It seems to me that the producers behind The Beat Generation really looked down on beatniks. I was not alive for this fad so most of what I know about it comes from sitcoms that play up the tropes with levity (think, The Addams Family Meets a Beatnik). Therefore, watching a film about such a serious subject as rape and abortion lean so heavily into the beatnik stereotype leaves me with one big question: What is the message these producers were trying to get across? That beatniks are self-serious loafers with a dangerous streak hiding behind all that poetry and music? The message here seems to be muddled to the point of ludicrousness, sending out mixed signals over whether we should be taking anything seriously even when what is going on on-screen is brutal.
The film opens with a sexual assault. Stan Hess (Ray Danton) is introduced as a stereotypical beatnik who has a hatred for women. He scorns his father when the elder announces his engagement to a younger woman whom Stan had also pursued. Later, he is revealed to be a serial rapist whose modus operandi is to pose as a friend of the woman’s husband who owes the man some money. He shows up when the husband is away and talks his way into their home and, tricking the woman into leaving the room for a moment, he attacks her from behind. Upon leaving the scene of this first assault, he is nearly hit by a car driven by police detective Dave Culloran (Steve Cochran), on his way home from work. Culloran offers Stan a ride home and during that drive Stan learns all about Dave’s wife and figures out his home address. Using that information, Stan stages another assault, this time intentionally maneuvering the detective away from home so that his wife will be alone. Dave has been assigned the task of finding and capturing the rapist, and when his wife becomes the next victim, he takes it personally.
Without having been on the beatnik scene it is difficult to tell if this is an exaggeration of what these people were like or if this really was the way it was. It is most likely a mixture of the two but it is played so broadly that it borders on parody. This tone, set largely to the music of Louis Armstrong—who makes a couple of brief on-screen appearances—is inconsistent. There are scenes of beat poetry and people daydreaming or dancing their lives away (most likely with some assistance from illegal substances) followed by scenes depicting some very serious subjects. This is not only about the rapes but also about abortion. Culloran’s wife ends up pregnant and doesn’t know if the baby is her husband’s or her rapist’s. She becomes obsessed with the idea that it is Stan’s child and that she should have it aborted. These moments are sympathetic, but hard to watch and they are sprinkled in amongst the broad comedy.
There are a lot of things to recommend in this film but there are also a lot of head-scratching choices made by the filmmakers, too. This was one of the last film noir movies made and it is playing with ideas that would have never been permissible on-screen just a few years earlier when the Hays Code was being heavily implemented. It’s a rough subject to tackle and I have to wonder if the levity was added to try and soften it a little. It doesn’t work. Instead, it makes the whole film seem like a fever dream where moment to moment doesn’t pair with the next. This is a weird film with an even weirder climax that oddly takes place underwater. This is one of those movies that epitomizes the question: “What were they thinking?” 1959 - 96 minutes
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