The Wild One
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Movie Reviews of The Wild One
Movie Review: One of the Greats!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have always wanted this movie being a biker for so many years but I was never able to find it. Now, I have it on DVD!Movie Review: TEEN ANGST MEETS THE SMALL TOWN FROM HELL!
Summary: 4 Stars
IN A NUTSHELL:
Teen angst portrayed by grown men, led by Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin, on noisy motorcycles meets the small town from hell. Mary Murphy is stunning as Brando's small-town girl ready for the backseat of his motorcycle. This is a real spectacle and something film buffs should consider seeing, at least once. However, the real meaning and value is a bit confusing.
CONFUSING?
I am pleased to say I had never experienced "The Wild One" before last night, which makes my impressions fresh. As the film rolled on I was not sure who was the villian[s] and who was the victim[s]? In concrete terms, it was the old man that was killed by the motorcycle after Brando was knocked off it by a thrown "tire iron", but that was NOT what the story was about.
WHAT WAS THE STORY ABOUT:
In a word - RAGE - RAGE - RAGE and more RAGE.
My thought process went something like this. The movie opens with a motorcycle gang riding into and disrupting a motorcycle race. They shove a few protesting race officials and then I think, "A-ha! So this is where the biker gang goes wild!" After a few minutes, Brando gets a 2nd place trophy courtesy of a thieving henchmen and the gang departs swiftly after the first sign of local law enforcement, before anyone gets hurt. Ok, so that's just to whet our appetite -- RIGHT?
The next town won't be so lucky. I smiled when I saw Jay C. Flippen playing Sheriff Singer. This man would be the pushover needed to have a real disaster, I assured myself. Gradually, the bikers became increasingly raucous and were definitely disturbing the peace. As long as they paid for their beers and didn't break too much around the town, nobody was too put out. Mary Murphy who played Brando's love interest Kathie was certainly the scene stealer here and was as out-of-place as the middle aged bikers, but so what?
However, after a while, I realized nothing was really happening other than some bad-mannered bikers drinking a lot of beer. Then, Lee Marvin and his rival gang [actually the group Brando's gang broke from] showed up and I thought, "A-ha! These guys are going to commit atrocities here," and I quickly fetched my remote control so that I could skip or fast-forward scenes if I found the new gang too disturbing. Well, when the milquetoast town cop marched Lee Marvin [Chino] to the jail without any violence or even a protest from the two gangs now outnumbering the townspeople, my confusion really deepened and I put the remote control down.
So where is the WILD ONE? At the beginning of the film there was this warning about what horrors happened in this town and in England it would be 13 years before the censors would allow "The Wild One" to be shown! Well, SURPRISE - SURPRISE, the violence and killing did come, but it came from vigilantes in the town. Yes, that's right, it came from the townspeople, or at least the local bullies who were as mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore.
Johnny [Brando] was selected to become the scapegoat and was yanked off his bike, captured, and beaten. When Johnny escaped while Sheriff Singer was talking sense to the town bully, the vigilantes went looking for him again. As he fled on his motorcycle, one of the vigilantes threw the "tire iron" which knocked him off his bike and caused the death of the old man who was basically an innocent bystander.
TIME CAPSULE?
I'm not sure if the way I interpreted the film last night is the way it was intended in 1954. I do know that when I saw "Rebel Without A Cause" also for the first time recently, I saw the "teen angst" and "ineffective parents". This time, I just saw the town from hell responding to the bad-mannered bikers. After seeing "Rebel Without A Cause" with me, my 16-year-old daughter declared that she wanted a red jacket for Christmas. I'm pretty sure, however, that she won't want a silly-looking hat and a black leather jacket after she sees "The Wild One". I'm not sure if that makes "The Wild One" a time capsule or just a dated movie that was a provovative Brando vehicle at the time. I am sure that seeing it today may be confusing for some.
WORTH MENTIONING:
Mary Murphy was a very sympathetic young woman and very alluring in a wholesome small town way. Lee Marvin was his usual grating self and Brando essentially pouted throughout the entire movie. It was very touching that Johnny did give Mary Murphy his stolen 2nd place trophy at the end, as a sort of intimate thank you for her appeal to the County Sheriff at the end of the film. This appeal prompted her uncle to admit that "someone" had thrown a tire iron that "made the bike go crazy" and cleared "The Wild One" of manslaughter.
ABOUT THE DVD:
If "Scene Selector" is a feature, this DVD has features. Nevertheless, it is a stunningly clean black and white transfer with the right contrast.
Movie Review: He's really just a pussy cat
Summary: 4 Stars
The "bikers" are like Broadway show extras. The dialogue is embarrassingly unauthentic. Believe me, nobody outside of 42nd Street ever talked like that, daddy-o. The story plays out like some kind of "B" Western with a horse shortage. The "town" even looks like a Western set made over for what somebody in Hollywood thought might be a new genre. There's a café and a saloon rolled into one and a gal working there to catch the eye, and a town posse and a jail and a sheriff (father of the gal) and some "decent citizens" turning into vigilantes, and instead of outlaws we have "hooligans." The bikers do everything but tie their bikes up to the hitching post after roaring into town as though to take over.Okay, that's one level. On another level this should be compared to Rebel without a Cause (1955) as a mid-century testament to teen angst. Or to Blackboard Jungle (1955) with the fake juvenile delinquency and the phony slang. Marlon Brando as Johnny Strabler, whose claim to fame (aside from being the leader of the pack) is that he stole a second-place biker trophy, stars in a role that helped to launch his career, not that his acting in this film was so great. (He was better in half a dozen other roles, for example., as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire 1951, or as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront 1954). What stands out here is his tough-guy vulnerability with women: the irresistible little boy playing big. In one sense, this is, despite all the men running around and the macho delirium, something very close to ladies night out. It's a period piece love story, as delicate as a teenager's heart.
Mary Murphy, who in my opinion really steals the show, is at the very center of the drama and the psychology (not to mention that she looks downright yummy in her cashmere sweater and close fitting skirt). She plays Kathie Bleeker, a small town girl whose heart yearns for something--anything--to break the tedium. Along comes Johnny to sweep her off her feet. Only he isn't sure how. Furthermore, she has a problem: although she falls in love with the wild one, she sees right through him. The scene that makes the movie begins with her jumping onto the back of his motorcycle (of course) and, after roaring down the night highway, they retire to what looks like a park. She is about a breath away from what used to be called swooning, but despite her fluttering heart, she sets him straight on who he is and how she feels and why. It's like a woman talking to a wild boy. Then she falls to the ground and just about caresses his motorcycle. It really hits home because she sees through all his pretense and exposes his vulnerability, but is vulnerable herself.
Lee Marvin plays the rival gang leader with a lot of showmanship and Robert Keith plays the ineffectual father. Just about everybody else (including longtime LA sports anchor, Gil Stratton) amounts to an extra.
See this for a glimpse at mid-century psychology as seen through the eyes of Hollywood's seduction machine, and especially for Mary Murphy (running in those heels) who, for whatever reason, never became a star.
Movie Review: "The Wild One" introduces the motorcycle as the symbol of youth rebellion...
Summary: 4 Stars
The 1950's was a period of review and questioning, as a new postwar generation sensed that much was wrong but could not grasp what it was nor offer any solution... It was, in fact, a generation with a sensitive exposed nerve that gave constant pain...
Marlon Brando, a young 'Method' actor (the "Method' was itself a manifestation of the times) began his film career with 'The Men' (1950) and continued with 'A Streetcar Named Desire' (1951), 'Viva Zapata' (1952) and 'Julius Caesar' (1953), all roles concerned with rebellion... Then, in 1953, he made 'The Wild One' and his rebel image crystallized...
Brando plays Johnny, leader of a motorcycle gang calling itself the Black Rebels, which terrorizes Wrightsville, a little American town...
The gang members release their frustrated emotions by racing, overturning a car, and by vicariously participating in a savage fight between Johnny and Chino (Lee Marvin), formerly a part of Johnny's gang but now a rival club...
Violence escalates when the town forms a vigilante committee, and inevitably there is an accidental killing... Johnny is saved from wrongful arrest by Kathie (Mary Murphy), a local girl who, in spite of herself, falls in love with him, as he does with her... She senses beneath his cruel exterior an innate gentleness, and is attracted by his sexuality, an element that was increasingly to become a factor in the evolution of the rebel hero...
Johnny and the gang finally leave town and life returns to normal, but many questions that the film poses were left unanswered...
Brooding, and compulsive, the film created a noisy tumult partly because it failed to show 'why' youths were this way, ending up, in the words of one critics "violent for violence's sake." However it is an important film... It reflected the problems of the period and it marked a step in the progress of the rebel hero... It also introduced the motorcycle as the symbol of youth rebellion foretelling such films as 'Wild Angels' (1966) and 'Easy Rider' (1969).
Movie Review: Are you down with my review
Summary: 4 Stars
Ummmmmm, I think the reason I like this film stems from the reasoning that any picture that can leave me questioning for years wether I like it or not must have had an impact. No im wrong I do like it I just dont know if I love it.The film is about a lovely little group of buggerlugs who decide to run a muck in a small town, and thats it. What makes it a bit special is that there is a sparkly allagiorical treat hidden away ( it was a fifties film ) and it has Brando in it.
The film allows you to decide who are the villans of the tale, the gang or the towns people. The bikers are thankfully represented in an aimiable light when contrasted with the lynch mob of towns people, who decide to go against the law to rid their town of the invading scallywags, and the towns folk arent all 'squares', theres a nice balance that lets you decide. Being set and produced in the fifties theres a strong rebellious streak through the film, and rather than just the dramatisation ao an actual event I think it has links with the social climate of the time. I get a strong Macarthyism style wiff from this pungent little snuff box, i could be wrong but the stench is mighty strong.
Brando does his usual job, acting mostly with his expressive face throughout as his character hardly says much, you always get the impression he is continually considering his situation and finding no real purpose, you cant help but watch him and he manages to shine through from a sea of insignificant others.
The film has aged in a way that other youth films such as 'Rebel without a cause' havent, this is mainly down to the jive talk, which is a bit old hat, its funny though how even today white folks still imitate the infinately cooler speech of the black community ( Brando does it a bit better than most kids today though )
If you can look past the jive ( which i think gives the film a touch of style) you will most probably enjoy this, i just convinced myself that i do love this afterall
bye