Golden age of Hopper

As Ervell E. Menezes recalls the finest period of Hollywood, he pays a tribute to Dennis Hopper, who became an icon of the American counter culture in the 1970s

Dennis Hopper died obscurely and well nigh unsung after succumbing to cancer of the prostate recently. This was in total contrast to the late 1960s when his Easy Rider became a cult film that struck a blow for anti-establishment.

It is a story of two dropouts Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, who ride across America on motorcycles. Happening to please hippies and motorcycle enthusiasts, this oddball melodrama drew frenziedly large audiences throughout the world and was much admired for its casual effectiveness. The film was directed by Hopper, who became an icon of American counter-culture.

On the road, they pick up another oddball, who but the now famous Jack Nicholson, who clucks like a chicken in characteristic style before joining the duo. And what a ride it was. Historic as well as adventurous — breaking new ground. They were ushering in the new "make love, not war" generation and they did it with panacea.

Almost a decade later came Mad Max but it was a pale shadow of that original. Set in the future, it was about motorcycle gangs, who fight the police, a violent extravaganza with no real merit save in enthusiasm for destruction of bikes and bodies. Pure graphic violence.

But the late 1960s and early 1970 marked the golden age of Hollywood. It was the decade of change, what with moon-landing (the universe had suddenly shrunk), flower power, women’s lib, drugs and a marked decline in the impact of religion. The existentialists gained more mileage than ever before and Hollywood covered real-life issues and came closest to European cinema. Escapism took a backseat.

About that time, there was a fairly unheralded little film of a housewife, who left her sleeping husband in bed and drove her automobile on the road to adventure. She was played to perfection by Shirley Knight and amply brought out that "finding oneself"feeling. James Caan was the football star she meets first and then Robert Duvall as the traffic cop, who takes advantage of her. It was the performance of a lifetime. Man, of course, often became the villain because women had begun to see their shortcomings. But guess who was the director? None other than, then relatively unknown, Francis Ford Coppola. It was before The Godfather but within a decade he would become the biggest name in Hollywood and for that matter the world.

A decade later Coppola made Apocalypse Now, and it was a new high in cinema with his creation of Colonel’s Kurtz’s world almost unimaginable. Vietnam was a live subject then after President’s Johnson’s carpet-bombing diktat. The other three films that come to mind now are Deer Hunter, Coming Home and Go, Tell the Spartans but it was Apocalypse Now that came off best.

It is a story of a Vietnam captain (Martin Sheen) sent to eliminate a Colonel (Marlon Brando) who has retired into the hills and is fighting a war of his very own. Based on Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, it is a metaphor of horror and has to be seen to be believed with an astounding performance by Brando. Hopper also plays a significant character whom Sheen meets before entering "that corridor horrors."

Then there was The Big Cube, a family drama about drugs and its ill effects when the US itself was in that deadly state after the Vietnam war. It was quite cerebral and had an awesome star cast — George Chakiris, Lana Turner and Richard. Karen Mosberg was the newcomer but she did an excellent job. Sweet Ride was another which dealt with drugs with Tony Franciosa in the lead role and the French beauty Jacqueline Bisset as his co-star. Yes, Bisset was to dominate Hollywood for more than a decade and her most memorable role was beside Steve McQueen in Bullitt, one of the early car chase movies.

But to come back to the rebel Dennis Hopper, who in later years, had his distinct cigar-puffing image. After those salad anti-establishment days, he slid slowly but surely into obscurity and may be a rounded view of his life can be had from his filmmaker-journalist friend Allan Hunter. "Dennis Hopper was a rebel poet of the counter-culture era. Easy Rider captured a unique moment in the life of America and challenged the Hollywood mindset for good and bad. Hopper’s talent shone sufficiently (Out of the Blue, Colors and Blue Velvet) to make you lament the vast mediocrity apparent throughout his 50-year film career." It could well be his epitaph.