Year: 1974
Director: Sam Peckinpah
A film where vastly more people have heard of it than actually seen it is always interesting. While it didn’t exactly finish his career: he’d go on to Cross of Iron and, er, Convoy and The Osterman Weekend and (thanks Wikipedia) end up directing Julian Lennon videos, Alfredo Garcia certainly marked the end of his A-list status as a director. Its a film that’s become famous for the vitriol of the reviews at the time: most famously ‘Bring Me The Head of Sam Peckinpah’ and for the way its title has seeped into usage by people who’ve never seen the film, unless Graeme Garden is in fact an aficionado. The last few decades have seen its slow ascent from ignomy to cult status. Now its viewed as Peckinpah’s most autobiographical film – not least for the titanic amounts of alcohol consumed by its protagonist.
The plot is indeed as described: a Mexican gangster boss offers a huge reward for the head of the man who impregnated his daughter, prompting hitmen to scour Mexico. Warren Oates plays a hard-at-heel pianist and bar manager Bennie who picks up the conversation in a bar, and smells a big payday. He gets himself hired by the American hitmen chasing the vanished lothario. Bennie’s girlfriend, who has had a thing with said Alfredo, knows that in fact the unlucky gigolo is already dead and buried. The bulk of the movie comprises a road trip into hell, in which Oates’ greed strips him of everything and everyone.
So far so good. Why did it bomb at the time? The script is a collection of action movie cliches from start to finish – from the titular line itself to the final confrontation. The pace is often slow, yet crucial sequences are often rushed through so the storytelling can get confused. Oates’ character Bennie is deeply unlikeable, a series of shrugs and mutterings in seventies anti-hero style. There are no other characters to speak of, except his girlfriend whose talk of domestic bliss and making of picnics strikes a jarring tone in the relentlessly macho world of the film. Everyone else, from Kris Kristofferson who has a cameo as an aggressive biker, to a succession of swarthy men with moustaches and guns, gets to move the story along without engaging the audience.
So why the fuss? Oates is an anti-hero, in an anti-movie. The road trip brings no wisdom, it pushes Oates to the edge of madness. Fuelled by booze and sun, Bennie spends much of the last act talking to Alfredo’s head beside him on the passenger seat. The slam-bang editing allows Peckinpah to pull off scenes that have a wierd dream-like power: a roadside shoot-out is paused while everyone involved waves at a passing tourist bus. Bennie at one point wakes in Garcia’s grave, and we’re as unsure as he is for some minutes what has happened.
Then there’s the look. Bennie’s white suit becomes progressively dirtier as he is literally pushed deeper into the filth with every act. The Mexican settings recall Leone’s spaghetti western visuals. The Americans have eye-poppingly mid-seventies suits with lapels and ties that hurt the eyes. Hotel rooms are a riot of beige and smoked glass. Oates’ boat-like car is from the same Detroit production line as Hunter S Thompson’s Great White While.
With its b-movie script, unforgiving violence and seventies vibes there is no question that Quentin Tarentino, amongst many others, has had his finger on the pause button here. Alfredo Garcia is not a particularly easy watch, but as an exemplar of the bitter cynicism of the mid-seventies its hard to beat. Peckinpah can’t resist Nixon’s image (on the cover of Time) making an appearance. Hmm. Good time to watch it if you haven’t.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Tarantino and Rodriguez, Easy Rider, Vanishing Point, Two Lane Blacktop and all those seventies road movies
Ah the obligitory self-comment. I wrote some of this on Friday after seeing it, on Monday I’d just say that any film which leaves you thinking was that great or awful or both has to worth seeing once. And secondly, is it the greatest film title of all time?
Alternatively, think of it as Weekend At Bernie’s remade by Tarantino.
It’s a long time since I saw Alfredo Garcia, and if I’m honest I’m in no rush to see it again but it’s part of that late, mad Peckinpah, all the themes building since Guns in the Afternoon/Major Dundee.
“I’ve killed people… and worse, a whole lot worse. ”
Webber and Gig Young too.
You kind of knew none of this was going to end well. Would make a great (if long) double bill with Touch of Evil. I wonder what sort of film Sam would have made of No Country for Old Men?
@moseleymoles – my mistake above, I meant a Peckinpah film of Blood Meridian….the Evening Redness in the West.
“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
Oates is always a fascinating watch, and this performance is no exception. Well worth seeing, and probably more than once, IMHO.
I bought a Pekinpah box set a while ago and this is next on my list as it happens. I love that era of film making.
To quote David Thomson “The OK people know it. It isn’t a question of liking it.”
If you can find it I commend to you Film Comment Vol. 17, No. 1, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1981. Brilliant articles about bloody sam, Warren, and…Strother Martin. Come on TC Help me get his boots.
Have you watched it yet, Twang?
It’s many years since I saw it. I think I felt it was a bit too slow. Possibly I have an inadequate understanding of existentialism and didn’t appreciate it.
@anton I think it’s not a film that can bear repeated viewing, as script, pacing and editing are all primitive. But some great, great moments – and @twang it is a great era, when the studios had no idea what was working anymore, so all these bitter, completely adult movies got made as, well why not. Boxing Day 1975 Jaws was released in the UK (June in the US)…
So we beat on…..Bloody Sam!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI37UZXO2Cc
A short list of a few other films that got released in 74 tells you how rich a time it was:
The Godfather Part II
Blazing Saddles
Chinatown
The Conversation
Dark Star
Parallax View
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
The Yakuza
Young Frankenstein
you can forgive a man a lot
His filmography stacks up against just about any other American director of the sixties and early seventies, Kubrick excepted, before Scorsese gets into his stride.
I think of myself as a mild movie buff, but I have a Peckinpah shaped hole in my CV. Never watched any of his films, apart from giving up about twenty minutes into The Wild Bunch (I remember thinking it just looked cheap).
This sounds intriguing though.
As the Irish fella asked to give directions to Dublin said, “I wouldn’t start from here”.
If you were new to Pecker’s work it might be wiser to ease in with something more conventional (but just as good) like Ride The High Country – I’d even watch Straw Dogs before this one. As for The Wild Bunch looking “cheap”, as with much of John Carpenter’s work, ol’ pickledpecker’s stuff does tend to slum it in shabby chic…
I have an interesting story about this film. In 1974 I was 14 years old, 3 years older than my brother and at the time we were ‘horrible’ teenagers or at least I was and he was a horrible whippersnapper.
One Sunday we were seriously irritating my mum. I suspect my dad was also contributing to the Toxic atmosphere that prevailed in the house. The tension was palpable. My mum is and always has been a gentle sort of person usually unflappable. Not that day. ‘I have completely had enough of you lot and I am going out’. She slammed the door and disappeared. For several hours. We had no dinner. She came back late in the evening slightly calmer than when she left and apparently a little embarrassed that she had been so hot headed. ‘Where have you been mum?’ we asked. ‘To the pictures’ she replied. ‘What did you see?’. ‘Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia’.
‘Was it any good?’. ‘No it was rubbish’ she told us.
Never been inclined to see the movie ever since because of the association with domestic unrest.
After this passage of time I might just give it a go.