Is one of the most influential films in American cinema. The intensity of its violence was unprecedented, while the director´s use of multiple cameras, montage editing, and slow motion quickly became the normative style for rendering screen violence. Demonstrating to filmmakers the power of irony as a narrative voice and its effectiveness as a tool for exploring and portraying brutality, The Wild Bunch fundamentally changed the Western, moving it into a more brutal and psychopathic territory than it had ever occupied. This volume includes newly commissioned essays by several leading scholars of Peckinpah´s work. Examining the film´s production history from script to screen, its rich and ambivalent vision of American society, and its relationship to the Western genre, among other topics, it provides a definitive reinterpretation of an enduring film classic.