The Subterraneans (1960)

Director:

Ranald MacDougall

Writers:

Jack Kerouac (novel)
Robert Thom (writer)

Release Date:

23 June 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

These are The Subterraneans Today's Young Rebels - Who live and love in a world of their own this is their story told to the hot rhythms of fabulous jazz!

Plot Keywords:

Based On Novel

Cast

Leslie Caron	...	Mardou Fox
George Peppard	...	Leo Percepied
Janice Rule	...	Roxanne
Roddy McDowall	...	Yuri Gilgoric
Anne Seymour	...	Charlotte Percepied
Jim Hutton	...	Adam Moorad
Scott Marlowe	...	Julien Alexander
Arte Johnson	...	Arial Lavalerra
Ruth Storey	...	Analyst
Bert Freed	...	Bartender
Gerry Mulligan	...	Reverend Joshua Hoskins
Carmen McRae	...	Herself
André Previn	...	Himself
Shelly Manne	...	Himself
Red Mitchell	...	Himself

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Filming Locations:

San Francisco, California, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

"Subterraneans" author Jack Kerouac was disturbed that his friend, author John Clellon Holmes, managed to get his "Beat Generation" novel "Go" into print before his own was published ("Go", in which Kerouac is a main character, was published in 1952, while "On the Road" was not published until 1957). Kerouac was worried that Holmes was plagiarizing him, although Holmes was careful to credit Kerouac with creating the term "Beat" for their generation, and much of the material was common amongst them and other writers of their circle, such as Allen Ginsberg. Ironically, producer Albert Zugsmith outfoxed Kerouac by copyrighting the term "The Beat Generation", which he used as the title of an egregious film. The 1960 movie of "The Subterraneans", made by a top studio with top talent, proved to be a major disappointment as it grossly misrepresented the scene (as well as Kerouac's novel), but ironically, it is probably the premier movie about the Beats, as so few "Beat" movies were made, the phenomenon occurring during a time of strict screen censorship in the United States. By the time censorship was lifted in 1968, the Beats had been supplanted by the Hippies.

Quotes:

Mardou Fox: I go through men as other women go through money. I'm a spendthrift with men ... I want so badly to be a miser!

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Great Performances: Musicals Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM" (1996)

Soundtrack:

Coffee Time

Is there anything worse than self-conscious 'intellectuals'?

There are good bad films and bad bad films - this is a skin-crawlingly embarrassing bad film. It starts with a title text about "Bohemians" who gather in Greenwich Village, London's Soho, the Left Bank in Paris, and San Francisco.

We then see George Peppard playing a frustrated would-be author shouting at his typewriter and telling his long-suffering mother he is hungry for life and needs to discover its meaning.

After this the film goes downhill as George encounters a group of Beatniks who gather in a place called the "Catacombs", call each other "man", have very intense relationships and meditate on the cosmic.

This is just a joke. A caricature of existentialism, 'beat culture' or whatever you want to call it. It also marks the point where young people starting taking themselves too seriously, felt they had "Something To Say" simply because they *were* young and that they knew how to put things right. Sorry, chaps, the world's a s**t-house and that's it. Dear San Francisco, if you think *this* is a youth movement, wait until you see what 1967 has in store.

Why this should be a Turner "Classic" Movie is beyond me (unless we're talking about some sort of "classic age" of movie-making). MGM was responsible for enough true classics for this piece of bilge to be quietly forgotten.