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Candidates for the National Film Registry:
The Wild One and Gimme Shelter

(Editor's note: For an intellectually-stimulating reply to Ms. Lund's provocative lecture,
see the written response from Stanley Goldstein, whom the film's credits list as providing "Special Help" on "Gimme Shelter")

Introduction by Karen Lund

The Wild One, made in 1953 and directed by Laslo Benedek, features the legendary Marlon Brando who somehow makes the incoherent mumblings of a leather-jacketed hoodlum seem profound. The film was based on an incident which occurred on the fourth of July in 1947 in Hollister, CA, when a motorcycle gang terrorized the town. This could happen in your town, too, seemed to be the surface message of the film. Indeed, the Film Daily review commented that the film was a "frequently frightening study of unhampered rowdyism by a collection of marauding, up-to-no-good types given over to terrorizing decent citizenry of a small community." While by today's standards, Brando's gang appears to be little more than obnoxious beatniks, the threat to society by these disaffected youths seemed very real at the time in Eisenhower America. In fact, the film was banned for 14 years in England, since it was feared that the film would give youths ideas on how to brutalize the public. Ironically, only 2 years after the ban was lifted, the violence that was always suspected to be lurking out there was brought vividly and horrifyingly to the screen at Altamont.

Gimme Shelter was to chronicle a tour of the United States in 1969 by the Rolling Stones, the so-called bad boys from England. As a kind of "thank you" to America, the Stones planned to host a free concert in San Francisco. Unable to locate a venue, the concert was finally set at Altamont Speedway with little planning or foresight. Mick Jagger extolled their hopes for the concert in the film, saying, "It sets an example to the rest of America, as to how one can behave in nice gatherings."

The film was to be directed by David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. The Maysles brothers were known for what they called "direct cinema" which utilized the techniques of fictional films to shape the reporting of actual events. This type of nonfiction filmmaking relied heavily on editing to form the context and structure of the film.

The Stones hired the Hell's Angels for security partly on the recommendation of the Grateful Dead. The Stones had also used Hell's Angels for security at a free concert in Hyde Park without problem, little realizing that the American Hell's Angels were much more riotous and prone to excessive drug use. In the guise of instilling order, the Angels used pool cues to beat the audience and threw full beer cans at them. The Rolling Stones' road manager decided that moving the Angels closer to the stage might settle the rowdy Angels down, and bought the Angels' beer for $500, moving it next to the stage, thus, the origin of the legend that the Angels were paid in beer. The stage was only a foot above the audience which made security even more difficult. Things started to get violent during the Jefferson Airplane's set. Singer Marty Balin objected to the way the Angels were acting and got knocked out by one. By the time the Stones got on stage, fights were appearing all over the crowd. As Sympathy for the Devil started playing, the Angels got into a fight with 18-year-old Meredith Hunter, who, when he pulled out a gun, was stabbed to death by the Angels in front of the camera. By this point, the Stones were playing Under My Thumb, and were valiantly trying to calm the audience, aware that some disturbance was occuring, but not realizing that someone had been killed. Three other deaths occurred at Altamont that day: 2 people in sleeping bags were run over, and one person drowned in a puddle. The magazine Rolling Stone reported, "Even the most incomplete medical reports show that this was a festival dominated by violence."

The event served to contribute to the Satanic image of the Rolling Stones that many had, especially since the worst part of the tragedy seemed to begin during their song Sympathy for the Devil. The incident caused the Stones to stop playing the song in concert for years afterwards.

The resulting film of the events provoked controversy. Variety wrote:

The film's preoccupation with events at Altamont raises serious moral and ethical questions regarding the exploitation of human tragedy that will not be ignored by critics and some factions of the public. By promising and delivering footage of a murder and by framing and structuring the film to build suspense around the event, the filmmakers have played their trump in a manner many may find inexcusably callous.

The New York Times wrote that the film "really uses its brightly colored footage to whitewash the Rolling Stones, who must share some of the responsibility for the disaster and who also, as it happens, are the people who hired the filmmakers and controlled the rights to whatever film they produced." Indeed, the film lingers over the actual murder, replaying the footage in slow motion before the shocked Rolling Stones.

Filmmaker Albert Maysles commented, "[The cameraman] was still on a staging far enough away that he couldn't have prevented the murder, couldn't have controlled that in any way whatsoever. But anyway, we've got that footage, we're using it in the film. Isn't that the grossest kind of exploitation? People will ask it, they have asked it, and it never occurred to me as that." (G. Roy Levin, Documentary Explorations, p. 291)

One of the main questions, then, that both films raise is the issue of moral responsibility. In The Wild One, it criticizes the lack of responsibility taken by the gang members for their rampage through town. The film raises questions such as whether Brando's character's actions have set in motion events that have resulted in someone's death. And what of the moral responsibility of the town sheriff, who is willing to sit by and drink alcohol, powerless to stop an angry lynch mob of citizens from attacking Brando? Furthermore, there are the town residents who form their own posse above the law, perpetuating the same violence of which they accuse the gang members. But in The Wild One, these moral dilemmas reside in a fictional place.

In Gimme Shelter, they are altogether too real. To what degree is the moral responsibility held by the Rolling Stones for the deaths of four people, most particularly that of Meredith Hunter? What of the responsibility of the Hell's Angels for the horrific violence they perpetuated on an unruly mob? What of the responsibility of the filmmakers who have packaged together a sickening sequence of death for all the world to see for profit? And what of us, who come to see this orgy of violence and tragedy? Are we not culpable in the spread of violence when a tragedy occurs and we all stop to stare?

Both of these films ask us to reexamine what we think we know about violence. They ask us to survey the savagery inside us all, and we are revealed to be more brutal than we thought possible.

These films have been nominated as candidates for the National Film Registry. The National Film Registry contains films which are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" to America. Why add The Wild One or Gimme Shelter to the list? Of course, we can point to Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin's impressive performances, among others, in The Wild One. We can point to the fact that Brando's character in The Wild One has become an popular icon for the ages, thus demonstrating the film's significance. We can laud the performance of the Rolling Stones, truly masters of their craft, along with those of Jefferson Airplane and Tina Turner in Gimme Shelter. We can point to the effect of rock music and the events of Altamont on American culture, thus making the film of historical significance. But perhaps the strongest reasons are because of the questions both raise about the moral culpability of all of us, and because these films dare to raise the questions.

Karen Lund is the digital conversion specialist for the National Digital Library Program in the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Ms. Lund holds an M.A. in Cinema Studies and a graduate certificate in Museum Studies from New York University, and has written several essays on early film for the Library's World Wide Web site and other LC written publications.