My Favourite Things

One of the most notorious films ever made, it can be viewed from a number of angles and works on a number of different levels..

As a period piece it gives a frightening portrait of hatred, violence and small town life of the early 70s - a period of discovery and rites of passage. 

Sam Peckenpah could be accused of trivialising the English way of life, of bringing something stupid and evil to the characters, but did we question his intentions in 1971 and do we question them today?

Only an American director could take the heart of an English village, rip it apart, drag it in the mud and ultimately re-construct it.

It is a relatively short film, which adds to its power. Viewing it back in the 1970s I remember feeling quite bored at the lengthy introduction passage which, it could be argued, goes on for almost an hour.

Today, it is this passage which gives the film its strength, its purpose and its menace. And the surprising thing is that the film can be construed to be about racial hatred, but on a deeper level it isn't.

Dustin Hoffman as the mild-mannered mathematician is taunted no more by the local yokels than the Major, who is the British equivalent of a sheriff.

The evil intent of this film lies in the way the villages of this small Cornwall community are prepared to laugh at anyone behind their backs.

Particularly menacing are the sections inside the pub where Hoffman is quite clearly made to feel like an outsider thanks to body language and glances. There is a simmering violence about these scenes.

On another level the film is a study of a rather unusual marriage between Hoffman's seriously under-stated academic character and Susan George's rather flirtatious Amy. This makes the rape scenes (one of the reasons the film was banned for so long) more difficult to understand. How willing was Amy to succumb and is Peckinpah somehow making an anti-feminist statement?

When the violence erupts Amy dissolves into the background as a "weak woman" whilst Hoffman rises to the fore as an aggressive antagonist. You can almost see him wearing a T-shirt assuring us that he is killing on behalf of "truth, honesty and the American way."

Essentially Peckinpah succeeds in allowing us to side with the Hoffman character whilst we gain nothing but contempt for the yokels as they attempt to exact revenge against the man they believe to have killed a teenager.

Straw Dogs also gets its power from the fact that there are no "normal" characters. If the yokels are far left, the Major is far right, the landlord of the pub seems to represent foreboding and there's also something decidedly nasty about the local vicar.

The fact that the Major attempts to help Hoffman and believes that he can stop the mob, shows how quickly law and order can break down. In the end the Major is less powerful than the other characters.

By the end of the film we are left with as many questions as answers. What was David (Hoffman) running away from, what has brought him to Trenchers Farm, where does he come from and where is he going to and what happens to his marriage after the film ends?

But we don't need answers to these questions. The real answer lies in the redemption of Hoffman who has left a trail of carnage that ultimately might allow the village to rid itself of the inbred hatreds and petty power struggles.

Ultimately Straw Dogs is one of those films that can be viewed again and again - each time from a different angle. It is difficult to see why we were kept from it for so many years as there have been many other films with much more gratuitous violence than this one.