Films by Monte Hellman

The American director and producer Monte Hellman attained cult status especially in Europe in the 1960s and 70s with his existentialist low-budget westerns RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND and THE SHOOTING, the racing driver movie TWO-LANE BLACKTOP and the drama COCKFIGHTER. On the occasion of a seminar held by Ralph Eue at the dffb, Arsenal will screen five movies by Hellman that now count as "New Hollywood" classics, as well as the interview video HELLMAN RIDER (FRG 1989) by Romuald Karmakar and Ulrich von Berg.

Monte Hellman is the great maverick of US-American cinema. He remained an insiders’ tip throughout his career: the lack of widespread acknowledgment corresponds with the unreserved and profound admiration on the part of his proclaimed fans. On the one hand, his movies are deliberately anchored in the American genre tradition - war movies, westerns, adventure films, road movies - but on the other, they insistently break with the conventions on which they are based or counter them in an intentionally absurd manner. He once said: "Maybe one of my tragic flaws is that, I hate to use the word, but I'm a kind of an intellectual." A testimony of how he was also (and especially) admired by colleagues is the following statement by Sam Peckinpah from 1973: "The best director working in America today is Monte Hellman.“ This is all the more interesting for the reason that the careers of Peckinpah and Hellman repeatedly crossed, or even got in each other's way. Hellman wrote the original script for Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and he also edited the action scenes in Killer Elite, a Sam Peckinpah film from 1975.