6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Two rival motorcycle gangs terrorize a small town after one of their leaders is thrown in jail.
Starring: Marlon Brando, Mary Murphy (I), Robert Keith, Lee Marvin, Jay C. FlippenDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
2.0 is Mono encoded in a dual-channel configuration
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Long before Toecutter, Goose and the Nightrider, there was Johnny of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, or "B.R.M.C." Director Laslo Benedek spent most of his career directing television in its formative years, but he made one signature film, The Wild One, that set the template for countless biker pictures to come and created an image of Marlon Brando as the uncompromising gang leader, Johnny Strabler, that remains iconic to this day. With the possible exception of Vito Corleone, Johnny is the figure (though not necessarily the role) with which Brando remains most closely associated. His poster was a long-time favorite on college dorm room walls; he was featured among the celebrities on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; and his look has been imitated by Elvis Presley and countless others. But The Wild One itself is less seen today, largely because, by contemporary standards, it's pretty tame. If not for the presence of Brando and the rival gang leader played by a young Lee Marvin, the film might have been forgotten. Although the opening text promises something "shocking", most of the violence is threatened rather than carried out. Benedek uses some of the techniques of film noir (deep shadows, empty spaces, suggestive framing) to imply more than he can show, but one never gets the sense in The Wild One that the biker gangs are truly a threat to life, limb or chastity. Any sense of danger comes from Brando's and Marvin's ability to suggest what their characters could do under the right circumstances. It would take several decades of social upheaval before such crimes were widely committed in mainstream films by gangs of street punks, inspiring characters like Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry and Charles Bronson's Paul Kirsey to respond with deadly force. In The Wild One, it's still just a few bad apples acting out.
The Wild One was shot by veteran cinematographer Hal Mohr (The Jazz Singer), and the opening credits specify that he used a "Garutso Balanced Lens", a patented design by inventor Stephen E. Garutso that offered greater depth of field while keeping the foreground in focus. Though some of the claims made by Garutso and his co-inventors at the time were far-fetched (notably, that their results created a 3D-like effect), Mohr shot several films with Garutso lenses, with impressive results. Mill Creek's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of The Wild One, presumably from a transfer supplied by Sony, provides a crisply defined, detailed presentation, with deep blacks and finely rendered shades of gray that give the image a sense of depth and texture. Brando's subtle shifts in expression, the large street scenes filled with bikers and citizens, and the dark streets and alleys of Wrightsville late at night are all vividly rendered. Except for an occasional flicker, the source material appears to be in excellent condition, and leaving aside some light occurrences of video noise, there are no artifacts or other tell-tale signs of digital manipulation. With no extras, Mill Creek has devoted the entire BD-25 to the 79-minute film, resulting in an average bitrate of 29.42 Mbps, which is excellent.
The film's original mono soundtrack is encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels. It's a functional mix that sounds just fine. The roar of the cycles has decent bass extension for the era, and the top end is neither brittle nor fatiguing. The dialogue is clear, and the jazzy score by Leith Stevens (The War of the Worlds) suits both the era and the mood.
The disc contains no extras.
Besides being the grandfather of biker pictures, The Wild One also anticipated a new kind of anti-hero who would begin to take shape in the next decade with such films as Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider and the explosion of cinematic creativity accompanying what was then known as the counterculture. All of that still lay in the future in 1953, but if you listen closely to Johnny talking to Mary, or the B.R.M.C. members talking to Jimmy (William Vedder), the elderly dishwasher at Frank's tavern, you'll notice that the rhythms, slang and style are borrowed from the lingo of jazz musicians (or what the gang members imagine jazz musicians sound like). Long before media and fashion companies learned how to merchandise rock 'n' roll and gangsta rap, rebellious young American males signaled their anti-establishment status by adopting the lingo of "outsider" music. Most of the B.R.M.C. was dorky, but Brando made them cool—which is why The Wild One is essential viewing for any student of American cultural history, let alone American cinema. Mill Creek's Blu-ray is very good and highly recommended.
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