. Not that there's any reason to complain: he'd earned the right to be, after a long and frutiful career.

"What I don't understand is how we're going to stay alive this winter."

[–] riogarhed 9 years ago

Yes, he would criticize The Godfather as "an old picture," The Wild Bunch as "an old picture," implying that they were mere rehashes of familiar plots or in some other way derivative. Directorial vision seemed not to enter his discussion of younger directors as though it was a virtue only he and his peers had. He spoke as though the death rate in a violent movie was a rational measure of its worth. For instance, he said he "killed off" more people in the first ten minutes of Scarface than you'd find in the first ten minutes of its remake or The Godfather. Perhaps he simply thought the young filmgoers of the 1970s were too easily impressed with screen violence in contemporary films and felt by that foolish standard he could impress them over to his side of the generational divide. But of course he couldn't.

[–] Rolltide (964) 3 years ago

The wild bunch is one of the top 10 films ever made. Most directors should be jealous.