Sam Peckinpah, the anti-hero of cinema: meeting with Gérard Camy, president of Cannes Cinéma and author of his biography

His ultimate biography on "Sam Peckinpah, the melancholic rebel" has the air of a bible, with more than 700 pages on the life and work of this great American filmmaker ( The Wild Bunch, The Ambush, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid ...), even if Gérard Camy did not hesitate to also take out the Colt to destroy the man's failings, sometimes violent, depressive and addicted to alcohol and cocaine. Before a conference for Cannes University on October 2 and a signing session this Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Fnac in Nice, the president of Cannes Cinéma will once again proclaim all his love and admiration for this extraordinary artist during the screening of Cross of Iron this evening at the Olympia cinema.

Why Sam Peckinpah?

I've been familiar with him cinematographically for a long time. I discovered him at 19 with The Wild Bunch , thinking that something was happening that had never been seen on the big screen. In 1996, I wrote a first book on his work where I analyzed his films, without knowing much about his life. But from then on, I met a lot of Peckinpah-minded people, notably during a tribute in 2000 with James Coburn, Ali MacGraw or Peckinpah's sister with whom I stayed in contact, as well as with specialist American writers. In short, I entered "the Peckinpah family" and four years ago, Thierry Frémaux (Editor's note: general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival and director of the Lumière Institute) asked me to write this exhaustive biography for the Acte Sud-Lumière Institute collection. I was able to access a huge number of sources to evoke this extraordinary destiny.

The western was his favorite genre, but this Friday evening, you're paying tribute to him with a war film...

Cross of Iron is a mind-blowing film that explores the German debacle on the Russian front in the South, through the confrontation between two officers. Orson Welles himself called it the greatest anti-war film. And on October 2nd at Cannes University, Sam Peckinpah will be in the spotlight with the thriller The Ambush .

Violence is often at the heart of his work, between fascination and repulsion?

He had a huge ambiguity about violence, which characterizes his films. He himself was sometimes violent when he had drunk too much or taken drugs, but he hated it and was deeply shocked by the assassinations of his time, Martin Luther King, JFK, Sharon Tate… He has been accused of complacency because he used innovative techniques to stage violence, but for me, it's a mockery. And the complacency is more on the side of Stanley Kubrick with A Clockwork Orange .

With his westerns, Peckinpah also dismantled the American myth?

Yes, he belongs to that group of American directors like Arthur Penn, Robert Altman, Anthony Mann… who brought a certain truth to the conquest of the West, in its darkest aspects. It's ambivalent because Peckinpah himself lived in the American West where his grandfather ran a big ranch, and he was fascinated by these drunken cowboys who told dirty jokes in the evenings by the fire. He himself remained a hunter whose games often ended in a brothel, in contradiction with his strict and religious upbringing.

Sam Peckinpah, who clashed with Hollywood studios while being one of their icons in the 1960s and 1970s, is like his antiheroes?

Yes, the heroes of his films are magnificent losers who have become maladjusted to their world. At the end of the cycle, they decide to make a last stand, as in The Wild Bunch .

Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Dustin Hoffman, and Charlton Heston have all played them. Which one is the most Peckinpah-esque?

The one he was closest to was James Coburn, his absolute friend who always defended him. On Convoy , Coburn, hired as second unit director, carried the entire film on his shoulders, following the instructions of a Peckinpah weakened by illness.

You call him a rebel?

Yes, especially in relation to the Hollywood system because he was in perpetual conflict with the producers. But between 1969 and 1973, Peckinpah was also the director that all the major studios wanted, before being banned from them. Today, he is a filmmaker somewhat forgotten by the general public, but my book tells the story of an extraordinary life. And Peckinpah retains an immense aura among today's filmmakers, from Jean-Pierre Améris who does not make the same films at all, to Scorsese who orchestrated the restoration of The Wild Bunch , John Woo or Tarantino who wrote more than thirty pages about The Ambush in his book.

You also describe him as melancholic?

Sam Peckinpah himself said: "I'm only happy with a camera. Otherwise, I'm a guy who's not capable of happiness."

Basically, he had about ten years of joy with his first wife and their three daughters, but his love life deteriorated after his house burned down. His attraction to brothels, his addiction to alcohol and cocaine ended up wearing him down...

He was also one of the first to appear on television before making a name for himself in cinema?

Yes, he had a truly successful ten-year career on the small screen, notably with the extraordinary series The Westerner , which prefigures all his cinema. Even though he was constrained by the codes of television, it was nevertheless his laboratory, and the head of NBC was shocked by this: he had the series canceled after thirteen episodes, even though it was a resounding success.

A cult scene?

In Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid , when an old sheriff, hit, dies slowly at the water's edge while his companion mourns him.