...haven't completely lost their @#$% over being portrayed as only sex objects in this film!
Of course, tons of women use their sexuality to get rich husbands, etc. So, it would be a bit hypocritical!
I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP! - Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood
"The feminists." That's cute.
Fact is, there are plenty of women in this who weren't portrayed as you describe.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
Surprised That the Feminists...haven't completely lost their @#$% over being portrayed as only sex objects in this film!
It might help to understand the movie as picaresque wherein the protagonists are likable rogues, bohemians, adventurers, rapscallions, which is what the root word picaro means.
That's why I threw in the word "likable" to describe the picaros. It seems that Eastwood's character, Thunderbolt, wasn't just hiding out as a preacher, but (I'm assuming) seriously trying to turn over a new leaf. And Lightfoot showed character and warmth when he expressed his desire for simple friendship with Thunderbolt in the latter part of the first act.
shareNo, I understand your point and agree with it completely, but I was thinking of *other* films where those people whose story we see may not even be nearly as likeable as Lightfoot or Thunderbolt, but we pull for them anyway.
I didn’t misunderstand you; I was just applying what you said to the movie. It's a good point. After all, if the viewer doesn't like the protagonists in some way -- picaros or not -- you naturally lose interest in the story.
This is why I was never a big fan of "The Wild Bunch," even though I can enjoy a lot of it if I watch it: Practically every character is an immoral or amoral dirtbag (remember the first line by Pike Bishop: “If they move, kill ’em”?). Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) has the audacity to repeatedly call the members of his posse "gutter trash" and the like. Well, what is he? A freed-on-condition prisoner who was once a member of the very outlaw scum he's chasing. At least the posse members -- lowlifes that they may be -- are on the right side of the law. What hypocrisy.
It’s true that a lot of dialogue/drama is devoted to character development, but who cares about a bunch of criminal scumbags? How can you devote "character development" to people who have no character? That's the problem with "The Wild Bunch" (for me anyway).
It’s true that a lot of dialogue/drama is devoted to character development, but who cares about a bunch of criminal scumbags? How can you devote "character development" to people who have no character? That's the problem with "The Wild Bunch" (for me anyway).
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That sure was at once "the problem" and "the point" of The Wild Bunch when it came out, wasn't it? Critics were astounded by all the slo-mo bloodshed in the film, but ALSO astounded by how it posited as "heroes" a group of extremely hateful and murderous men. After all the movie opens with a shootout between "the good guys"(the posse) and "the bad guys"(the Wild Bunch bank robbers) in which the people who mainly get killed are the innocent bystanders who literally walk right into the middle of the battle. And all the way at the end, during the climactic gunbattle(a bloody doozy), Ernest "McHale's Navy" Borgnine grabs an innocent woman and uses her as a physical shield -- she is killed.
I personally felt that "Vietnam" was offered up too often as a rationale for these downbeat violent movies of the era -- but The Wild Bunch did capture the idea that in "total war," innocents die, and likely innocents die first(they are unarmed.)
Still...and yet...when they make that final march to their doom, the four Wild Bunch men are a sort of twisted group of heroes...going to rescue their tortured friend, taking on 200 and dying in the process. The movie set out to say that, even amongst the most savage and criminal of men, a certain "code of honor" separates the bad from the worst. Plus...they hired Handsome Bill Holden and Plump Smiler Ernest Borgnine to play the two main Bunchers. A "sympathy level" kicked right in.
There's no transforming The Wild Bunch into "regular heroes," but in the year of its making, The Wild Bunch made the case that in a violent world gone mad, perhaps this was the best we could do.
Meanwhile, back at Clint Eastwood.
I think it is interesting to note that his stardom came about very much as Golden Era Hollywood was fading out and R-rated 70's Hollywood was coming in.
Eastwood was a handsome, tall muscular man , with a soft voice...but he played a LOT of amoral, murderous, sexually carnivorous men in his first 15 years of stardom. He was a "R-rated star," not for the kids, not for the family. Mainly for men. Though I think some ladies fantasized about his "tough love." I knew some.
Take a look: his Man With No Name shot men in the back and killed indiscriminately. His High Plains Drifter started that picture raping a woman prior to killing a bunch of men. In The Beguiled, Eastwood seduces a house full of women and pays a price for his betrayal of their love. In Play Misty for Me, he's a womanizer who meets the Psycho Ex from Hell(well before Fatal Attraction). His spy in The Eiger Sanction beds women black and white alike, and sadistically leaves a gay villain out in the middle of the desert to die of thirst and heat(he does rescue the gay man's little poodle, however.) In "Every Which Way But Loose," when not engaging in bare knuckle boxing bouts that brain-damage other men for money, he picks fights in bars just for the fun of it. And of course in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, he's a criminal.
And even when he was on the side of the law -- five times as Dirty Harry -- Eastwood was a cop who rarely put the cuffs on a suspect. He shot 'em. He stabbed 'em. He beat them to death with his bare hands. He HARPOONED them(The Dead Pool.)
Right at the beginning of his star period -- in the WWII thriller Where Eagles Dare -- Clint let Richard Burton have all the lines while he silently shot, stabbed and machine-gunned Nazis by the score. Eastwood was almost a "murder robot' in that one.
In other words, Clint Eastwood spent most of his money years as...not a very nice guy.
But we loved him.
Well said about "The Wild Bunch," but "Handsome Bill Holden and Plump Smiler Ernest Borgnine" or not, I couldn't find munch sympathy for the group of outlaws. Sure, it's commendable that they're going to try to save their captured buddy and they know they'll probably die trying, but it doesn't change the fact that they're criminal scum fully willing to let innocents die in their illicit pursuit of lucre. Besides, part of them wanted to die because they knew the wild west days were over.
Eastwood was a handsome, tall muscular man
Well said about "The Wild Bunch," but "Handsome Bill Holden and Plump Smiler Ernest Borgnine" or not, I couldn't find munch sympathy for the group of outlaws. Sure, it's commendable that they're going to try to save their captured buddy and they know they'll probably die trying, but it doesn't change the fact that they're criminal scum fully willing to let innocents die in their illicit pursuit of lucre. Besides, part of them wanted to die because they knew the wild west days were over.
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All true and -- part of the allure and status of The Wild Bunch at the time. These were "beyond anti-heroes," we were meant to see them as extremely dangerous and deadly men. As with Bonnie and Clyde in that movie, there is a bit of the psycho to the protagonists. Their code of honor is within a very twisted view of the world.
I think I was drawn to The Wild Bunch at the time for the same "immature" reasons I was drawn to Psycho(which manifested on TV broadcast in 1967 only two years before The Wild Bunch) and Bonnie and Clyde(which came out IN 1967): the violence, pure and simple, which made all three of these movies horror movies of a sort (yes Psycho could be seen that way from the get-go, but it was really a thriller with horror overtongs.)
With these films as "forbidden fruit" the bad guys (and gal) who led them stood out to me. But not as heroes. That said, there was honor in how the Bunch went down, savagely as they implemented it(Borgnine using that women as a human shield unto her death.)
BTW, as I post this, Netflix (or somebody) is running a movie starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as the cops who hunted Bonnie and Clyde down to death(Denver Pyle played one of them in the 1967 movie.) Its rather full circle: B and C are now the scum that the heroic police must take down. I'll be seeing this.
Eastwood was a handsome, tall muscular man
Handsome and tall, yes; muscular, no. I'm not saying he was weak or a wimp, but he wasn't muscular. Steve Reeves, Stallone and Arnie are muscular.
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Well, maybe they are muscleBOUND and Clint's just muscular. But I won't fight to the death on this(or anything.)
I thing I am thinking of the build that Eastwood had, shirtless,in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and the Orangtan movies where he fought in bare knuckle bouts. Also as the Marine in Heartbreak Ridge. Muscular ENOUGH, though his lanky torso seemed to predict the old man's body he would soon have.
RE: "in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, he's a criminal"
True, but it's clear at the beginning that he seriously tried to turn over a new leaf by becoming a Christian minister, which presumes that he went to some kind of bible school or seminary for a season, otherwise the officials of that particular assembly/sect wouldn't allow him to wear clerical clothing and preach.
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I guess I forgot that the preacher outfit and gig were for real and that he was trying to go straight. I recall also thinking that he took the gig to "hide out" from that guy who shows up to shoot him. I dunno.
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It's only after meeting Lightfoot (Bridges) that he's steered back to his old lifestyle and eventually reunites with the old gang for one last big heist. Since most viewers can relate to this one way or another -- turning over a new leaf and eventually tempted back into folly -- he wins sympathy.
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All true. A few years later a movie called "Straight Time" would show ex-convict Dustin Hoffman trying to find a job and housing and succeeding for awhile until an overzealous parole officer ends all of that. Soon, Hoffman MUST steal again(though we learn that some of his buddies HAVE to steal -- a regular life is suffocating.)
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Besides, he's stealing money, not killing innocents
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A key element. As I've noted, Charley Varrick starts distastefully with the killing of innocents (and two bank robbers, including the leader's wife) and it was hard to root for Varrick even with Walter Matthau playing him.
In Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, one guy gets realistically bopped on the head by Jeff Bridges, and the gang terrorize the safe owner and his family but I guess...no murders.