Wild Boys of the Road
Dec. 22nd, 2020 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhen I started my Depression era tramps reading, sovay recommended the 1933 pre-Code film Wild Boys of the Road as must-see viewing.
This is absolutely accurate. Wild Boys of the Road is dynamite, and I wish it were better known. It tells the story of two ordinary high school students, Tommy and Eddie, who drive onto the scene in Eddie’s rattletrap car painted, all over with twenties-style slogans: “Four wheels, no brakes,” “Out hunting: mostly teddies.” (Teddies were a kind of women’s underwear at the time.)
But their carefree days are numbered: Eddie’s widowed mother is already struggling, so that Eddie doesn’t even have the entry fee to the dance (Eddie sneaks in cross-dressed in his girlfriend’s hat and coat, as girls don’t need to pay), and Tommy soon learns that his father has lost his job. Unable to find work in their hometown and eager to ease the burden on their beleaguered parents, the two boys impulsively decide to jump a train out of town - and quickly meet Sally, a girl tramp, who is traveling to Chicago to meet her aunt.
Sally is a bright-eyed, freckle-faced youngster, more or less what would happen if Anne of Green Gables had to ride the rails. When she first meets the boys, they think she’s just stolen their sandwiches, and Sally gives Tommy a bloody nose, which of course makes them fast friends as soon as Tommy realizes she is (a) a girl, so they have to stop fighting, and (b) not a sandwich thief.
Unfortunately, Sally’s aunt gets arrested for prostitution almost as soon as the kids reach her apartment, so they have to hit the road again (Eddie pauses to carry along a chocolate cake).
They quickly fall in with a big group of kid tramps, and the camaraderie among the kids keeps the picture from ever seeming like sheer misery porn, but nonetheless it's clear their lives are grim. A railroad guard rapes one of the girl tramps; the rest of the kids band together to fling the man off the train to his death. Eddie loses a leg when he falls across a train track and the train runs over it. Even when the kids have a bit of luck, like setting up a sort of village in a bunch of unused concrete pipes, the police chase them out with firehoses. The man who owns the pipes gave the kids permission to live there - but the city thinks they’re a nuisance, “wild boys of the road” as a headline puts it, treating them as vicious young hoodlums when really they’re just kids whose families have fallen on hard times.
The main characters are played by actual teenagers, and so, I suspect, are most of the other kid tramps in the movie. The movie is a strong argument in favor of having actual teenagers play teens, instead of having them played by twenty-somethings: their misfortunes hit differently when you can very clearly see these characters are baby-faced round-cheeked wide-eyed kids.
sovay recommended the 1933 pre-Code film Wild Boys of the Road as must-see viewing. This is absolutely accurate. Wild Boys of the Road is dynamite, and I wish it were better known. It tells the story of two ordinary high school students, Tommy and Eddie, who drive onto the scene in Eddie’s rattletrap car painted, all over with twenties-style slogans: “Four wheels, no brakes,” “Out hunting: mostly teddies.” (Teddies were a kind of women’s underwear at the time.)
But their carefree days are numbered: Eddie’s widowed mother is already struggling, so that Eddie doesn’t even have the entry fee to the dance (Eddie sneaks in cross-dressed in his girlfriend’s hat and coat, as girls don’t need to pay), and Tommy soon learns that his father has lost his job. Unable to find work in their hometown and eager to ease the burden on their beleaguered parents, the two boys impulsively decide to jump a train out of town - and quickly meet Sally, a girl tramp, who is traveling to Chicago to meet her aunt.
Sally is a bright-eyed, freckle-faced youngster, more or less what would happen if Anne of Green Gables had to ride the rails. When she first meets the boys, they think she’s just stolen their sandwiches, and Sally gives Tommy a bloody nose, which of course makes them fast friends as soon as Tommy realizes she is (a) a girl, so they have to stop fighting, and (b) not a sandwich thief.
Unfortunately, Sally’s aunt gets arrested for prostitution almost as soon as the kids reach her apartment, so they have to hit the road again (Eddie pauses to carry along a chocolate cake).
They quickly fall in with a big group of kid tramps, and the camaraderie among the kids keeps the picture from ever seeming like sheer misery porn, but nonetheless it's clear their lives are grim. A railroad guard rapes one of the girl tramps; the rest of the kids band together to fling the man off the train to his death. Eddie loses a leg when he falls across a train track and the train runs over it. Even when the kids have a bit of luck, like setting up a sort of village in a bunch of unused concrete pipes, the police chase them out with firehoses. The man who owns the pipes gave the kids permission to live there - but the city thinks they’re a nuisance, “wild boys of the road” as a headline puts it, treating them as vicious young hoodlums when really they’re just kids whose families have fallen on hard times.
The main characters are played by actual teenagers, and so, I suspect, are most of the other kid tramps in the movie. The movie is a strong argument in favor of having actual teenagers play teens, instead of having them played by twenty-somethings: their misfortunes hit differently when you can very clearly see these characters are baby-faced round-cheeked wide-eyed kids.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 02:20 pm (UTC)Yaaaaaaaaaay.
(Decades of unavailability is the only excuse I can think of, and it's not much of one. I have the TCM Forbidden Hollywood DVD, but I really want it to get a higher-profile, not to mention not-out-of-print, release.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 07:18 pm (UTC)It may have become unavailable sooner, depending on whether it was one of the pre-Codes that couldn't be re-released during the Code era; certainly it contains material that might have screened it out.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 03:34 pm (UTC)The thing about the pipes: there was an empty lot near us when I was growing which for a while was a staging area (I guess; I had no idea, back in the day) for some kind of water/sewage project, and there were huge pipes (and less huge ones) around, and we often climbed in them. I can well imagine turning them into a place to stay if circumstances demanded it.
And yes, re: child actors. The difference between actual teenagers and twenty-somethings is huge.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 04:01 pm (UTC)I wouldn't want to be too doctrinaire insisting teenagers must always be played by teenagers; there are some people who look much younger or older than they are, and also filmmakers can do a lot to show a character's age through costuming choices and mannerisms. I just recently watched the 1981 Brideshead Revisited and they had the same actress, 22 at the time, play a character who is 12 and then later 25. She was so utterly convincing as a 12 year old that I was stunned to realize they hadn't recast an older actress for the second part. Or, more recently, Florence Pugh did a great job as young Amy (also 12ish) in Greta Gerwig's Little Women.
But a lot of filmmakers don't bother to try to make twentysomethings look or act like teenagers. Like in the Hunger Games. They seem, I guess, too controlled? Too well-socialized? I'm not sure exactly what word I want.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 05:52 pm (UTC)Or, if they're shy rather than extroverted, they can come across as sulky gremlins, where again an older person would at least the well-socialized thing and make small talk.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 07:03 pm (UTC)