FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE The Wanderers 

In 1979, three great gang films saw the cinema screens of the world: "Quadrophenia", "The Warriors" and Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers. Kaufman looks (just like Quadrophenia) full of nostalgia back to a time about which we basically don't know much: The early 60s, the time between the rebels of the 50s, but still before the student revolt of the hippie era. Life on the streets of the Bronx 1963. The Wanderers are a teen gang of Italian immigrants, their opponents are the blacks and the Koreans. But the worst enemy of the wanderers are the bald "elders". Richie is the leader of the Wanderers and we see everyday life through his perspective. Everyone in his gang has just finished high school and is making their first steps with girls, shyly exchanging phone numbers and hosting rock'n'roll parties. This is done in a humorous and never precocious way. Sometimes you also feel the existential need around her (during a fight even a gang member dies). But Richie also has completely different experiences: He hears a folk singer named Dylan in a bar and learns about Kennedy's death - but reacts completely uninvolved. The decay of the gang comes naturally: Richie is expecting a child with his lover, two others have to leave because they had a fight with their father. In the Bronx, nothing keeps her: The families break down, the girlfriend just broke up, the school-leaving certificate doesn't help her. Like so many others, they leave for San Francisco... Philip Kaufman filmed this rigorously from the perspective of his protagonists and for them there was neither a "bourgeois" nor a "leftist" world view. Kaufman doesn't dramatize anything unnecessarily, but rather tells it casually. He relies on amateur actors. There is a lot going on in our heads, because here something like a first youth revolt arises, even if quite unconsciously.