Sam Peckinpah summary

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Sam Peckinpah, (born Feb. 21, 1925, Fresno, Calif., U.S.—died Dec. 28, 1984, Inglewood, Calif.), U.S. film director. He served in the U.S. Marines, studied drama at the University of Southern California, and began working in television in the mid-1950s, writing for and directing programs such as Gunsmoke and The Rifleman. He made his debut as a film director with The Deadly Companions (1961), which was followed by Ride the High Country (1962) and Major Dundee (1965). Among his later films are The Wild Bunch (1969), considered his finest, Straw Dogs (1971), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and Cross of Iron (1977). His films are noted for their magnificent landscapes, embittered characters, and brutal violence.

western Summary

Western, a genre of novels and short stories, motion pictures, and television and radio shows that are set in the American West, usually in the period from the 1850s to the end of the 19th century. Though basically an American creation, the western had its counterparts in the gaucho literature of

directing Summary

Directing, the craft of controlling the evolution of a performance out of material composed or assembled by an author. The performance may be live, as in a theatre and in some broadcasts, or it may be recorded, as in motion pictures and the majority of broadcast material. The term is also used in

film Summary

Film, series of still photographs on film, projected in rapid succession onto a screen by means of light. Because of the optical phenomenon known as persistence of vision, this gives the illusion of actual, smooth, and continuous movement. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film