Sam Peckinpah’s opinion on the greatest directors in history: “Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman”
Known for his reinvention of the traditional western during his prime, Sam Peckinpah stands as a legendary director with a well-regarded filmography.
His influence on western films made him a point of reference for many filmmakers who followed in his wake, with ‘Bloody Sam’ ushering in a new era for balletic violence that would go on to inspire everyone from Quentin Tarantino to John Woo.
Peckinpah was also a famously cantankerous presence who was regularly his own worst enemy, but he could always be relied on to shoot from the hip both figuratively and literally. With his inimitable style, he definitely had the ‘it factor’, but he didn’t think some of his era’s most storied auteurs did.
With such extensive experience in the industry, he was entitled to comment on the directors he admired and the state of the industry as a whole. In an interview with Playboy in 1972, Peckinpah laid out what he considered to be the directors who had ‘it’ when it came to directing.
As abstract as that sounds on the surface, he related it to legendary directors and their legacy. “Kurosawa has it. Fellini. Bergman,” he said, before controversially claiming that “no American has it,” himself included. “Some, like Kubrick and Nichols, think they do, but they don’t,” he offered, and in light of making such a direct statement, Peckinpah delved more precisely into what he meant by such an argument.
Peckinpah drew attention to the methodology behind filmmaking and the impact that people in his profession have beyond just directing their work, suggesting that “it’s not just a question of what happens to you during shooting and editing: it’s what they do to you once the film is entirely out of your hands,” before pointing to a particular example in John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage.
“Huston once almost had total control,” he reflected. “But he blew it on The Red Badge of Courage, when he walked away from the cutting of the picture”. It becomes clear then that Peckinpah is appraising the holistic impact that a director has on the outcome of their film rather than just pure talent.
Peckinpah argued that Kubrick and Nichols don’t have the requisite flair as a result of them stepping back from the minutia of editing and the processes behind it, whereas he prefers to be involved along every step of the way, and isn’t above trashing the end result when he’s not.
Peckinpah clearly reveres the industry in general when he talks about his experiences with Huston’s body of work. He particularly credits The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, describing them as “the perfect films of this kind” made by a director who “tried not only to tell a story but to make some kind of statement” every time he stepped behind the camera.
Beyond his obvious scorn for The Red Badge of Courage, it’s clear that Peckinpah saw Huston as about as close to having those intangibles possessed by Kurosawa, Fellini, and Bergman that he didn’t think any of his other American counterparts had, although cinema history would indicate there are plenty who’d disagree with his assessment that Kubrick and Nichols were lacking in ‘it factor’.
