The Wild One Review
This classic youth rebellion movie was controversial not just for its permissive youth violence, but especially for its lack of a moral solution. Marlon_Brando's image was long defined by his iconic role as a motorcycle gang leader. Directed by Laslo_Benedek, the film is a cultural turning point, a mid-1950s harbinger of the generational and social unrest which would follow in the 1960s. Easy_Rider, the emblematic film of the late 1960s counter-culture, was itself a derivative of The Wild One. As two gangs of hoods terrorize a quiet Midwestern U.S. town, the complacency of post-war, white-bread America is figuratively shattered, and nothing in American culture would ever be quite so placid again. As a film, The Wild One is a brooding soap opera that seems dated in retrospect, but its cinematic impact was slight compared to its cultural reverberations. Brando's stature as the bad boy of his era grew to immense proportions, and the film was banned in Britain for fourteen years (until 1968), as authorities feared that it would incite riots. Michael Betzold, Rovi
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