What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?Whadya got?
I consider Marlon Brando one of the greatest actors of all time, but I have not seen more than a handful of his films in their entirety. What I have seen are the interviews, documentaries and television specials devoted to the man. And without fail, these retrospectives always trot out The Scenes – those iconic bits of dialogue that have been plucked so repeatedly from the original films that they’ve come to stand for The Movie Itself, the way a shark gets reduced to a set of preserved jaws hanging in the window of some beach gift shop.
The Wild One is one such creature. You don’t need to have seen it to understand its impact – in terms of pop culture, this movie spreads more seeds than an inside-out condom (the name of Brando’s gang? The Black Rebels Motorcycle Club. The name of the BRMC’s rival gang? The Beetles). And don’t forget; this is the movie where Brando single-handedly created a fresh template for actors and masculinity as a whole! With a minimum of clumsy, hard-boiled dialogue, Brando gave life to the Late-20th Century Complicated Man…the man who could just as easily beat the living bejesus out of you as sit and stew over how you hurt his feelings.
This you know, yet you can still actually see the film. And then it slowly dawns on you…this movie is not good. Actually, it’s just another early-1950s low-budget exploitation flick, cashing in on the mild hysteria whipped up by exaggerated news stories about biker gangs invading small towns – in particular, the 1947 non-sacking of Hollister, California, over the Fourth of July weekend.
Brando plays Johnny, leader of the aforementioned BRMC. After a brief, teasing voice-over by Johnny attempting to explain “how the whole mess happened,” the gang roars into frame – menacingly wobbling on their motorcycles in front of a projection screen of moving hillsides. After an abortive attempt to crash a “legitimate” motorcycle race, the gang rolls into Wrightsville, a quaint studio backlot of a town full of curious old biddies who initially roll out the red carpet for the bikers. Innocent carousing leads to flirtation between Johnny and Kathie, the pristine young counter-girl at the local café. Johnny’s ambiguous courtship of Kathie rouses the restrained ire of Kathie’s father, who happens to be the local sheriff – which in this town means he’s merely an empty uniform controlled by the local bigwigs (when Johnny and the sheriff lock horns, you half-expect Brando to launch into Col. Kurtz’s “You’re an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill” speech from Apocalypse Now).
The real threat to Johnny’s control over the situation arrives in the form of Lee Marvin as Chino, former sidekick to Johnny and current leader of the Beetles. A fist-fight between the two gang leaders lands Chino in jail, and nightfall transforms the tension between the citizens and the increasingly inebriated bikers into an honest-to-goodness 1950s fracas. Telephone lines are cut. Beauty parlors are overrun. Old folk are jostled. Of course, none of this is actually Johnny’s fault – he’s too busy giving Kathie her first motorcycle ride. And since he is a Complicated Man, he alternates between playing tongue hockey and berating the girl for being such a “square.” They return just in time for Johnny to be beaten up by the lynch mob which the town has turned into, then blamed for the accidental death of a local old fart. All is eventually sorted out, the bikers are issued a stern ultimatum, and Johnny finally gives the girl a smile before riding away forever.
I don’t mean to imply that The Wild One does not have its merits. Brando and Marvin definitely stand out as “guys to watch.” Fans of kitsch will derive much mirth from the occasionally broad acting and unintentionally hilarious dialogue – always a hazard when the need to convey heavy-handed social messages is conveyed by actors spouting some forty-something screenwriter’s notion of contemporary youth slang.
The passage of time and the blooming of Marlon Brando’s career have transformed The Wild One into a classic. And in a not-too-distant future, the torch will be passed to its cinematic heir, Point Break.
I eagerly await that day.
