Skip to main content

_

Notes from Underground

  And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
Read more

Hope

To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.-- Erich Fromm


Labels

Straw Dogs (1971)





"One of the most ambiguous, neurotic, and disturbing of all American films"

Straw Dogs was cut by US censors, it was banned in the UK on original release. Even most home video releases have been of edited versions of the feature. In this thriller, Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial film, David (Dustin Hoffman), a young American mathematician, moves with his English wife, Amy (Susan George), to the village where she grew up. Their sense of safety unravels as the local men David has hired to repair their house prove more interested in leering at Amy and intimidating David, beginning an agonizing initiation into the iron laws of violent masculinity that govern Peckinpah’s world. Shortly after they found their cat hanging in the closet.
An adaptation of Gordon Williams’ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm, Peckinpah took the story and made it his own, delivering a controversial feature that stirs as much debate today.

At its core, it examines concepts of masculinity, of sex and baser instincts punching through the thin veneer that is civilization. David and Amy’s relationship are central to these events. It’s a marriage on the wane, an obvious incompatibility.




It’s a part of man's nature to challenge others, to vie with the strong for dominance, or to stamp over the weak. David’s pacifism, his inability to meet the escalating challenges to his authority, invite even more aggression from the men, fueled by the sexual energy stemming from his wife’s vivacious nature, as well as her history with one of the men in the group.

Straw Dogs holds your gaze, no matter how hard you want to look away.

https://cinapse.co/criterion-review-straw-dogs-1971-5e702a962e7e

"Straw Dogs’ most infamous scene involves Amy’s rape at the hands of both Charlie and one of his cohorts, and only a director like Peckinpah would have the gall to show Amy as not only somewhat responsible for this crime but also partially enjoying the act of violence. The scene has long been condemned as proof of Peckinpah’s misogyny"





BLOODY SAM

"I want to be able to make westerns like Kurosawa makes westerns."

David Samuel Peckinpah was an American film director and screenwriter who revolutionized the Western genre with his explicit depiction of violence and his revisionist approach to American myths. Born in Fresno, California, he served in the Marine Corps in China during WWII—an experience that profoundly shaped his nihilistic worldview. Known for his combative personality and struggles with alcoholism, Peckinpah was an uncompromising auteur. He fought constant battles with studio executives to preserve his artistic vision, earning him a reputation as a Hollywood rebel. His films are elegies for the "Old West," populated by outmoded men living by a code of honor in a world that no longer has a place for them.












The Rape Scene: The most criticized element of the film is the first rape scene, where Amy appears to go from resisting to momentarily reciprocating or "enjoying" the assault. Critics, most notably Pauline Kael, accused the film of "sexual fascism" and misogyny, arguing it reinforced the dangerous myth that women "want" to be raped.







Editing: Peckinpah’s use of rapid "montage" editing and slow-motion (a technique he perfected in The Wild Bunch) creates an almost unbearable sense of dread and chaos.







Sam Peckinpah:Key Filmography








The "Bloody Sam" Persona

Peckinpah’s professional legacy is inextricably linked to his combative personality and struggles with substance abuse:

  • Studio Wars: He was famous for "losing" his films in the editing room. Studios often took his movies away and recut them (Major Dundee, Pat Garrett), leading to decades of "Director's Cuts" being released posthumously.

  • Legacy of Influence: Directors like Quentin Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow, John Woo, and Walter Hill have all cited Peckinpah’s editing and action staging as primary influences.

  • Final Years: His later career was marked by declining health and studio distrust, though he continued to work until his death from a heart attack at age 59 in 1984.







"The end of a film is the end of a life." — Sam Peckinpah






Mexico: The Promised Land and Living Hell

Mexico played a spiritual role in Peckinpah's life and work. He was married three separate times to Mexican actress Begoña Palacios and spent much of his later life living in Puerto Vallarta.

  • Landscape of Escape: In his films, Mexico is often portrayed as a place where outlaws go to find a final moment of peace or a violent, honorable death.

  • Cultural Respect: Unlike many Hollywood directors of his era, Peckinpah populated his films with authentic Mexican actors and treated the culture with a mix of gritty realism and deep romanticism.











Labels:

Popular Posts