Marlon Brando is iconic in the role of the leader of a bike gang, but this was a tough film for me to warm to. The Black Rebels Motorcycle Club are a bunch of people who ride into town, harass women and old people, cause accidents, and commit general mayhem, all while delivering slick, defiant lines in early 1950's slang that the "squares" don't get. The town's sheriff is feckless and weak, and his shrugging and "what can I do?" responses quickly get annoying. A waitress (his daughter, of course) is assaulted but somehow still falls for Brando (argh), and then the townsfolk decide they've had enough and form a vigilante mob. Maybe in all of this there is an ink blot whereby who you sympathize with says something about you or maybe your current station in life, but for me, it was close to being none of the above, and it was tough to see the film tilt its sympathies to the motorcycle gang. The latter is of course helped in no small part by Brando's considerable screen presence.
The performances are generally good, and aside from Brando, Lee Marvin is great as the leader of a rival gang. What a fine actor he was, and with The Big Heat coming out the same year, 1953 was certainly a good one for him. I liked the direction from László Benedek, especially when he put Brando and the young woman (Mary Murphy) in close up, or gets interesting shots of the swarm of motorcycles, which descend on the town like a plague of locusts.
The oft-quoted response of Brando's to the question "Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" (answer: "What have you got?") seems to capture a nihilistic attitude so perfectly that although memorable, was somewhat off-putting to me. However, a much smaller line delivered later, when he's getting beaten up by the people of the town who have had enough of his gang running roughshod over everything, contains the glimmer of something kind of hidden, and probably the best part of the film for me. He says "My old man used to hit harder than that," and in that little moment, it hit me that he was the product of abuse and a difficult childhood. Reflecting on it, the feeling grows. Why is this guy so attached to a silly trophy that one of his gang member's swiped from a racing competition? Why does he allude to having made a deal with a cop once (and was presumably betrayed)? Why can he not simply express gratitude in the scene at the police station, why is it that "he doesn't know how"? He has not seen enough kindness in life, and in acting out sees even less of it, in the spiral to becoming a misunderstood outsider.
I don't know if there is quiiite enough of this aspect to balance out Brando's character, much less how all of the others behave in the film. Maybe the film is the truest test of empathy, or maybe this guy's just a punk who should behave better (albeit an iconically cool punk mind you), or maybe it was ahead of its time in showing the inevitable rebellion to the norms of post-war America. Maybe all of the above.
The performances are generally good, and aside from Brando, Lee Marvin is great as the leader of a rival gang. What a fine actor he was, and with The Big Heat coming out the same year, 1953 was certainly a good one for him. I liked the direction from László Benedek, especially when he put Brando and the young woman (Mary Murphy) in close up, or gets interesting shots of the swarm of motorcycles, which descend on the town like a plague of locusts.
The oft-quoted response of Brando's to the question "Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" (answer: "What have you got?") seems to capture a nihilistic attitude so perfectly that although memorable, was somewhat off-putting to me. However, a much smaller line delivered later, when he's getting beaten up by the people of the town who have had enough of his gang running roughshod over everything, contains the glimmer of something kind of hidden, and probably the best part of the film for me. He says "My old man used to hit harder than that," and in that little moment, it hit me that he was the product of abuse and a difficult childhood. Reflecting on it, the feeling grows. Why is this guy so attached to a silly trophy that one of his gang member's swiped from a racing competition? Why does he allude to having made a deal with a cop once (and was presumably betrayed)? Why can he not simply express gratitude in the scene at the police station, why is it that "he doesn't know how"? He has not seen enough kindness in life, and in acting out sees even less of it, in the spiral to becoming a misunderstood outsider.
I don't know if there is quiiite enough of this aspect to balance out Brando's character, much less how all of the others behave in the film. Maybe the film is the truest test of empathy, or maybe this guy's just a punk who should behave better (albeit an iconically cool punk mind you), or maybe it was ahead of its time in showing the inevitable rebellion to the norms of post-war America. Maybe all of the above.