Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns

Provides the first theoretical and critical attempt to place Sam Peckinpah within the 2,000-year-old tradition of western tragedy. This tragic tradition, enfolding the Greeks, Shakespeare and modern tragedians, is represented in Peckinpah's art in numerous ways, and the fact that he worked in the tragedic mode through out his career distinguishes him from most American film directors.