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Peckinpah's Mellowist Movie; Family Perfectly Cast

posted 17 years ago by ecarle
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Sam Peckinpah's legend burned quick and fast in the years after "The Wild Bunch" (1969.)

That movie had full budgetary support from Warners and was rich in powerful, violent imagery, nowhere greater than in its spectacularly bloody gunbattle climax.

"The Wild Bunch" wasn't a huge hit (neither Westerns nor gory Westerns travelled too far, Sergio Leone excluded), but Peckinpah looked like a true auteur, and he seemed required to offer up two stylistic touches: bloody ultra-violence and a "slo-mo mix" of various camera speeds.

After the lyrical but tragic "Cable Hogue" and the ultra-violent modern thriller "Straw Dogs," Peckinpah changed gears again in 1971, making two films with superstar Steve McQueen for 1972 release, back-to-back.

The second one was "the big one" -- the ultra-violent crime thriller "The Getaway", a Christmas release with McQueen, MacGraw and plenty o' bang-bang.

But the first McQueen/Peckinpah picture stands as a sweet detour for Peckinpah -- not from lyrical non-sexual man-love (Ride The High Country and The Wild Bunch had covered that ground well), but from violence.

Meet Junior Bonner.

"Junior Bonner" is a nice piece of early seventies filmmaking, complete with a realistic semi-documentary look and feel (the sound recording sometimes has the tinny echo of a home tape recorder), and a lackadaisical approach to story-telling.

Still, the piece has a beautiful structure, aided and abetted by four perfectly cast actors as the Family Bonner:

McQueen, of course, who starts the movie busted up and shirtless (yea, girls) from a bad bull ride, and who arrives in Prescott, Arizona, looking to ride that bull again in the annual rodeo, see his parental family (who live there)and hook up with his daddy, who is played by

Robert Preston, a bigger-than-life movie star who invests "Junior Bonner" with the same kind of wonderfully overdone vocal style he used in "The Music Man," but who somehow seems RIGHT in his flourish. He also believably looks like a cool, tough guy who could sire Steve McQueen.

The beautiful first 40 minutes of the movie find McQueen looking to meet his dad (who is laid up in a hospital bed from a drunk drive crash), while his dad keeps just missing being met. McQueen looks forever for his dad before finding him sleeping in his hospital bed. McQueen agrees to come back the next morning, but before he can return, Preston flies the coop ("I'll find him, or he'll find me.") McQueen goes to get his horse, and finds his dad has "stolen it" to ride in the Prescott rodeo parade. Finally, the two men find each other, and father invites son to ride WITH him on the horse. It is a hugely warm and personal moment -- with two great stars playing father and son in perfectly warm accord-- and there's still a lot of movie left.

Before finding his papa, McQueen finds his mama -- perfectly played by 40's/50's survivor Ida Lupino (one of the first major PRODUCER-DIRECTORS in Hollywood; fitting to see her in a film by the talented Peckinpah, who worked for Lupino in televisin.) She's estranged from the lady-chasing n'er do-well Preston, but clearly loves him still.

And then there's McQueen's younger brother, played by Joe Don Baker as a money-hungry real estate promoter who is, nonetheless, the only true success in the Bonner family. One figures without him, they'd all starve. But that doesn't stop McQueen from punching Baker through a window when the latter says "you don't want to end up like (dad Preston.)" Nor does it stop Baker from eventually punching McQueen back ("I'm gonna kick your ass," Baker warns, to which McQueen replies: "Somebody's going to, and it won't be the first time.")The brothers are wary of each other, but they care enough.

With McQueen, Preston, Lupino and Baker in place, "Junior Bonner" moves effortlessly to real emotional involvement. These people LOOK like a family. McQueen and Baker look like they could be brothers. Lupino and Preston look like they could be their parents.

NO SPOILERS here, but suffice it to say that McQueen needs to get a few things done with and for his family before the movie ends. Riding that bull is important. Goals are set and bittersweet things happen at the finish.

Lacking any bloody deaths, Peckinpah at least tosses in a multi-film-speed barroom brawl, which McQueen elects to sit out -- with a beautiful woman while her rich boyfriend gets punched. Cute.

If there is a weakness to "Junior Bonner," it is that one senses Peckinpah trying to live up to his reputation, what with all the slow-mo, quick-cutting, flash-forward, flash-back. And the movie, like most of his films after "The Wild Bunch," has a cheaper look than that classic.

Still, it is a wonderful film. A great throwback to a kind of filmmaking not done much anymore. You get to like the Bonners, each and every one of them (even greedy but practical Joe Don, who has bought up his father's land on the cheap and bulldozed the man's house down!.)

There were two other rodeo movies in '72: one with James Coburn and one with Cliff Robertson. None of them were big hits. All three were good. "Junior Bonner" was the best. It didn't make a dime, but Peckinpah and McQueen had "The Getaway" waiting for cover.

See "Junior Bonner" anyway. And tell 'em Junior sent ya.

P.S. At one point in the flim, Joe Don's boys call McQueen "Uncle Junior." The Sopranos pick this up?

[–] salieri125 17 years ago

Damn you, ecarle! Here I've been trying all week to think of something to say about this movie, and you come in here and say all kinds of wonderful things about it that I can't really beat. Sigh.

In a way I actually think that this film (along with Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) is as good as or even BETTER than The Wild Bunch. Wild Bunch is like Citizen Kane - you'll find very few who will argue with its utter perfection, its pure beauty, its touchstone status as innovator. Certainly the filmmakers themselves had trouble living up to them. But the later Peckinpah films, like the later Welles films (especially Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, maybe even The Trial) are works that almost seem to benefit from their imperfections. They seem like more personal, more textured, more ARTISTIC statements, freed from the streamlining of their lofty predecessors. Junior Bonner is one of the best examples of this. It seems almost as part of the story of Peckinpah's own life.

I can defend the Peckinpah editing style here. Junior Bonner is just this side of being an American verison of a European film. A lot of Fellini films bank on his experience and the places he came from, especially Amarcord. Coupled with these is a sense of nostalgia. Everything in Amarcord is so pretty. In other films of this type we would no doubt be inundated with lingering shots of beautiful countryside, of the America/Italy/whatever that has gone by or is going by. But Peckinpah, in typical Peckinpah fashion, says *beep* that!!" and edits at such a pace that we are not going to get unduly attached to the time and place. That's not really what you were talking about, I know. Some of the more "artful" edits are kind of heavy-handed, symbolically obvious (although I don't think there's any such thing as "unobvious" symbolism - Hemingway didn't use subtle symbolism!). The rodeo scenes are cut like a music video or instant replay, but you kind of have to do that or else the scenes go by in mere seconds and they don't mean much to the uninitiated.

Also I must add that the incomprehensively wonderful Ms. Lupino was a writer as well.

"Waving a flag with one hand and picking pockets with the other - that's your patriotism."

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

saleri125, I am mightily persuaded by your remarks on the cutting and film speeds.

I remember now that Peckinpah picked up that style from watching one episode of a 60's TV show called "The Felony Squad," in which a villain played by -- Joe Don Baker!-- was shot in slo-mo intercut with other speeds. The editor later worked on "The Wild Bunch," and Peckinpah, having seen that episdoe (as an audition tape!) went to town expanding the style. Others tried, but nobody could quite duplicate the weird visual rhythms in Peckinpah's head.

And yes, American seventies film DID have a heavy European influence and Peckinpah's auteurship was in the European tradition and just right.

As a young feller deeply stunned by "The Wild Bunch," I dutifully followed all the Peckinpah films thereafter. I didn't know the truth -- Peckinpah was slowly drinking and drugging himself into oblivion -- but the films themselves after "The Wild Bunch" seemed at once to be deeply personal, intensely affecting works which reflected the mind of a great man falling apart at the creative seams. The assault on "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" by its studio issued forth a flawed masterpiece, and an evidently broken Peckinpah just sort of kept hanging in there -- the hallucinogenic "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," the rattletrap "Killer Elite" (in which the drugged leads make fun of the CIA action movie they are in, right before your eyes), on to the intense WWII "Cross of Iron" and ironically enough, Peckinpah's near-biggest hit, the CB-novelty-song Smokey ripoff, "Convoy." And beyond.

"Junior Bonner" is after the greatness of Citize-- oops, "The Wild Bunch," -- but before Peckinpah's impressive but cursed final films.

Still, the key to this one is its small-scale, small-town LIKEABILITY. Peckinpah and Big Steve McQueen are in a mellow mood in this movie, and it shows, and it lasts.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] csu16387 15 years ago

I can't add anything to what you said. Junior Bonner is a beaut and the cast is stellar. McQueen's so underrated it's a shame! This is one of his best performances. Ida Lupino is always wonderful, and best of all in the film is Robert Preston. He gave an Oscar-caliber performance.

The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece, but I agree that there's something about Peckinpah's other films that I'm even more drawn to such as this, Cable Hogue, and Alfredo Garcia. Perhaps it is because they're highly personal despite the flaws. Maybe most people didn't 'get' Peckinpah until it was too late.

"Now what kind of man are YOU dude?"

[–] FANatic-10 10 years ago

Just a nod of agreement here. Junior Bonner is such a wonderfully lived-in feeling film, obviously a work of true affection for Sam Peckinpah, and a terrific look at the rodeo life. Its big heart makes up for some of the raggedy elements (I agree the sound is positively Altmanesque), and helps account for the truth of the performances. Also, looking back at it now gives a nostalgic and very real feel for Prescott, Arizona and the early 1970's (at least according to this individual who lived through them and has visited Prescott).

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

It certainly captures a time and we will take your observation well that it captures a place(Prescott.) Thanks!

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

It certainly captures a time and we will take your observation well that it captures a place(Prescott.) Thanks!

--

6 years later: ...and on a recent re-viewing, I felt that the movie captured -- beautifully -- the FEELING of being outside in the July heat in small town as various outdoor events took place -- a rodeo, a main street parade...and it was "just like being there." It brought back memories of other summer days and public events -- like city wide picnics -- that I have attended in my own life, as I expect you all have in yours.

A movie with great MOOD. You can feel the heat, the sweat, the dust...and you love it.