ROAD TO REBELLION

SINCE THE BIRTH OF CINEMA, AUDIENCES HAVE ALWAYS LOVED A LAW-BREAKING, TABOO-BUSTING, SYSTEM-BUCKING MAVERICK. TO CELEBRATE THE UPCOMING RELEASE OF THE BIKERIDERS, TOTAL FILM LOOKS BACK AT HOW THE MOVIE REBEL HAS EVOLVED OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS…

1922-PRESENT

ROBIN HOOD

Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner

REBELLING AGAINST? The legendary outlaw in Lincoln green who stole from the rich to give to the poor has been a staple of English folklore since the 14th century. The film Robin, though, takes his cue from Douglas Fairbanks’ portrayal in 1922, his debonair earl turned arrow-slinging brigand establishing a cast-iron template that would be subsequently recycled by Errol Flynn in 1938, Kevin Costner in 1991, and countless other imitators.

ICONIC MOMENT Kev firing that slow-motion flaming arrow in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

1933

WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD

Eddie (Frankie Darro), Tommy (Edwin Phillips), Sally (Dorothy Coonan)

REBELLING AGAINST? Inducted into the US National Film Registry in 2013 alongside Pulp Fiction and Mary Poppins, William Wellman’s tale of teenage dropouts who become railroading hobos was both a product of its Depression-ravaged era and ahead of its time, the character of Sally – a runaway who dresses in male clothing to avoid sexual harassment – defying the same gender conventions that Boys Don’t Cry would some 66 years later.

ICONIC MOMENT A wince-inducing scene where Tommy loses a leg to an oncoming freight train.

1953

THE WILD ONE

Johnny Strabler (Marlon Brando)

REBELLING AGAINST? Inspired by an actual incident of bikers causing havoc in California in 1947, this tale of leather-clad motorcyclists terrorising a small town was deemed such a ‘spectacle of unbridled hooliganism’ by the BBFC, it was denied a certificate for 14 years. Yet its influence spread regardless, Marlon Brando’s insouciant Johnny becoming such an indelible symbol of incalcitrant antiestablishment nihilism that he now lives on forever (with 70 others) on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album cover.

ICONIC MOMENT ‘Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?’ one character inquires. ‘Whadda you got?’ he unforgettably replies.

1955

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

Jim Stark (James Dean)

REBELLING AGAINST? Juvenile delinquency got a poster boy in Nicholas Ray’s look at an alienated youth so disgusted by his parents’ stultifying, middle-class conformity he becomes its crimson-jacketed, blade-wielding, hot-rodracing antithesis. Killed in a car crash in California a month before the film made its debut in cinemas, James Dean would come to embody the disaffection of a generation and give actors a paradigm for powder-keg anguish that’s emulated to this day. ‘I started acting because I wanted to be him,’ said Nicolas Cage of his idol in 2014. ICONIC MOMENT ‘You’re tearing me apart!’

1959

THE 400 BLOWS

Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud)

REBELLING AGAINST? The oppressive strictures of school stand in for the everyday repressions of post-war French society in François Truffaut’s thinly disguised recreation of his own troubled childhood, the first of a quintet of films featuring his fictional alter ego. Truancy, insolence and petty larceny see Léaud’s Doinel sent to a reformatory by parents and teachers too blinkered or intolerant to recognise his potential. Individualism only gets him so far, though, in a world hard-wired to crush it.

ICONIC MOMENT The much-imitated final freeze-frame of Antoine on the beach, running away to who knows where.

1960

SPARTACUS

Spartacus (Kirk Douglas)

REBELLING AGAINST? A slave turned gladiator leads a rebellion against the might of Imperial Rome in a film that led a revolt of its own against America’s red-baiting political establishment. Based on a book whose author served time for refusing to name names, Stanley Kubrick’s three-hour-plus epic helped to end the Hollywood blacklist when producer/lead Kirk Douglas insisted the ostracised Dalton Trumbo be given credit for his screenplay.

ICONIC MOMENT When the slaves – offered pardons by the Romans if they give up their leader – take to their feet to yell, ‘I’m Spartacus!’ in one voice.

1960

CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH

Kiyoshi Fujii (Yûsuke Kawazu), Makoto Shinjo (Miyuki Kuwano)

REBELLING AGAINST? A pair of young lovers embark on a doomed affair financed by criminality in an early title from the Japanese New Wave that’s as garishly colourful as Breathless (the film to which it’s often compared) is artfully monochrome. Unburdened by scruples, Nagisa Ôshima’s restless protagonists have nowhere to go but the grave as they devote themselves to a life bereft of redeeming purpose.

ICONIC MOMENT Having beaten up a salaryman and stolen his money, Kiyoshi takes Makoto on a merry motorbike ride.

1962

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER

Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay)

REBELLING AGAINST? Borstal boy Colin’s running talent earns him preferential treatment from the detention centre’s governor (Michael Redgrave) in a kitchen-sink yarn from director Tony Richardson about a working-class lad sticking it to his ‘betters’. ‘Tony knew how to use me,’ Tom Courtenay would subsequently remember. ‘The rawness and the rage, when I watched it later, astonished me.’

ICONIC MOMENT With victory in the big race his, Colin stops short of the finish line and lets the runner behind him win.

1968

IF….

Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell)

REBELLING AGAINST? A boarding school for boys becomes the birthplace of a revolution stoked by McDowell’s insubordinate Travis in this critique of Britain’s ruling class, the first (and best) of the three films he made with director Lindsay Anderson. ‘It was a dagger in their guts,’ said the actor of a satire whose Zéro De Conduite-inspired finale might almost have been written for the student protests in Paris that preceded its release.

ICONIC MOMENT The closing image of McDowell shooting wildly from a rooftop.

1961

WEST SIDE STORY

Riff (Russ Tamblyn), Bernardo (George Chakiris)

REBELLING AGAINST? Rival gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, wage a bitter turf war on the streets of New York in a musical update of Romeo and Juliet where the only thing that unites them is a distrust of authority figures. ‘When do you kids stop? You make this world lousy!’ wails Ned Glass’ drugstore owner. ‘We didn’t make it, Doc,’ answers one of the Jets sagely.

ICONIC MOMENT A temporary truce at the local gym that devolves into a fast and furious dance-off.

1967

COOL HAND LUKE

Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman)

REBELLING AGAINST? Defiant to the last, Paul Newman’s chain-gang prisoner refuses to submit, no matter how much punishment he receives from his captors in Stuart Rosenberg’s classic combo of noncompliance, Christian allegory and failures to communicate. ‘You can’t picture Newman as a coward or quitting because that persona doesn’t exist,’ said George Kennedy of his co-star in the film that won Kennedy his Oscar.

ICONIC MOMENT The cracking sequence where Luke makes a bet he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour.

1975

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson)

REBELLING AGAINST? Mad-eyed McMurphy and cold-hearted Nurse Ratched are like oil and water from the moment their paths cross inside the Oregon mental-health institution to which the former has been transferred. In real life, though, it was Nicholson and director Milos Forman who clashed, the star disagreeing with how Forman saw his character’s entrance and refusing to allow him to supervise improvisations and rehearsals. ‘Nicholson was at the top of his game,’ recalls co-star Brad Dourif. ‘He galvanised all of us.’ Small wonder Randle remains the quintessential movie rebel, determined to resist his nemesis’ cruel tyrannies even if it ends with him literally losing his mind.

ICONIC MOMENT Randle defying Ratched’s ban on watching a televised ball game by pretending the set is on.

1979

THE WARRIORS

Swan (Michael Beck), Ajax (James Remar), Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh)

REBELLING AGAINST? There’s not much room for rebelling in Walter Hill’s gritty thriller about a gang from Coney Island who find themselves caught behind enemy lines when a conclave in the Bronx goes sour. It’s more of a race for survival as New York’s other crews cut off their escape routes, setting up a series of clashes that took place both on and off screen. (‘We’d run into real gangs and sometimes our guys thought they were tough enough to take them on,’ Hill remembered in 2014.) More unrest followed upon the film’s release, forcing some US cinemas to cancel screenings and hire security personnel.

ICONIC MOMENT Roger Hill’s exultant ‘Can you dig it?’ refrain at the midnight summit that kicks off the story.

1977

STAR WARS: EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE

Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), Han Solo (Harrison Ford)

REBELLING AGAINST? The rebel roll call is long in the Star Wars saga, from the original trifecta of Skywalker, Solo and Organa to the many who followed (Rogue One’s Jyn Erso and Andor’s Mon Mothma among them). And it has to be to stand a chance against the all-powerful Empire, the ultimate big bad in a series that, at the time of its inception at least, appeared to respond to a collective desire for unblemished heroes, moral certitude and clear-cut divisions between good and evil. ‘In the mid-70s, America felt like shit,’ Simon Pegg opines in his 2011 memoir.

‘Star Wars was everything it was crying out for.’

ICONIC MOMENT Luke eschewing the targeting computer and firing a torpedo into the bowels of the Death Star. Great shot, kid!

1979

NORMA RAE

Norma Rae (Sally Field)

REBELLING AGAINST? Inspired by the activism of a real-life union organiser from North Carolina, Martin Ritt’s rousing drama sees Sally Field’s mill employee go toe to toe with her bosses, her beau (Beau Bridges) and her fellow workers in her fight to win them better pay and conditions. Field herself won an Oscar for her efforts, though perhaps the film’s more lasting legacy is the way it gave encouragement to labour movements IRL. The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union was among those to book movie theatres and use the picture as a promotional tool.

ICONIC MOMENT Threatened with ejection from her place of work, Norma instigates a shutdown by holding up a board with ‘Union’ scrawled upon it.

1983

THE OUTSIDERS

Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell), Johnny (Ralph Macchio), Dallas (Matt Dillon)

REBELLING AGAINST? The on-screen tension between the well-off ‘Socs’ and the poorer ‘Greasers’ was stoked by director Francis Ford Coppola, who gave the former better treatment to make the rival gangs’ antagonism feel authentic. The young cast were put up in the same Tulsa hotel and got up to all manner of high jinks; on one occasion, Howell returned to his room to find everything within it turned upside down. ICONIC MOMENT Ponyboy reciting Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay to Johnny at sunrise.

1989

HEATHERS

J.D. (Christian Slater)

REBELLING AGAINST? The 80s had no lack of hip high-school rebels, from AWOL Ferris Bueller to the unruly members of the Breakfast Club. Yet no one was cooler, or deadlier, than Slater’s Jason ‘J.D.’ Dean, a gun-toting misfit who recruits Winona Ryder’s Veronica Sawyer as his accomplice in murders intended to appear as suicides. ‘I got the opportunity to do a homage to Jack Nicholson,’ said Slater in 2018. ‘It was certainly a very conscious channelling.’

ICONIC MOMENT Why bother turning off a hi-fi when you can silence it with a sidearm?

1991

THELMA & LOUISE

Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis), Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon)

REBELLING AGAINST? Housewife Thelma and waitress Louise aren’t looking for trouble in Ridley Scott’s subversive road movie. It’s trouble that comes looking for them, in the form of both a would-be rapist whom Louise kills and a dashing drifter (Brad Pitt) who makes off with their moolah. Things go south from there in a film that proves ladies can raise hell with the best of them.

ICONIC MOMENT Cornered beside the Grand Canyon, the girls decide to ‘keep going’ and drive over the edge.

1986

TOP GUN

Pete Mitchell (Tom Cruise) REBELLING AGAINST? Whether buzzing the control tower, slamming the brakes or giving the finger to a MiG-28 while flying inverted above it, there’s no end to what ace fighter pilot Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell can get up to when at the controls of an F-14 Tomcat. ‘He doesn’t do anything by the book,’ Cruise concurs. ‘He’s a guy who wants to live at 150% afterburn all the way.’

ICONIC MOMENT The grin on Cruise’s face as Maverick speeds into Miramar on the back of a Kawasaki Ninja, Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone scoring the sheer exuberance.

1990

CRY-BABY

Wade Walker (Johnny Depp)

REBELLING AGAINST? ‘He’s not just antisocial – he was born to be bad!’ So ran the trailer for John Waters’ Grease pastiche, which tells the story of a leather-clad ‘drape’ – young delinquent – in 1950s Baltimore whose illicit affair with a girl from the right side of the tracks (Amy Locane’s Allison) lands him behind bars. ‘I thought, “Who can I get to play this?”’ said Waters in 1990. ‘So I bought every teen magazine and Johnny was on the cover of all of them.’

ICONIC MOMENT Depp aping Elvis during his King Cry-Baby number.

1999

FIGHT CLUB

Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt)

REBELLING AGAINST? Impotent male rage gets a charismatic outlet in Pitt’s Mephistophelean avatar of Edward Norton’s id, whose Fight Club and ‘Project Mayhem’ let his emasculated acolytes wreak revenge on their detested lives. So what if (spoiler alert) he’s a figment of Norton’s character’s imagination? ‘Brad’s work was stellar,’ wrote producer Art Linson in his 2002 memoir What Just Happened? ‘I was not expecting him to be almost reckless about challenging boundaries.’

ICONIC MOMENT Tyler administering a chemical burn.

2012

THE HUNGER GAMES

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence)

REBELLING AGAINST? Ninety years on from Fairbanks’ take on Sherwood Forest’s finest, Jennifer Lawrence made her own contribution to bow-and-arrow mythology as the reluctant tribute from District 12 who becomes a lightning rod for opposition to Panem’s totalitarian regime. Over the ensuing tetralogy, Katniss learns how to use the celebrity status she has been given and take the struggle to the gates of the Capitol itself. ‘For me, the message that has always resonated is that one person has the ability to affect something,’ reflected Lawrence’s co-star Josh Hutcherson in 2015. ‘It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in.’

ICONIC MOMENT Grabbing the attention of gamemaker Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) by shooting an apple from a roasted pig’s mouth.

2015

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron)

REBELLING AGAINST? In an apocalyptic future world starved of water, resources and humanity, it’s always easiest to just look after number one. You have to hand it to Theron’s Furiosa, then, for putting the interests of Immortan Joe’s Five Wives above her own in George Miller’s actioner, even if it’s guaranteed to incur his wrath and have an army of War Boys hounding her into the wasteland. ‘Reading the script, part of me felt shocked at how much Furiosa emotionally drives this story,’ said Theron in 2015. ‘George just showed the truth of who we are as women – that we are more than just nurturers and breeders.’

ICONIC MOMENT ‘Remember me?’ Furiosa growls at Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) before ripping off half his face.

2014

GIRLHOOD

Marieme (Karidja Touré)

REBELLING AGAINST? Frustrated by school and abused at home, Parisian teen Marieme finds both companionship and self-worth by joining a bande de filles who flout the rules, dress to impress and take no merde from anyone. It is not long before Marieme (rechristened Vic, after Victory) is calling the shots herself in a girl-gang drama about adolescent rebellion that’s as tender as it is gritty. ‘I wanted to make a movie about friendship, sorority and anger,’ explains director Céline Sciamma. ‘It’s a classical tale, with a very contemporary character. I was really trying to make a romantic heroine for the 21st century.’ ICONIC MOMENT The scene where Marieme dances ecstatically to Rihanna’s hit Diamonds with Lady (Assa Sylla), Fily (Mariétou Touré) and Adiatou (Lindsay Karamoh).

2023

BARBIE

Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie)

REBELLING AGAINST? If the last hundred years have shown us anything, it’s that rebels come in all shapes and sizes – and indeed boxes, if the rebel in question is the Stereotypical Barbie Margot Robbie starts off as in Greta Gerwig’s Mattel-incepted smash. When we first encounter her she is sunniness personified, a vision of pink and blonde in a perfect plastic utopia. Once she starts to think outside of her box, however, its cracks begin to show as Barbie – a little late perhaps – comes to discern the true possibilities of her unexplored womanhood. ‘It certainly is a feminist film,’ says Gerwig. ‘But it’s feminist in a way that includes everyone.’

ICONIC MOMENT America Ferrera’s truth bomb on what’s it’s like to be a woman.