Regarding “The Getaway”

The title of auteur can justifiably be applied to the work of Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) in a career that encompassed fourteen films between 1962 and 1983.  His recurring themes are those primarily of men out of step with the passage of time, outcasts on the edge of “civilised” society, who live a life filled with anger, regret, and a search for a lasting love. Jim Kitses cites in his brilliant book “Horizons West” (Thames and Hudson, 1969) “Peckinpah’s characters suffer from not knowing who they are: above all, it is the quest for personal identity that provides the dramatic action of his films, a quest seen both in terms of a meaningful confrontation or dialogue with the past, and a tortured struggle to achieve mastery over self-annihilating and savage impulses”. As an auteur this thematic approach can be seen as early as 1962 with “Ride the High Country” and more significantly with “The Wild Bunch” (1969). These two films, westerns set in the late 1880’s, were populated with men for whom the coming of the new age was fraught with denial, melancholy and confusion. This theme is also strongly represented in  “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1970), “Junior Bonner” (1972), “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” (1973), and even “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974), and “Cross of Iron” (1977), and most emphatically in the film which is discussed in depth here, “The Getaway”.

When considering Peckinpah as an auteur it is almost entirely through his use of mise-en-scène that we can discern his visual and thematic aesthetic, unencumbered by notions of potential creative control exerted by any of his technicians. It is this fiercely passionate vision that led to his friction with studios, that would actually alter and dilute that vision in the editing room after he had handed in his cut. Where this friction started was not due so much to content, as to length. His initial cuts would sometimes run in excess of three hours. Whilst running times of this duration are not that uncommon now, in the sixties they were mainly the domain of musicals and epics. But Peckinpah needed a luxurious running time to properly explore the arc of his characters, and to satisfactorily convey his vision. That he was often denied this luxury was a cause of deep resentment and anger within him.

Peckinpah’s stylistic approach gradually became evident during the 1960s and became as recognised as his recurrent themes. He would infuse his personal vision into writers’ scripts via various techniques including casting (his films have a consistent gallery of strong, male character actors including Warren Oates, LQ Jones, Ben Johnson, RG Armstrong, and Bo Hopkins) and also his use of mise-en-scène – specifically his deliberately relaxed pacing, his use of montage, and his preference for a particular style of editing – crosscutting slow motion and normal speed to create a form of suspended reality and disjointed chronology.

These techniques became a recognisable method, and in his body of work, it is possible to see that the recurrent usage of these methods enables us to discern a greater meaning inherent in his texts. Thus his filmography grew to become a cohesive whole, one whose thematic and stylistic lineage can be linked back from film to film, regardless of genre or narrative. The film that crystallized this approach was “The Wild Bunch”, and by 1972 Peckinpah had honed his skills and vision to such a degree as to infuse all his scripts with these concerns.

In 1972 Sam Peckinpah was in need of a commercial winner. Even allowing for 1969’s considerable success with “The Wild Bunch”, his friction with producers on his previous films due to his drink and drug problems had resulted in the stigma that had dogged him in the 1960’s as a troublesome director to reoccur. This had resulted in his recent output being derisively handled by the distributors.

Having “The Wild Bunch” shorn of entire subplots behind his back by producer (and apparent friend) Phil Feldman whilst in pre-production on “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1970) had angered and saddened Peckinpah. So when Warner Brothers, who had released “The Wild Bunch”, then allowed “Hogue” into cinemas with virtually no publicity, his tenure with them was at an end.

Peckinpah had been pigeon-holed after “The Wild Bunch” as a director of adult-oriented action films with violent flourishes, and anything that strayed from the formula was not welcomed by the major studios. The truth was, beneath the surface sheen, he had always tempered his essentially macho films with an underlying tenderness and a striving for love, friendship, companionship, or simply acceptance.

Luckily for Peckinpah, actor Steve McQueen liked and respected the director. The two had found working together on “Junior Bonner” a pleasurable experience. McQueen was a partner in the recently formed First Artists. This was a  production company set up by stars Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand and Sydney Poitier in the style of United Artists, which itself had been set up in 1919 by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and DW Griffith. The basic idea being that the four stars would exert total artistic control over the productions they would star in, and by cutting out the “middle” men would reap higher profits. This first tenet would have undoubtedly have appealed to Peckinpah, who had fought his entire career for artistic control. He may not have been given the ultimate accolade of final cut, but it was as close as he had come to it for many years.

In reality, Steve McQueen’s involvement in First Artists was partly borne out of desperation. Having not had a solid commercial success since 1968’s “Bullitt”, his own production company, Solar, was on the verge of financial collapse. He owed the Internal Revenue Service two million dollars and, mainly on the basis of the disastrous vanity-piece “Le Mans” (1971), was not considered to be a box-office certainty any longer. However, he had recently acquired the rights to Jim Thompson’s pulp crime novel “The Getaway” and his instincts recognised a hit when he saw it.

Essentially a loner, joining First Artists was not consistent with McQueen’s’ working credo, and his friction with his co-directors was evident from the start. This friction and his dimming in the superstar firmament at that period led to “The Getaway” being allotted quite a modest budget compared to many “star vehicles” of the time. So already it can be seen that extraneous circumstances influenced the look and feel of the finished product.

The convergence of the trajectory of Peckinpah and McQueen’s careers in 1972 have a significant bearing on how this film will ultimately be seen in the context of both their careers, and 1970’s Hollywood cinema as a whole. With “The French Connection” and “Dirty Harry” in 1971, the crime thriller was just coming into a period of major resurgence when “The Getaway” was in production, and the film became a huge success partly due to the massive popularity of the genre at that time. But the modest budget of the film is reflected on screen. With few establishing shots and close-ups, and lighting that is a little flat, the film could not be said to look like a prestigious product.  But Peckinpah worked within these constraints and gave the film its own unique texture, managing, within his approach to mise-en-scène, to make the economic restraints reflect the paucity of compassion of the characters and bleak existence in which they lived. He had enjoyed a much larger budget on “The Wild Bunch”, but even with a large budget, the themes and stylistic approaches are as forthright as those in “The Getaway”. The differing budgets just give the films different textures.

From various accounts of the shooting, it is evident that both McQueen and Peckinpah were aware that the raw material was there to make a good, standard action film, and that they both needed a solid hit under their belts. The result was a more or less professional shoot, with little of McQueen’s egocentric posturing or Peckinpah’s drink and drug-fuelled rages interfering with the job at hand.  At the beginning of the shoot there were a few power plays going on – after all the star of the movie was also its de-facto producer – but essentially the production was straightforward. This may have been due to the fact that the film was shot on location, away from the studios and any interference from anyone not directly involved in the creative process. Peckinpah elicited strong performances from all his main leads, with the exception of Ali MacGraw, who, on the evidence of her screen work to date, is an adequate, but not particularly talented actress.

MacGraw would never have been cast if she had not enjoyed considerable success in “Love Story” in 1971, and more importantly had she not met with McQueen’s approval (the two started an affair on set, and later married). Peckinpah, for the most part, shot MacGraw’s scenes so as to minimise her actual to-camera shots. Her wooden performance almost undermines the film, and considering the off-screen dalliance of the two stars there is little onscreen chemistry between them. Peckinpah had to modify his overall mise-en-scène to accommodate the actresses’ shortcomings.

There was one unfortunate incident which occurred near to the end of filming, which had an effect on the texture of the finished film. Music is an important element in the creation of mise-en-scène, and it is one of the only creative processes, that, unless he or she is also a composer (such as John Carpenter), or is at least moderately adept at conveying musically their requirements, a director has only a modicum amount of influence upon. With the exception of “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” Peckinpah had worked consistently with composer Jerry Fielding since 1969 and “The Wild Bunch”. The two men, similar in temperament, had formed a productive working relationship. In Fielding, Peckinpah had found a near-perfect musical conduit to underline his texts. No other composer was able to satisfactorily convey the isolation, desperation and tension inherent between characters quite as well. Peckinpah, in this particular field, was unable to convey his vision satisfactorily via any other composer that he used. McQueen and First Artists had sanctioned Peckinpah’s hiring of Fielding for “The Getaway” and he produced a tense score tempered with an underlying tenderness that was affecting without being sentimental. He captured the mood of the piece, although the score itself was quite dissonant. McQueen though, ever conscious of his image, thought the score too downbeat and alienating, and wanted something more stylish. He ordered Fieldings’ score scrapped and brought in Quincy Jones who produced the required hipness, but the music was too lightweight for the material.  Fielding was furious with Peckinpah for not backing him up, and refused to work with him on his next film “Pat Garret and Billy the Kid”. Fielding’s score however has subsequently been recorded and gives the film a subtly darker edge. As an element within his mise-en-scene, the wrong music does weaken the vision, though not fatally, but its absence betrays Peckinpah’s reliance on this particular composers skills. Conversely it is noteworthy that Fielding produced his most expressive work with Peckinpah. Though he went on to work on several projects for Michael Winner and Clint Eastwood (eg, “Lawman” and “Chato’s Land” [1971 & 1972, Winner],  “The Enforcer” and “The Outlaw Josey Wales” [both 1976, Eastwood]), these scores reveal many motifs already essayed with Peckinpah.

When considering the concept of the auteur, it can be argued that a film is a sum of its creative parts, that it is only well shot or skilfully edited because the director had the good taste to hire a particular cinematographer or editor. However, on the evidence of Sam Peckinpah’s films, apart from Fielding’s music, I think that argument fails. Whilst any feature film is by its very nature a collaborative effort, there remains with Peckinpah a consistent visual style which permeates his work, most prominently in his signature montage editing technique. He has used this in virtually all his films, but significantly he never used one editor consecutively more than twice in his entire career. This would imply a personal vision at work that transcended the talents or creative imprint of the individual editor. Editing is the most obvious example to discerning recurrent stylistic approaches. But it could also be applied to cinematography.

Peckinpah brought in cinematographer Lucien Ballard, with whom he had worked four times previously, dating back to 1962. Ballard in total worked on five Peckinpah films and John Coquillon was Director of Photography on four. This would help to bolster the anti-auteur argument. But upon inspection of both their approaches there is no individualistic photographic style, other than a highly professional feel for the material that can be discerned. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that looking at the filmographies of these technicians it is strongly arguable that their best work was carried out under Peckinpah’s direction. This further supports the position that Peckinpah’s vision permeated the entire creative process, and that his crews prodigious talent was harnessed to express his vision consistently and methodically.

“The Getaway” is first and foremost an action thriller. That is what all concerned were endeavouring to produce and, on the basis of its box-office receipts and Steve McQueen’s return to the top of the superstar tree, they succeeded. But a closer examination of the text reveals subtleties not usually at work in such a genre-piece.

“The Getaway” is the tale of a bank robbery gone wrong. Double crossings and revenge swirl around the two main characters, “Doc” McCoy and his wife Carol, as they attempt to escape to Mexico with the loot from a botched robbery pursued by various agents from both sides of the law.

For a mainstream film of this nature it is unusual to find no sympathetic characters. “Doc” McCoy is a career criminal, who cares first for himself, then his wife. He only becomes animated when discussing the mechanics of his “profession”. Essentially a loner, he is emotionally cold, inarticulate, and casually brutal – and this is the protagonist of the piece. The rest of the narrative is peopled with characters whose concern is for their own personal material gain.

On this slim conceit of a storyline are built some interesting meditations on trust, both the lack of it, and the redemptive power of it.

There are two sequences in which, in their mise-en-scène, can be discerned much of why Sam Peckinpah can rightfully be labelled an auteur in the most accepted definition of the term.

The first sequence comes at the start of the film. In the opening eight minutes there’s no narrative dialogue, but we glean much information about McQueen’s character and also a palpable sense of time and place. Peckinpah utilises sound and editing in an effective montage suggesting the cumulative sense of the monotony of prison life and the effect it’s having on McCoy.

Peckinpah orchestrates a highly skilled montage with sound editing carrying the chronology of images in a unifying manner. Within the montage can be located his mise-en-scène approach in a clear and consistent approach. Peckinpah shows us an oft-seen sequence – the hero incarcerated – and infuses it with an extraordinary amount of information about the main character.  The audience is eased into the mundanity of prison life gradually with scenes of everyday routine overlaid with dialogue from a prison warden outlining the terms of McCoy’s potential parole. This dialogue continues and is overlapped with the on-screen sounds. McCoy is introduced into these scenes completely organically, with no visual fanfare. Also interspersed are the scenes of the warden speaking the heard dialogue. The montage continues and we see McCoy’s daily routine as the credits roll. The credits themselves are flashed on screen in time with a freeze-frame, although the sounds (both real-time and wardens monologue) continue. We are shown McCoy working a mechanical loom and the sound effects of this machine gradually come to the fore. In rapid succession we see him alone in his cell, in the showers, playing chess, and working, now all with the monotonous sound of loom added to whatever on-screen sound accompanies the visuals. We also see inside McCoy’s mind as he recalls making love with his wife Carol. As the credits end, the cuts become increasingly rapid and the montage ends with an extended medium shot of McCoy cracking up in his cell, his previously outwardly calm, cool exterior imploding.

There are a minimum number of camera set-ups, but the rapid editing style belies this. The overall effect – using sound, montage and staccato editing – is to convey the grinding, never-ending dull routine of prison life. It also conveys this in a slightly dizzying way, totally in keeping with McCoy’s state of mind as he tries, and fails, to mentally withdraw from the daily tedium. The whole sequence is shot in a very low-key, almost documentary fashion. The lighting is completely natural, and the cinematography is not designed to draw our attention in any one particular direction, it is simply a window on the events unfolding, unobtrusive and impartial. Indeed, some the shots are carried out using a handheld camera, further accentuating the naturalistic feel. Peckinpah shot in a real penitentiary, and McQueen was the only actor amongst the prison population. The performances by the other players are therefore extremely unpretentious and spontaneous, with Ben Johnson the only other professional actor in these scenes. It gives the film an almost verité feel. McQueen in this arena was able to completely suppress his superstar persona, and give a highly internalised performance. Although Peckinpah does not use this kind of hyper-realism elsewhere in the film, he does shoot with very few self conscious flourishes, apart from the montage/crosscut edit technique, which he employs mainly during scenes of high drama or cathartic violence. It is held to a minimum, and his reputation as a director for overusing this technique is probably due to the strategic and spare use of it, rather than an over-indulgence.

McQueen’s performance in these opening scenes convincingly portrays a strong-willed man who is desperate to be out of prison not because he is not tough enough physically to endure his sentence, but because the confinement of body, and of spirit, is completely alien to his nature. Working with him here for the second consecutive film Peckinpah played to his star’s strengths, and McQueen proved why he was such a good cinematic presence.

Working with no dialogue and only medium close ups, McQueen uses his body language, stoic countenance and spare use of available props to more than adequately convey a character barely able to reign in his fury at being incarcerated. Peckinpah recognised McQueen’s strengths and weaknesses as an actor and staged the sequence to maximise his positive traits.

This seemingly straightforward credit sequence is, under close analysis, a highly complex amalgam of sound and vision, and is a signature Peckinpah work in execution. Obviously Peckinpah’s editor, Robert Wolfe, physically cut the scenes together, but the creative force and architecture of the sequence was the director’s own. That Peckinpah was able to sustain the dramatic thread for the audience in such a technically complex way shows an artist in total control of his medium.

Although this is graphic evidence of Peckinpah’s mise-en-scène, the mechanics of his visual style alone would not necessarily mark out Peckinpah as an auteur. His editing style is recognisable, but it is not particularly unique in the history of cinema, with antecedents dating back to Sergei Eisenstein. But whereas Eisenstein’s montage was utilised to convey a particular aesthetic, for instance using images within the montage that had no narrative context, but rather was there to underline a particular vision, Peckinpah’s montage exists to both condense and suspend time, and to impart the same information from differing viewpoints, and also to give the audience the time to absorb finer narrative concepts. It is this visual style taken in conjunction with his recurring underlying theme of the American male out of step with society, of mental and physical isolation, of anger, frustration, and of the loss of love and companionship that we can discern Peckinpah’s vision shine through.

I would speculate that it is highly probable that the shooting script by Walter Hill assigned the opening sequence to a few perfunctory lines requiring some establishing shots of McCoy in prison. Peckinpah delivered, in eight minutes of film, his persistent themes in a visual style congruent with his previous work. The film benefits immensely from this opening scene in that it sets the tone of both the narrative and its leading man (e.g., humourless, tough, serious, multi-layered), and imparts a lot of information in a short amount of screen time. It also lets the audience know that the language of this particular film will not be linear and two-dimensional, that they will have to work a little to tease out the nuances that will be evident to those looking for them.

To summarise, Peckinpah’s use of mise-en-scène here acts to create a thoroughly believable atmosphere. All the elements coalesce to enable the audience to think that the screen is unfolding real events before them, a mirror on reality. That he is using non-linear methodology, and therefore adding layers of subjectivity to the scenes in an almost subliminal way, is all the more effective in its subtlety. In this respect, the authorship approach has benefited the film using mise-en-scène as a vehicle to engender a specific mood.

A brief scene shortly afterward cleverly manipulates the audience’s willingness to accept this style of mise-en-scène to present a sequence that includes in its alternating (and this time slow motion) crosscuts a scene which may be real or may be imagined by McCoy. After being freed from jail, McCoy is reunited with his wife. They head for a park. It is high summer; the park is busy with families on picnics, children playing in a sparkling blue lake, dogs barking, etc. McCoy, still in his regulation prison-issue parolee black suit looks completely incongruous in this setting. The locale too, is jarring in its idyll when juxtaposed with the harsh reality of McCoy’s existence in the film so far. The opposing focus of formalised incarceration and utter freedom of space and expression could not be more underlined. Even the colour coding is telling. The prison scenes are bleached of almost all colour except grey, whilst the park scene is saturated in lush greens and dappled yellows.

We watch as McCoy wistfully observes some youngsters swing on a rope and leap into the lake. Peckinpah cuts here to an extended, slow motion, soft focus scene of McCoy and Carol doing the same thing, and cavorting romantically in the water. We then cut back to real time, and McCoy still smiling at the scene. We have once again been witness to McCoy’s inner thoughts.

This is McCoy’s idea of the perfect state of grace, freedom of body, freedom of mind, a peaceful respite in a timeless setting, alone with someone he loves. Again, we have a distillation of Peckinpah’s recurrent themes of the loner, the outsider, striving for acceptance and serenity. McCoy then removes his jacket and begins running toward the rope. The scene ends abruptly and we jump cut to the interior of Carol’s apartment and the two characters entering – dripping wet. Peckinpah had skilfully influenced our acceptance of his montage style to present a visual sleight of hand which is both amusing and jarring – was the slow motion sequence a future actuality? Or wish-fulfilment subsequently acted upon? This underlines a director who meticulously planned his mise-en-scène before the cameras rolled. This attention to detail is not unusual in his work during this period, and is at odds with the reputation Peckinpah had of being drunk in the morning and totally out of control by afternoon. It is only by the time of his final few films, such as “The Killer Elite” (1975), “Convoy” (1978) and “The Osterman Weekend” (1983) that a lack of focus and laziness in execution can be discerned. These films displayed a weakness of vision, and a looseness of structure, that was at odds with Peckinpah’s working methods up until then. Certainly, between 1969 and 1974, he was at the peak of his directorial prowess and was possessed of a concentration of creativity more than equal to his contemporaries at that time.

As the story unfolds we learn that Carol slept with Johnson’s character, Benyon, in order to facilitate McCoy’s release from prison. It is further implied that she was to double-cross and kill her husband after the robbery. McCoy cannot deal with this betrayal at first, even though Carol relented and killed Benyon instead of McCoy when the time came. He mentally and physically abuses her although they stick together during their getaway. It is only when Carol makes it utterly clear to McCoy that she regrets what she did, and that she still truly loves her husband, that McCoy is able to regain his equilibrium, and do what’s needed to be done to tie up loose ends, and make good their escape. The redemptive power of Carol’s love for McCoy has made his life make sense, has quietened his fury, and even made him hopeful for the future.

“The Getaway” closes with McCoy and Carol escaping over the border into Mexico, with the loot, having dispatched the small army of people in their pursuit. They disappear into the sunset, at peace with each other, their love renewed.

Although a massive hit, the film was attacked at the time for allowing the “bad guys” to get away with the money but Peckinpah was simply being true to his characters’ vision and, by extension, his own.

Sam Peckinpah was an influential creative force. His legacy has reverberated down through the decades and directors including Brian de Palma, Quentin Tarantino, Phil Joanou, and Oliver Stone have been directly influenced by his directorial style.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight, his approach to mise-en-scène is instantly recognisable in his visual style, but his personal vision is equally evident in film after film. It may have been diluted as his personal demons took hold, but Sam Peckinpah on form worked with a clarity that was breathtaking in its honesty, and incisive in its execution.

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The Screen Lounge is a place to come and look and read a little about the movies that have made an impact on me during my life. They'll usually be older movies - I love films from the 60s and 70s - but not always.

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