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The Delinquents

Directed by Robert Altman.
With Tom Laughlin, Peter Miller, Richard Bakalyan.
US, 1957, DCP, black & white, 72 min.
DCP source: Robert Altman Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive

Shot on the cheap in his hometown of Kansas City, Altman’s feature debut—on which he served as writer, director and producer—has all the surface components of a go-for-broke American independent film. The end product, however, suggests less the reckless primal scream of a young visionary than an uncommonly proficient industry calling card. Notwithstanding a bookending Public Service Announcement tacked on to placate censors, The Delinquents offers a narratively graceful and emotionally rich take on the mostly disreputable Eisenhower-era subgenre of the teenage exploitation film. In an exciting promise of things to come, Altman corrals a spirited cast of amateurs for a snapshot of the fractious cross-sections of suburban Middle America: the pampered pretty boys, the bad seeds from across the tracks, and the adults who are all-too-oblivious to their children’s changing social habits. Though more a forecast of Altman’s formidable gifts as a storyteller than his relatively avant-garde stylistic sensibilities, the film nonetheless features striking bird’s-eye-view camerawork that encourages one to see provincial conflict as the product of an interconnected community rather than mere individuals. 

PRECEDED BY

  • The Perfect Crime

    Directed by Robert Altman.
    With Leonard Belove, Owen Bush, Art Ellison.
    US, 1955, digital video, black & white, 20 min.
    Copy source: Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Made by the Calvin Company in Kansas City for the National Safety Council, The Perfect Crime is a grim (but not gory) lecture on safe driving. 

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