BEFORE: Enough Shakespeare, let's move on to biker gangs. Makes perfect sense, right? I didn't watch "Sons of Anarchy", but from what I've read, the story arcs in that show were greatly influenced by the plot of "Hamlet", so a connection is not out of the question.
Marlon Brando carries over from "Julius Caesar", and since he played such a wide variety of roles (no, that's not a fat joke) over the course of his enormous career (still not a fat joke) I'll treat this as just another chance to show off his extensive range. (Still, nope.)
THE PLOT: Two rival motorcycle gangs terrorize a small town after one of their leaders is thrown in jail.
AFTER: What's clear from the Marlon Brando films that I've seen is that he had such a commanding presence, whichever character he played became the biggest character on the screen (still not a fat joke). Whether this is because he had a knack for playing the most influential character, or whether that character became influential because it was played by Brando, I can't say.
His Marc Anthony character in "Julius Caesar" demonstrated violence in the form of revenge, but any violence here exhibited by his biker character, Johnny Strabler, is just for kicks. He takes the form of a bully here, but something of a conflicted bully in turmoil. Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown, even the crown of a gang leader.
These bikers are the kind that ride into town, annoy the townsfolk, and then prepare to fight back whenever the cops or decent folk try to get them to leave town. The bully rulebook is perfectly represented here, many times I see people who are playing their car radios too loud, or taking up too much space on the subway seats, just waiting for someone to react, so they can escalate the situation even further. It's best to just let these people be the annoying a-holes that they are, and not "poke the bear". Discretion is the better part of valor, I've learned.
It sort of seems like a part that James Dean would have been up for, but perhaps Dean was too busy moping his way through obscure television roles, and he didn't hit it big until "East of Eden", released two years after this film. Besides, Dean would have been 22 at the time, and Brando was a ripe 39 - some would say too old to play a troubled biker, but maybe the fact that his character was aging out of the biker gang was one of his troubles. The rest of Johnny's adult angst seems sort of undefined - someone asks him "What are you rebelling against?" and he replies, "Whadda you got?"
There's an odd relationship between Johnny and the waitress, Kathie - at first he wants nothing to do with her because her father's a cop, but that just makes her seem more unattainable, and perhaps therefore more forbidden, and ultimately attractive. He saves her from a bunch of his own bikers who are circling her with their hogs in a symbolic sort of gang-rape, but when they go for a long ride together in the countryside, nothing seems to come of it. Some people might point to this as evidence that Brando's character is gay, but I think it has more to do with the dynamic - suddenly she wasn't so unattainable any more, and thus she lost her appeal.
I think Kathie went through something similar - as long as Johnny was hard, tough, and unreachable, he had some appeal. But as soon as she started to break down his walls, she realized she couldn't turn him into the kind of man she needed, rather than the kind she wanted. It's a strange dynamic, but it's better for Johnny than the relationship with the other girl, who just calls his name a lot. "Johnny, Johnny" every 5 seconds, it would be enough to drive any man mad.
Also starring Mary Murphy, Lee Marvin (last seen in "The Big Heat"), Robert Keith, Jay C. Flippen, Will Wright (last seen in "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"), Ray Teal, Peggy Maley, Hugh Sanders, John Brown, Robert Osterloh, William Vedder, Yvonne Doughty.
RATING: 4 out of 10 racing trophies
No comments:
Post a Comment