The Wild One 1953 PG

The Wild One will screen from a 2K digital restoration.

'At its first screening in 1953, against the backdrop of the traditionalist, buttoned-up Eisenhower years, The Wild One shocked its audiences with its vivid depiction of gang violence. The Wild One was inspired by an encounter between its director, László Benedek, and a real motorcycle gang in California, and is said to have created the outlaw biker film genre. The film’s hard-faced, leather-clad brooding protagonist, Johnny Strabler, as portrayed by Marlon Brando in his fifth film, became the anti-heroic symbol of rebellious youth and had widespread cultural reverberations on films and beyond. Brando’s biker getup in The Wild One rose to iconic fame through Andy Warhol’s 1963 screen portrait entitled Silver Marlon, which captures the youthful arrogance of its subject, suggestively straddling his bike, to recast him as an object of male desire.' SFMOMA

35MM, BLACK AND WHITE, MONO, 79 MINUTES, USA, ENGLISH / DIRECTOR: LASLO BENEDEK / SCRIPT: JOHN PAXTON / BASED ON A STORY BY FRANK ROONEY / CINEMATOGRAPHER: HAL MOHR / EDITOR: AL CLARK / STUNTPERSONS: FRED CARSON, LARRY DURAN, RICHARD FARNSWORTH, WHITEY HUGHES, CAREY LOFTIN / PROD CO: STANLEY KRAMER PRODUCTIONS / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: PARK CIRCUS / SCREENING FORMAT: 2K DCP