JUNIOR BONNER
US, 1972, 98 minutes, Colour.
Steve Mc Queen, Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, Joe Don Baker, Ben Johnson.
Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Junior Bonner is unusual Peckinpah. After Straw Dogs and before The Getaway, he seems to have taken a rest and enjoyed himself with a lightweight rodeo film that nevertheless allows him to explore some of the western themes (and change) that he probed in Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue.
1972 saw a group of rodeo films - When the Legends Die, J.W. Coop, The Honkers. Junior Bonner shows quite a lot of the rodeo life and its challenge and style. But it also explores contemporary style in Prescott, Arizona, and its traditions. The changing west is still in a state of change as the real estate experts and the developers move in to demolish and expand - a new version of the nineteenth century style development. Peckinpah showing us the generations in this setting is on familiar ground. Steve Mc Queen is at home in this kind of role. Robert Preston and Ida Lupino make welcome re-appearances as his parents. Interesting Americana and interesting Peckinpah.
1. Was Junior Bonner the hero of this film?
2. What impression did you get of him during the multi-image credits and song?
3. What motivated Junior? What were his ambitions?
4. What picture of rodeo-circuit life did the film give? What was its glamour, attractions, challenge?
5. This film is a cowboy picture set in Arizona. What did it have in common with westerns?
6. What was the significance of showing three generations of Bonners - Ace, Junior and Curly, Curly's children? What did the film have to say about the different generations? About change, differing life-styles and challenges?
7. What was the significance of the sequence of the bulldozing of Ace's house and Junior confronted in his car by the huge earth-moving machine?
8. What standards and values did Curly stand for - his T.V. and showmanship at the home-sites, slogans, his float in the parade? How did he contrast with Ace and Junior? How was he the man of the present and future? Why did he and Junior fight?
9. What was the relationship between Junior and his mother? Curly and his mother, Ace and Elvira, Curly and Ace?
10. How was the parade sequence a summary of the whole film - Ace and Junior and the horse? Ace and Junior riding off, Ace and Junior's talk at the station: Ace full of dreams, Junior ageing and broke?
11. What picture of Arizona life did the film give - of the west, of ordinary, friendly, country, patriotic people? The parade, party, rodeo?
12. How important was Junior's riding of Sunshine? Why?
13. What contribution did Buck Roan, Red, the girl make to the film?
14. Did Junior do the right thing by Ace at the end? Was this too sentimental?
15. Comment on the effectiveness of the ending: the still of each character, resolution, Junior riding into the sunset.
