A festival celebrating the Beat Generation in New York, runs from 3 to 8 June. The conceit of the organizers is to honor the late Beat Poet Allan Ginsberg, who were he alive, would turn 90 on 3 June. The film 'The Beat Generation', some 57 years old, is a haunted house that creaks. It a pair of whiskers that covers a detective story of a serial killer, who's 'Beat'. Even when the film flared across screens in America, it was obvious that Hollywood's knowledge and use of the Beats and the rage among the middle class youth, expressing a muted discontent and restlessness of the early Cold War repression of liberal thought and the starch collars of the Eisenhower years, found expression, albeit half understood, and the stereotypes are stultifying and cardboard like. Scenes from 'Bell, Book and Candle; and yes 'Funny Face' had scenes in smoked filled 'cafes', deeply set in indolence and utter boredom, and bongo playing. It was the time of daddy-o and the use of jazz expression to convey 'ennui'. The film featuring Steve Cochran, Mamie Van Doren and Ray Danton, is a pastiche of the Beats. At one point Danton quotes Schopenhauer, about the perfidy of the female sex, to justify his penchant for killing women, as a revolt against his oft married father who weds younger women even younger than Danton. (In fact, Danton is physically too old for the part; he's wooden throughout the film). This B film was a come down for Cochran. He had two years before starred in Antoninio's 'Il grido', but upon his return he had this script to pay his bills. Mamie Van Doren is fluff and buxom and eye candy. No Kerouac, no Ginsberg, no Cassidy, no William Burroughs...nothing of the Beat Generation. In sum, we have an exploitation film, which is hardly convincing, and maybe evoked yawns and groans. I suspect he didn't draw a big gate and was made cheaply. Overall, it is low camp at its best, a curiosity piece best left to gather dust.
Review of The Beat Generation
