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Join us on June 16 at 1 p.m. for our weekly Sunday screening series, featuring director Francis Ford Coppola’s startling adaptation of the S.E. Hinto young adult novel “Rumble Fish” (1983) in digital projection.
RUMBLE FISH | 1983 | DIRECTOR: Francis Ford Coppola | WITH: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Vincent Spano, Laurence Fishburne | RUNNING TIME: 1H 34M | RATED R for language, gang violence, sexual situations, nudity, adult themes. | DIGITAL PROJECTION
In this deeply personal tale of estrangement and reconciliation between two rebellious brothers, set in a dreamlike and timeless Tulsa, Francis Ford Coppola gives mythic dimensions to intimate, painful emotions.
The director’s “art film for teenagers” was his second adaptation of young-adult novelist S. E. Hinton’s work in a single year, after the more classically styled The Outsiders. Graced with a remarkable cast headed by Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, and Diane Lane; haunting black-and-white visuals that hark back to German expressionism; and a powerful percussive score by Stewart Copeland that underlines the movie’s romantic fatalism, Rumble Fish pulsates throughout with genuine love and dread.
“On Sundays during the Outsiders shoot, Coppola and Hinton worked on the script for Rumble Fish, a more intimate but also more strangely mythic narrative than that of The Outsiders. He then enlisted a couple of actors from the other film, Matt Dillon, then eighteen, and Diane Lane, then seventeen, to play its leads.
“Where for The Outsiders Coppola took a lush, emotive, romantic approach replete with allusions to Gone with the Wind (a favorite movie of one of its characters), with Rumble Fish he went about finding himself in a different way. The story here is very simple: Rusty-James (Dillon), a charming, aimless gang leader, searches for meaning in the absence of his legendary older brother, the Motorcycle Boy.
“The Motorcycle Boy cruises back into town at a crucial juncture for Rusty-James, and the older brother has a message for the younger: he’s not going to find what he’s looking for. The brothers wrestle with their drunkard father, Rusty-James wrestles with his feelings for his sometimes girlfriend, Patty (Lane), a local cop sets his gun sight on the Motorcycle Boy, and all the characters enact gestures and provocations both intimate and archetypal.
“The future in which Rumble Fish is set resides at least in part in its vision of tormented but fluid masculinity. For a couple of supposed tough guys, Rusty-James and the Motorcycle Boy are almost perversely lacking in machismo. They’re ideals of a sort; doomed as they may be, they represent potential alternatives to the toxic masculinity of a Sonny Corleone.
“Rumble Fish as a whole is suffused with that longing, and it goes in many directions. Rusty-James may not be the brightest fellow, but he has a desire that is very direct and possibly universal: “I just want you to see me, man,” he says through his pain.” — Glenn Kenny
The screening will be introduced by Bill Cosford Cinema manager Rene Rodriguez. Tickets are $5 and available at link above. Students use code UMSTUDENT at checkout for free admission. Cane card must be shown at the door.
