To gauge the influence of 1953’s The Wild One,
screening as part of the Northwest Film Center’s Top Down movie series,
look no further than last summer’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull, in which a swaggering Shia LaBeouf donned a
garment-for-garment replica of the outfit that Marlon Brando wore in
his portrayal of The Wild One‘s titular motorcycle rebel. (If
for some reason you’re skeptical as to the cinematic staying power of
the Beef, other Wild One adherents famously included Elvis
Presley and James Dean.)
So it’s established that The Wild One was instrumental in
defining a certain strand of American masculinity—or at the very
least, defining an aesthetic that became synonymous with a certain
strand of American masculinity. And as a visual relic, it certainly
holds up: Brando on a motorcycle practically generates his own
pheromonal force field.
But it’s hard to scratch the stylish surface of The Wild One.
Proto-rebellious Brando and his motorcycle gang zoom into a little
Western town, start fights and trash bars, and a small-town girl pins
her hopes of escape on Brando’s (admittedly strapping) shoulders. But
Brando’s vacuous rebellion, his “Whaddaya got?” posturing, is pitched
against a bygone world, one that even within the film seems like a
caricature. In fact, it’d be easy to chalk the film’s inscrutability up
to the times. It’s old, after all, set in an alien landscape of
small-town values and small-town fears. Such a view, though, would
disservice other films of the era: Compare The Wild One to, say
1955’s The Blackboard Jungle or even Rebel Without a
Cause, both of which are infinitely more resonant. These films hold
up, feel relevant and relatable in a way that The Wild One does
not. So what is it about Brando’s aimless rebellion that
still
appeals?
Maybe it’s as simple as a friend’s explanation, offered as I puzzled
over the film’s staying power: “Marlon Brando invented being cool in
that movie. Before that there was no such thing.”