Robert Kuperberg’s Le Retour de la Beat Generation

Last weekend we had an Italian contextualizing, this weekend, it’s a French contextualizing (via the US), Robert Kuperberg‘s 2011 documentary, “Le Retour de la Beat Generation” has some (arguably) dubious “Beat” personages (Peter Fonda on Easy Rider?), it also has Gerald Nicosia (author of Memory Babe – A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac), Elisabeth Guigou (socialist, and author of “La Beat Generation et son influence sur la Societe Americaine” (The Beat Generation and its influence on American Society”), not to mention, Craig Detweiler (identified as “Professeur Cinema, (at the Christian-based (sic)) Université Pepperdime” (Pepperdime University in Malibu) – it’s he that drives the essentially filmic focus of this doc), Jerome Savary, Lee Purcell
“Dans l’Amérique conservatrice des années 50, entre guerre Froide, Maccarthysme et ségrégation raciale, un petit groupe de poètes, dont la figure emblématique s’appelle Jack Kerouac, donne naissance à un formidable mouvement qui va profondément bouleverser la culture et la société américaine…” (In the conservative America of the 1950’s, between the Cold War, McCarthyism and racial segregation, a small group of poets, of whom the key figure was Jack Kerouac, gave birth to a powerful movement that would profoundly disturb and change American society and culture..)

Great ’50’s “B-movie” moments (several “A-movies” heros too – Marlon Brando, Paul Newman..)
Not a profound study of the subject, but an amusing (and well-made) divertissement.
Enjoy.

[Regrettably, this film is no longer available on-line]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *