Title: Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia
Release Date: August 14th, 1974 (U.S.)
Directed By: Sam Peckinpah
Starring: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Robert Webber

The plot: A family scandal causes a wealthy and powerful Mexican rancher to make the pronouncement--'Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!' Two of the bounty-hunters thus dispatched encounter a local piano-player in their hunt for information. The piano-player does a little investigating on his own and finds out that his girlfriend knows of Garcia's death and last resting place. Thinking that he can make some easy money and gain financial security for he and his (now) fiancée, they set off on this goal. Of course, this quest only brings him untold misery, in the form of trademark Peckinpah violence.

(Credit to Ted Dibbern via imdb.com)


My take: It's intriguing to note a kinship between this film and the new French thriller Rapt, which essentially asks a question that very few people could answer without a seed of doubt; how much money is one man's life worth? It's especially troubling in this film, since the man in question is dead, and unlike the dogged protagonist of the aforementioned thriller, who comes from wealth and prestige, the title character of Peckinpah's bloody excursion doesn't seem to have lived an existence of any great distinction. Indeed, the film's central quandary is deepened since, oddly, the man who sets the bounty has seemed to make peace with the ramifications of the offense, proudly accepting and pronouncing the newborn, but still requires the head of the slain, perhaps as a totemic act. In every wrinkle and facet of plot in Garcia, there exists a reservoir of morality, and as abnormal as the character's decisions can become (including an act of near-martyrdom at the film's mid-section), there always exist a number of alternate, hidden reasons for every action and reaction. The film's mystery is paradoxically one concerning morality in a world so bleak that only desperate risk and questionable sacrifice equate to any kind of good.

I personally enjoy the film a good deal more than Peckinpah's similarly blood Wild Bunch, because the film's enigmatic purpose defies melodrama, and, in way, defines courage and reason beyond the obvious. Many people have postulated that Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia was an expose for Pekcinpah's troubled soul; indeed, the film seems to encourage a certain degree of reckless to accomplish goals that are never assured to be completed, or even can be. Oates' character looks for money, redemption, and love, but receives them at different times, in jumbled order, and quite often at the cost of some combination of the other two. Peckinpah's well-established (well before this film's release, nonetheless) maverick attitude both informs the film and also possibly informed the film's ugly critical dismissal upon release.

By any commercial standard, Garcia was a total failure, and many of the criticisms the film bore were brutal and pitiless. Roger Ebert once stated that people weren't reacting to Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel 'Last Exit To Brooklyn' in horror because of the nudity or the drugs, but because the world the characters inhabited were filled with realistically portrayed despair and a sense of pointlessness that stands in contrast to romantic notions of tragedy. If people flocked to Peckinpah's entertaining-yet-pessimistic Wild Bunch for the action, then they recoiled at his 1974 work, which pulled the rug out entirely from the characters and the audience. Gone was any sense of camaraderie, conventional scenes of love, any notion of a symmetrical plot. The doomed characters in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia react to a world of desolateness, and although they make moral actions and have deeply held concerns and beliefs, their choices are ultimately at the mercy of the world around them - and to those who possess power. That sense of drifting helplessness makes the film's strong undertow towards violence, and ultimately, oblivion, all the more powerful and searing.

But enough of me, for now.



Thoughts?

Give me until tomorrow night so I can get a hold of this and watch it.

Damn, this was way too short notice for me to re-watch. I'll work with my fading memories for now and hope to add more later if I see it again. Naturally, I can't be as erudite as I normally am (tee-hee)...

Among Peckinpah's films, Alfredo is second in my heart only to The Wild Bunch. Straw Dogs does many things better and may in fact be the better film, but Alfredo is the better experience. Why? Because Alfredo Garcia (the movie and the character) are fucking bad-ass.

The film is pretty much a B-movie, but a great one at that. And, it's definitely a Peckinpah film. All of Bloody Sam's normal touches are there. There's the violence (with his unique style of editing) and, of course, the Peckinpah woman complete with another controversial rape scene (wait, was she raped or was she about to be raped?)

Just look at the poster that Phil attached. It lets you know exactly what you're in for. There's the woman (one breast partially exposed, the other covered but with a nipple imprinting into her top), lots of bullet holes and Warren Oates with a gun. Oates in this movie reminds me a little of Belmondo in Breathless. Ugly as fuck, but so damn cool that he makes it work. Those dudes could bed any woman and I'd believe it. They got the swagger...

I don't know where I'm going with this...rambling mostly, but the movie is sort of a ramble too, no? It's a mess, but one of the most glorious messes I've ever seen. Certainly one of the greatest movie titles.

I really wanted to watch this tonight. Got home and found out the family is gone for a few hours - perfect! ...

Only available on DVD from Netflix. Now it will go to the bottom of the wife's DVD queue (we agreed she'd get the DVD queue while I got the instant). I'm realizing more and more that the instant streaming feature is getting pretty close to worthless for me. I don't give a hoot about tv shows. I'll probably cancel it this month. guess I'm living through you folks for this one.

That sucks, man, but what can you do? Glad you tried either way. And, I'd leave it on the DVD queue even if it's at the very bottom. Alfredo is good enough to see "someday".

Gah, why'd we have to pick the Peckinpah film its hardest for me to find? I can't find it online, I no longer have the DVD option on Netflix, and my local video store I frequent has it on a request list

YES! Found an old VHS copy, now I have something to watch tonight.

YUSSS. Apparently you found Peckinpah's master tape.


Can't wait to hear from you, dude.

It sure as hell felt like it Watched the film last night, should have a write up by tonight.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is the first of Sam Peckinpah's I've seen. Helluva place to start, huh? It's easy to see why the film was such a critical and commercial failure upon its initial release: it's one of the most nihilistic pieces of filmmaking I've come across since before and after I became seriously invested in the medium. Early the in the film Bennie and Elita discuss their future, Bennie proposing and offering a fresh start where Elita can quit prostituting herself. Elita is not so hopeful; it's their lot in life. Leave it to Kris Kristofferson to dampen Bennie's optimism. After Kristofferson's biker nearly rapes Elita, there are no more moments of hope in Alfredo Garcia; these two scenes are as sure a sign as any that there will be no happy ending for these sorry souls. In another directors hands this film might be virtually unwatchable. As Peckinpah directs it, there is a poetic beauty to this sun drenched wallow in misery, and a purpose.

I'm having a hard time figuring out where to bring this discussion. The film is a resounding success, but all of its successes have been put down more eloquently then I could by Nick Schager, Roger Ebert and Evenflow. Anything I could bring to the table about the film would sound woefully like I was copying them. So, as for the purpose of keeping discussion going, are there any points you could bring up, heir moderator? I'd hate for this thread to end here.

Yes and no. Most of what happens in Alfredo is vintage Peckinpah. You might have had a similar reaction to many of his films. Check him out. I think he's only made only one great movie (The Wild Bunch) but pretty much everything he's done is a great discussion piece. When he fails he does so spectacularly.

Although it's tempting to call the film 'nihilistic', I'm not sure I would apply that term more than loosely to Peckinpah, who, as Ebert once said, simply 'cleared the moral oatmeal' of the films he lensed. Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Gracia does not, indeed, offer catharsis or alot of hero-worthy moments of grandeur, but I'm not so sure that Peckinaph's view of the world around him was so black as to tempt the void as much as he views the situation realistically, and quite more significantly, personally. The quest is doomed from the start, and our desperate 'hero' merely becomes more prickled through time and pressure, until finally, he reverts to savage, vigilante vengeance. Yet the story is, in some way, an oddly moving tale of how one man tries to achieve something of note and importance from a downtrodden existence, and that, even in his failure, he does succeed in pulling some sense of victory from death's maw, as the hedonistic, perplexing villain of the story lays in a pool of their own blood. The film is not merely seen through the vantage point of a realist, but of a maverick avenging (and confronting) his demons in cinematic fashion.

People have said that the film is Peckinpah's most representative statement of purpose and personal film; here, we see his defiant, determinist spirit bared on the screen. The victory of the ending, though not clean, ultimate, or even all that comforting, is the kind of shaggy dog conclusion Peckinpah desired; instead of ending with a whimper, Bennie goes out in a blaze of glory and reaches (and breaks) the high end of the totem pole on the way down. It might not be what any sane man considers a victory or triumph, but for Peckinpah, that muddled success seems to be alright. I'm not sure I would ever recommend Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia as a date movie, but damned if it doesn't bullheadedly defy the simple categorization of 'downer flick'.