The Outsiders (1983)
The young cast that
Francis Ford Coppola assembled for this 1960s teen greaser gang movie is insane.
Matt Dillon,
C. Thomas Howell,
Ralph Macchio,
Patrick Swayze,
Rob Lowe,
Emilio Estevez and
Diane Lane are in their earliest roles, including a little known actor called
Tom Cruise.
Ralph Macchio's next film after this was
'The Karate Kid'. Coppola created the stars of the 80s right here. Sometimes the inexperience of the cast is apparent but mostly they are excellent. This is partly a nostalgic look back to the era of gleaming hot-rods and malt-shacks but from the wrong side of town, where it's all burned-out wrecks, poverty, black engine grease and flick-knives (it's like a film version of a
Bruce Springsteen track). The jukebox soundtrack featuring
Elvis,
Van Morrison, surf music and Rockabilly is amazing. I liked that the movie starts and concludes in such a way that you can watch it on a perpetual loop.
I watched Coppola's "The Complete Novel" extended cut, adding back 22-minutes of footage cut from the theatrical release. Apparently Coppola's granddaughter was studying
S. E. Hinton's book in class and they were planning on watching the film. He was a little embarrassed at the prospect of them seeing the hollowed-out 92-minute version, so he quickly put together a longer cut just for them to watch in school. This convinced him to revisit the film and release the 115-minute extended cut. I can't imagine the short release was better, although since it has a different score, it's probably worth checking out.
Rumble Fish (1983)
Francis Ford Coppola shot
'Rumble Fish' back to back with
'The Outsiders' (also based on an
S. E. Hinton story) using many of the same cast and crew and released it six-months afterwards. Unusually he chose to do this narratively similar second film in a completely different way. 'The Outsiders' was a nostalgic sunlit evocation of the period in which it was set, with a 50s jukebox soundtrack and a classic film-making style not unlike actual films of the era like
'Rebel Without a Cause'. Where as 'Rumble Fish' is set in some sort of 50s/80s heightened reality, shot in Noir black & white, with extreme expressionist angles, wild editing, R-Rated sex, violence and drug taking, strobe lighting effects, deliberately artificial post-synced sound design, experimental shots and an avant-garde percussive score by
The Police's drummer
Stewart Copeland. The sequence of Matt Dillon's soul leaving his body and floating across various scenes, real or imaginary, looks extraordinary because it's accomplished in-camera using some kind of crane arm. There are also perfectly executed shots where the actors did their performance in slow motion, so when played back at the correct speed the sky would appear sped up.
The cast is incredible featuring
Matt Dillon,
Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane,
Nicolas Cage,
Chris Penn,
Laurence Fishburne,
Tom Waits and
Dennis Hopper... often all in the same scene together. 50% of the words in the script seemed to be people saying "Rusty James" to each other (the name of Dillon's main character). You could accuse the film of being "style over substance", which I suppose it is but when there is this much style packed into every frame, it hardly matters.
^ The period trailer has the same energetic editing of the film.