The Outsiders is one of the few — possibly the only — entries in Francis Ford Coppola’s oeuvre that is widely considered a cult classic today. Its reputation as a breakout vehicle for an absurdly stacked lineup of up-and-comers — including Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane, and Ralph Maccio — certainly has something to do with this. Then there’s its nostalgic luster. Often, what can give a film cult appeal is its ability to tap into that sentimental desire for a happier, less complicated past era and the promise of security and possibility attached to it. We watch, again and again, to claim safe haven and resist the neurotic dissonance brought on by the inexorable march of time. Directing ourselves toward the past and what could have been, in remembrance and reappraisal, grants that ego-salving capacity we all cherish in one way or another — a feeling of control.
The Outsiders, adapting S. E. Hinton’s 1967 novel of the same name, depicts 1965 Tulsa as a bygone time. Two decades of sociopolitical upheaval both at home and abroad haven’t yet permeated the zeitgeist. Order and structure reign. One either fits themselves within the straight and narrow or is denied access to the comfy, consumerist future that’s courtesy of postwar economic prosperity. The Greasers, our rough, lovable rogues (and one of our proto-Brat Pack ensembles), populate the margins. Their existence isn’t sexy or radical, but is instead borne out of need and not so subtly tragic. It’s Coppola that imbues our experience of their lives with a sense of the humanistic sublime.
His typical mannerist style is toned down some, appropriately rougher around the edges so as to conjure a more realist Americana feel. Still, there remains a studied elegance to the execution. The self-conscious style does create a reserved stiffness; the litany of wooden deliveries and blunt dialogue certainly doesn’t help matters much. But Coppola’s presentation communicates a pleasant attention to care. The palette drenches scenes with a subdued technicolor warmth. The occasionally expressionistic use of faces creates images so awash in emotion that they insist on being remembered. Insertions of geometric internal framing and elaborate blocking bring a formal complexity that acts as a mature counterbalance to the juvenile whimsy. The Outsiders has period melodrama, crime thrills, and social commentary wrapped up in one syncretic package, its subversive facets just beneath the surface of its cozy, classical, coming-of-age structure. Compared to Coppola’s strongest career outings, the film is undeniably slighter, yet because of this it’s also sweeter. He finds the grander American mythos within this small-town American story, texturing the narrative so that its hokeyness works as a source of pathos, endearing us to its delinquent protagonists.
There may not be a better way to sum up The Outsiders than “New Hollywood in extremis,” a term the academic I. Q. Hunter used to describe cult films in toto. By the time The Outsiders came out in 1983, the New Hollywood movement in filmmaking — of which Coppola was at the forefront — had effectively been declared dead. Between the blockbuster success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and George Lucas’ Star Wars resetting the Hollywood business model and the commercial failures of New Hollywood films like Heaven’s Gate and Coppola’s One from the Heart, the American New Wave appeared past the point of viability. Like the film industry as a whole, Coppola himself was at a transitional point. His golden era of the ‘70s — multiple Oscars, a couple of Palmes d’Or, and critical veneration rivaling Orson Welles — was over. His bid to become a mogul ushering in a new age of filmmaking was falling far below expectations. He was about to begin the second leg of his filmography, a period characterized by a mournfulness, a concern about the futility of negotiating with fate, an incessant attempt at reinvention stemming from an essential dislocation, a fixation on the past and what could have been. To this end, Stevie Wonder and Carmine Coppola’s “Stay Golden” plays over The Outsiders’ opening credits, establishing an initiatory tone that’s melancholy and elegiac. The sky bleeds orange with an ambiguously tinged beauty. Is this a sunrise or a sunset, a dawning or an ending? Is it possible to return to the promise of a previous time? Layered with the gritty realism, cynicism, and self-reflection core to the New Hollywood aesthetic, what The Outsiders seems to be saying is that the best we can do is carry the things we wish to pass on with us as we trudge ahead.
We cannot always be exactly who we once were. But to forsake ourselves and leap into nihilism would be a greater error than stubbornly clinging to the same. To live is a perpetual process of becoming, balancing stability and progress as we arrive at new thresholds. The way Coppola folds in this liminality to enhance the story’s depiction of adolescence is not only what makes his The Outsiders ring so true, but also what makes the film undeniably his own.
Published as part of Francis Ford Coppola: As Big As Possible.
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