(Sam Peckinpah, US 1962, 94 min., 35mm)
Director Sam Peckinpah would have turned 100 in February, so the Dryden is resurrecting four of his best films to honor the occasion. Many Peckinpah fans consider this early effort, an elegiac Western, to be his finest creation. The director teamed two of the genre’s legendary leading men (Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea) in a story of two aging gunslingers hired to protect a gold shipment. Retired marshal Steve Judd (Scott) is the man for the job when a bank enlists him to escort raw ore from the mine to the town. He is happy to meet old friend Gil Westrum (McCrea) along the way and hires him and his sidekick Heck (Ron Starr) to help. But things get messy when Heck falls in love with a young woman (Mariette Hartley) who is already engaged to one of the miners.
