The Wild One (1953)

Directed by

László Benedek

Genre

drama film, teen film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 19m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 336 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A motorcycle gang rides into a small town and clashes with the locals. The leader Johnny Strabler challenges authority and stirs up trouble.

rebellioustensegrittymenacingrawunsettlingcooldefiant

What happens

The Wild One is a 1953 American crime film directed by László Benedek and produced by Stanley Kramer. The picture is most noted for the character of Johnny Strabler, portrayed by Marlon Brando, whose persona became a cultural icon of the 1950s. The Wild One is considered to be the original outlaw biker film, and the first to examine American outlaw motorcycle gang violence. The supporting cast features Lee Marvin as Chino, truculent leader of the motorcycle gang "The Beetles". The film's screenplay was based on Frank Rooney's short story "Cyclists' Raid", published in the January 1951 Harper's Magazine and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 1952. Rooney's story was inspired by sensationalistic media coverage of an American Motorcyclist Association motorcycle rally that got out of hand on the Fourth of July weekend in 1947 in Hollister, California. The overcrowding, drinking and street stunting were given national attention in the July 21, 1947, issue of Life, with a possibly staged photograph of a wild drunken man on a motorcycle. The events, conflated with the newspaper and magazine reports, Rooney's short story, and the film The Wild One are part of the legend of the Hollister riot. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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