DEATH WISH

US, 1974, 94 minutes, Colour.
Charles Bronson, Hope Lange, Vincent Gardenia, Steven Keats, William Redfield.
Directed by Michael Winner.

Death Wish is the film that has had New York audiences cheering an individualistic vigilante real-estate designer wreaking vengeance on street thugs because his wife has been brutally attacked and murdered and his daughter rendered catatonic. Michael Winner directs Charles Bronson for the 4th time. Bronson portrays well this unsympathetic sympathetic character, pacifist turned executioner because of sudden violence and police inability to cope with it. What is one to think of this violence (and its origins in the US West)? There is the vigilante within most of us when we suffer injustice which goes unavenged. But who has the right to be an avenger? Who has the authority?

1. Who had the death wish? Paul? The criminals? American society and New York?

2. How successful was this as action melodrama? How did it keep its fast pace? The excitement of the incidents? The ongoing force of the development of Paul's vigilantism? What technical details nude the film so successful?

3. How accurate a picture of violence in the modern world was this? The brutality of the muggers? The freedom of bashings and guns and rape? The risks to people in the cities? What is your response to this kind of world?

4. Where did your sympathies lie? The credit sequence of the holiday and the photos and the happy married life? This atmosphere crushed by the brutality of the rape and the death of Joanna Kersey? The feelings of revenge which we shared with Paul Kersey? Did sympathies remain with him throughout the film? When he was executing people? Did we have a basic sympathy with his point of view, even if we disagreed with his actions? Why?

5. Did the film raise the question of vigilantism accurately? Fairly? Why did Paul Kersey become a vigilante? What did he achieve? Had he the right to achieve it? Had he any right to execute people? Even if the police were incompetent? What are the social consequences of such individual vigilantism? Can society tolerate this? Was this made clear in the film? The attitudes of the police and the politicians?

6. What did the film have to offer in favour of vigilantism? The brutality in New York? The impossibility of detection? The need for avenging? Revenge? The right of the man to self-defence? What did the film show against vigilantism? The individual taking rights into his own hands? Using violence for violence, an eye for an eye? The social upheaval and terror? The atmosphere of hysteria in a city? The use that politicians make of such men?

7. What was the attitude of the film-makers towards American society? The place of violence in this society? The importance of the sequence in Tucson? The importance of the visit to the western village, the presentation of violent death, the vigilante in the West, the modern applause for such violence? The overtones of this for the rest of the film? e.g. his having to get out of town by sunset?

8. How did the film show Paul as an ordinary man - in his holiday, in his job, his involvement in the modern city, real estate etc.? His home life with his wife, with his daughter and son-in-law? His Korean War background? Pacifist? And changing then to violence?

9. What did the film have to say about how an ordinary man can be changed by unexpected violence? How did the film visualise this change in Paul, in his unhappiness, funeral, his relationship with the rest of the family and at work etc.?

10. What actually was the change in him? what happened to him? Did he really intend to kill someone when he went into the park? Did he shoot the first attacker on the spur of the moment?

11. What was the effect of the change in the son-in-law? Was he too weak? Did he do the right thing by his wife? The change in the daughter and her refusal to come to life again? Did she have a death wish?

12. Comment on the presentation of the police. Of Inspector Ochoa? His idiosyncrasies and style? His shrewdness in detecting Kersey? His reaction to the administration when asked to protect Kersey? His dealings with Kersey in disagreement with the administrators, but doing what he was told?

13. How violently portrayed was the rape and bashing? Too vividly done? The rest of the deaths? What was your response to these? (New York audiences cheered Kersey when the film was first released).

14. What right had the papers to sensationalise the vigilante? Did the papers and the media create the atmosphere where vigilantism could spread? And hysteria spread? (The irony of Kersey's collection of papers and magazines about himself?)

15. How cynical was the end of the film? What would Kersey do in Chicago? Begin again?

16. What is the effect of this kind of film on ordinary audiences? Do they take these films merely as thrillers? Are they influenced as regards their sense of justice and injustice? Are they made more violence prone?