Retrospective: The Films Of Sam Peckinpah

Starting today and running until April 7th, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is running a complete retrospective of the films of the notorious Sam Peckinpah. Not to be outdone, so are we — Peckinpah's relatively short but stormy filmography is one of the most rewarding to revisit, especially as, more than most directors of his turbulent, cinematically fertile era, it can be viewed as a kind of ongoing project in reassessment and rehabilitation, not to mention a fascinating prism through which to examine changing attitudes to sexism, classism, racism and the masculine ideal.

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Oftentimes, though, that scholarly reassessment has been a search for reasons and, well, excuses for liking his films — justifications for why these often brutish movies, full of testosterone-pumped machismo and orgiastic portrayals of violence are in fact pacifist in their outlook, or contorted arguments for how we can interpret Peckinpah's...