Biker films
The first moto-themed movies were, like all other movies over 100 years ago, silent black-and-white shorts. Of course, films about motorcycles initially interested the public. Bikes were as much of a curiosity then as they are now, such as artificial intelligence or biohacking techniques.
However, filmmakers have learned through experience that motorcycles do not capture the attention of a wide audience beyond the satisfaction of initial curiosity. The public looked at bikes, for example, in the first motion picture “Uncontrollable Motorcycle” in 1909, and that’s it. The further development of the topic, for example, films about motorcycle racing, did not interest almost anyone. Charlie Chaplin was, of course, much more popular.
However, with the advent of bikers, the situation has changed dramatically. It turned out that moviegoers do not like motorcycles in themselves, but people for whom bikes are a way of self-expression, as well as the lifestyle and beliefs of bikers. This was most convincingly proved by the first-born among the cult biker films – “The Savage” in 1953.
FROM THE FIRST SHOT – IN THE BULLSEYE
Yes, statistically, the likelihood of doing something so cool and convincing in a new niche that the result will become a kind of icon that people will pray for is vanishingly small. Probably, the chance of winning the jackpot in the lottery will be higher. But the Savage did.
I think that the biker “riot in Hollister” of 1947, which was widely publicized in the press, was a great help to his success. Of course, if you carefully understand the situation, it is difficult to call it a rebellion. Here the media exaggerated. These days, something similar happens at any open-air rock festival: endless booze, bottles that cover the ground in a continuous layer, people sleeping and urinating where they have to. But for people 75 years ago, what they saw seemed to be a real shock.
Be that as it may, American moviegoers were already prepared for the release of The Savage, the theme of bikers was not something out of the ordinary and unusual for them. Well, if we add Marlon Brando, the best actor of those years, in the title role to this recipe, choose a beautiful heroine for him for a romantic line, and also make the main character confront a very negative leader of another biker gang, and the inhabitants of a small town resist the invasion of bikers, then we’ll have all the ingredients that made Savage so successful.
The symbolic meaning of this film was fully manifested in the future and turned out to be very significant. Other biker films began to look up to The Savage Man, the images and artistic techniques used in it. People, inspired by Johnny, the hero of Marlon Brando, began to massively replenish the biker ranks and create motorcycle clubs. Well, the leather jacket has since been considered exclusively a biker jacket.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF BIKER FILMS
It began after the release of The Savage and continued until the end of the 70s. The scale of production of “bikers” (as all biker films began to be called) became truly industrial, for example, in the 70s, the average number of films about bikers per year was 9.
It should also be noted that for bikers those years were perhaps the best time in their entire history. The surrounding reality favored them very much. Post-war youth violently rejected parental values, refused to work hard for the sake of accumulating material values, did not want to think about the future, but lived in the present. The apogee of the ongoing protest was the famous “summer of love” in 1967 in San Francisco.
Such anarchic and rebellious values of the then youth perfectly corresponded to the biker values of unlimited freedom and disagreement with generally accepted norms. Surprisingly, most of the directors and screenwriters did not capture the essence of the moment and continued to rivet shoddy analogues of “The Savage”. However, two people, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, managed to feel the nerve of the era and made the biker cult film No. 2 – Easy Rider.
In the story, the two main characters of the film travel from California to New Orleans, trying to get to the Mardi Gras festival. In reality, their journey through America is a symbolic search for freedom in this country, as well as a demonstration by their own example that it is possible to live freely. Bikers find carelessness and lightness of being only in a hippie commune, where they are welcomed, but nowhere else.
As you can see when watching the movie, the values of freedom in the US in the 60s were mostly just declared. Most of the population, the so-called “rednecks”, are afraid of it and are ready to use violence against the adherents of true independence in deeds and thoughts. Therefore, the denouement of the film is quite logical: the death of bikers at the hands of blinkered townsfolk.
Similarly, the rebellion of young people of the 60s against their father’s conservative values ended, although not as tragically as the main characters of Easy Rider. They argued, protested, but in the end they also became cogs in corporations and the state machine, like their parents. “Captain America” in “Easy Rider” has similar feelings on the last night of his life, realizing that he lost, and in fact there is no freedom.
THE BEST SERIES
In the last 10-15 years, cinema has shifted its focus from filming films about bikers to producing series about them. Several interesting projects were released, including Mayans, Bikers: Band of Brothers, Undercover. But the series “Sons of Anarchy” won the greatest popularity, telling about the biker gang of the same name, which trades in crime in one of the California cities.
In the background – Jax Teller with a pistol, in the foreground – his stepfather Clay Morrow with a Kalashnikov assault rifle
Sons of Anarchy differs from similar projects in a cool Shakespeare-style plot, when the main character Jax Teller, the president of the club, like Hamlet, rushes between the principles of his father, who built a bike club and dreamed of starting a legal business, and the pressure of community members who do not want to change anything in his life of crime. As a result, Jax from a hero with ideals becomes a cruel criminal, imposing his will on others solely through violence.
In addition, “Sons of Anarchy” perfectly immerses into the biker world, into all these underground garages, the criminal business, the hierarchy of stripes, decorations for bikes and other attributes associated with bikers.
