Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

(MGM Home Entertainment, 3.22.05)

Sam Peckinpah was onto a prickly, unsettling, ugly truth that lurks at the edges of the frame. His films mourned the loss of an outdated ideal of machismo, the onrush of modern progress always representing the decay and devolution of old traditions. He was a moralist in the most classic sense imaginable but, more than anything else, he had the id of the modern male nailed. Peckinpah understood both the seductive appeal of violence and the agonizing pain of change and he never hesitated to look away when those forces collided inside his characters' heads. His violence may have been "beautiful" but it was never frivolous and there were always consequences.

To that end, 1974's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia represents probably the purest expression of Peckinpah's themes and obsessions. The pulp-crime plot elements are almost inconsequential next to its genuinely tragic examination of two shattered, embittered souls, bound together by forces neither fully understands.

The relationship between Benny (Warren Oates), the piano player enlisted to recover the titular object in question, and Elita (Isela Vega), the prostitute once involved with Alfredo Garcia himself, seesaws from hatred and violence to tender and desperate expressions of deep emotion. Garcia is dead before the story begins but the shockwaves of his deeds reverberate.

Oates, always an underutilized talent in his lifetime, creates a remarkable portrait of a feral, opportunistic scumbag in constant hiding behind enormous sunglasses (Oates apparently borrowed these from Peckinpah himself). The deck is stacked against Vega from the start -- in Peckinpah's world, women are either punching bags or earth-mother saviors of animalistic men unable to provide for them -- but, even when threatened with rape, she rises above a potentially exploitative story point with an astonishing, sad grace.

MGM's new DVD features, as its sole special feature, an info-packed commentary track with Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle. The track gets overcrowded at times but there are great nuggets along the way. For example, early choices for roles eventually played by Oates and "bored sadist" Gig Young included Peter Falk and Mort Sahl, respectively.

The film's editor was reluctant to depict the unsettling violence of its opening scene and chose a random exterior shot of the house to cut around it (one of the commentators was an extra in these scenes and provides plenty of on-set anecdotes.) Also of interest, Peckinpah had taken up dual citizenship in Mexico and the US at the time of the film's shooting, largely out of disgust with the American political climate (a caricature of Nixon, whom Peckinpah despised, pops up on a fake dollar bill).

The anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer preserves the gritty, naturalistic visual style quite well. It's practically revelatory next to the cruddy full-frame transfers previously available on video (and sporadically, at that). The print is clean and sharp and the much-lauded (by the commentators, anyway) day-for-night photography comes off about as well as that process will allow. A trailer -- in anamorphic widescreen, no less -- rounds out a respectable package. -- Jason Comerford