There are good bad films and bad bad films - this is a skin-crawlingly embarrassing bad film. It starts with a title text about "Bohemians" who gather in Greenwich Village, London's Soho, the Left Bank in Paris, and San Francisco.
We then see George Peppard playing a frustrated would-be author shouting at his typewriter and telling his long-suffering mother he is hungry for life and needs to discover its meaning.
After this the film goes downhill as George encounters a group of Beatniks who gather in a place called the "Catacombs", call each other "man", have very intense relationships and meditate on the cosmic.
This is just a joke. A caricature of existentialism, 'beat culture' or whatever you want to call it. It also marks the point where young people starting taking themselves too seriously, felt they had "Something To Say" simply because they *were* young and that they knew how to put things right. Sorry, chaps, the world's a s**t-house and that's it. Dear San Francisco, if you think *this* is a youth movement, wait until you see what 1967 has in store.
Why this should be a Turner "Classic" Movie is beyond me (unless we're talking about some sort of "classic age" of movie-making). MGM was responsible for enough true classics for this piece of bilge to be quietly forgotten.
We then see George Peppard playing a frustrated would-be author shouting at his typewriter and telling his long-suffering mother he is hungry for life and needs to discover its meaning.
After this the film goes downhill as George encounters a group of Beatniks who gather in a place called the "Catacombs", call each other "man", have very intense relationships and meditate on the cosmic.
This is just a joke. A caricature of existentialism, 'beat culture' or whatever you want to call it. It also marks the point where young people starting taking themselves too seriously, felt they had "Something To Say" simply because they *were* young and that they knew how to put things right. Sorry, chaps, the world's a s**t-house and that's it. Dear San Francisco, if you think *this* is a youth movement, wait until you see what 1967 has in store.
Why this should be a Turner "Classic" Movie is beyond me (unless we're talking about some sort of "classic age" of movie-making). MGM was responsible for enough true classics for this piece of bilge to be quietly forgotten.