Big Wednesday **** (1978, Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, Gary Busey, Patti D’Arbanville, Lee Purcell, Barbara Hale) – Classic Movie Review 321

Co-writer/director John Milius’s 1978 cult movie favourite offers a poignant, haunting toast to male friendship, beaches, girls and perfect waves. Unfortunately, it was spurned for what they considered its lack of commercial chances by its studio, Warner Bros, at the time but, with eventual art house success and critical acclaim, it was soon hailed as the best fictional movie ever on surfing. And it still is.

Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt and Gary Busey give performances of a lifetime as Matt Johnson, Jack Barlow and Leroy Smith, three carefree young California surfing buddies in the 1960s.

They thrill to the idyllic life of waves, totally immersing themselves in the life and succumbing to all its free-spirited charms. But all good things have to come to an end, and they are confronted with a changing, more complex world, in which the innocent, free spirit of the Sixties is lost for ever to the complicated Seventies as they are lost, along with their generation, to the Vietnam War.

Afterwards, the three older and sadder men get back together again. But can they live to enjoy the mythical day of Big Wednesday when the greatest wave of all will come?

Milius’s extraordinary personal work reaches out for and achieves a grandeur, myth, mysticism, longing and cinematic poetry that should make the film self-consciously arty or even pretentious but succeeds in being a completely accessible and enjoyable crowd-pleaser. A mad-keen surfer himself, he really shows a brilliant gift for memorable ideas, characters and dialogue as a writer and images as a director.

Barbara Hale (1922–2017).

Katt’s real mother, Barbara Hale, for ever Della Street in TV’s Perry Mason, touchingly plays his film mom. Hale was born on 18 April 1922. She made her last film, which was a Perry Mason TV movie, The Case of the Jealous Jokester, in 1995. She died on January 26, 2017, aged 94.

William Katt was born on February 16, 1951.

Katt, still busy acting with 128 credits in 2018, tells his story in the 2013 documentary Milius.

Jan-Michael Vincent was born on July 15, 1944.

Vincent’s most recent films are Buffalo ’66 (1998), No Rest for the Wicked (1998), Escape to Grizzly Mountain in 2000, The Thundering 8th (2000) and White Boy in 2002.

Big Wednesday was re-released to deserved renewed acclaim in Britain in 1992. It has gained even more resonance and stature over the years. It must be about time for another revival.

The full movie is an epic two hours but the cut version runs only 90 minutes, edited by 30 minutes by ABC for its 1985 network TV premiere. Ouch!

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 321

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