[go: up one dir, main page]

    Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsEmmysSan Diego Comic-ConSummer Watch GuideToronto Int'l Film FestivalSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • FAQ
IMDbPro

La Balade sauvage

Original title: Badlands
  • 1973
  • 12
  • 1h 34m
IMDb RATING
7.7/10
82K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
3,085
120
La Balade sauvage (1973)
An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.
Play trailer2:56
4 Videos
95 Photos
True CrimeActionCrimeDrama

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.

  • Director
    • Terrence Malick
  • Writer
    • Terrence Malick
  • Stars
    • Martin Sheen
    • Sissy Spacek
    • Warren Oates
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.7/10
    82K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    3,085
    120
    • Director
      • Terrence Malick
    • Writer
      • Terrence Malick
    • Stars
      • Martin Sheen
      • Sissy Spacek
      • Warren Oates
    • 293User reviews
    • 102Critic reviews
    • 94Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award
      • 4 wins & 1 nomination total

    Videos4

    Trailer
    Trailer 2:56
    Trailer
    Badlands: The Criterion Collection
    Trailer 1:37
    Badlands: The Criterion Collection
    Badlands: The Criterion Collection
    Trailer 1:37
    Badlands: The Criterion Collection
    A Guide to the Films of Terrence Malick
    Clip 2:31
    A Guide to the Films of Terrence Malick
    'Badlands' Anniversary Mashup
    Clip 1:47
    'Badlands' Anniversary Mashup

    Photos95

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    + 89
    View Poster

    Top cast18

    Edit
    Martin Sheen
    Martin Sheen
    • Kit
    Sissy Spacek
    Sissy Spacek
    • Holly
    Warren Oates
    Warren Oates
    • Father
    Ramon Bieri
    Ramon Bieri
    • Cato
    Alan Vint
    Alan Vint
    • Deputy
    Gary Littlejohn
    • Sheriff
    John Carter
    John Carter
    • Rich Man
    Bryan Montgomery
    • Boy
    Gail Threlkeld
    • Girl
    Charles Fitzpatrick
    • Clerk
    Howard Ragsdale
    • Boss
    John Womack Jr.
    • Trooper
    Dona Baldwin
    • Maid
    Ben Bravo
    • Gas Attendant
    Emilio Estevez
    Emilio Estevez
    • Boy Under Lamppost
    • (uncredited)
    Li Po Lung
    • Chinese Kid
    • (uncredited)
    Terrence Malick
    Terrence Malick
    • Caller at Rich Man's House
    • (uncredited)
    Charlie Sheen
    Charlie Sheen
    • Boy Under Lamppost
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Terrence Malick
    • Writer
      • Terrence Malick
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews293

    7.782K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    9jongru

    A sophisticated exploration of the nature of good and evil

    Surely one of the most brilliant films ever made. The haunting music and cinematography would almost suffice by itself. The hero is little more than a child: the heroine his willing accomplice, and we are made to question what is good and what is evil by seeing the world through the eyes of children. From the moment when the girl's father shoots her dog to punish her, we lose any loyalty to traditional values or to the rights of parents over their children. By the end, it's obvious to us that society doesn't value the lives of those who were killed. It anticipates Natural Born Killers, but perhaps says more and uses a tighter structure.

    Brilliantly acted and directed, with many layers to it. A film to watch again and again.
    7osdenflux

    A very beautiful film; does it have any other purpose?

    It has been said that Badlands was in part a reaction to the romanticising of deviance and criminality in films such as Bonnie and Clyde. In that film the protagonists were played by two fabulous-looking, charismatic (not to mention talented) actors. I came away feeling that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow would have been great fun to hang around with--dangerous, sexy fun.

    Badlands is not like that. Sure, no-one would really want to be like or spend time with Kit Carruthers (based directly on fifties killer Charles Starkweather). But I was troubled by several aspects of this stunningly put together film. Essentially, it is fine craftsmanship created around a very difficult subject with little exploration of the characters, their motivations or the consequences of their actions. What remains for the viewer but a kind of detached voyeurism?

    Cruel and cowardly, Charlie Starkweather was full of self-loathing, believed himself a failure and felt his life was doomed to misery. Murder is a simple act that even the sub-intelligent can commit, but it has staggering consequences. Having killed, Starkweather changed; in a way he grew. He felt himself to have achieved something. It completed the sad story that was his life.

    Kit Carruthers, on the other hand, slouches, mumbles and poses throughout Badlands. We know almost nothing of his past. Of course, the narrative follows Holly's point of view, but since she appears to be in a dream and virtually clueless throughout the whole affair, how useful is this narrative method? At the end Kit is pretty much his same inscrutable self as at the beginning, except now he is famous. He's kinda cool and he knows it. When he kills it's as if he has met some unpleasant but important obligation that only he is qualified for. The murders themselves are sterilised, just a bang and the victim quietly lies down. The sets and locations are picturesque, the actors are picturesque, the murders are picturesque...

    The 1957 film In Cold Blood is a gripping example of what can be achieved when something of the nature of spree/serial killers is explored, when the consequences of their actions is stark and real, and when the people inside them are glimpsed. (And there are people inside, badly damaged and loathsome, but fascinating.)
    9Lechuguilla

    Desperados Detached

    In January, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather and fourteen-year-old Caril Ann Fugate went on a murder spree in Nebraska and Wyoming. Eleven innocent people died. Most, though not all, of the killings were random. Starkweather and Fugate's story "inspired" several films, including this one.

    In "Badlands", the pair's names were changed to Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) and Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek), and their ages were altered slightly. From what I have read, Starkweather and Fugate were emotionally detached and casual about the killings, especially Charles, once the initial murders had occurred. Both Sheen and Spacek do a good job of mimicking this nonchalant attitude. At various points throughout the film, Holly narrates the story in an emotionless, monotone voice. It's like she's reading a diary of what happened as we, the viewers, watch movie footage of the events.

    The film's title is appropriate, given that the characters' inner lives must surely have been wastelands, and given that the film's plot takes place mostly outdoors, on the lonesome High Plains, with its brooding and "stark" landscape.

    The film's color cinematography conveys a mood of desolation, especially in those scenes that contain little more than the horizon, expansive blue sky, treeless plains, and a couple of lonely desperados. At one point, the color morphs into sepia-tinted images of small town America, as the whole country, in fear, takes up arms against the fugitives, a photographic change that renders an almost documentary tone to the film.

    From time to time, classical background music accompanies the senseless violence, a cinematic contrast so "stark" as to make the film surreal. And, of course, the sequence toward the end where Kit and Holly, with car radio on, dance in the headlights as Nat King Cole sings "A Blossom Fell", is truly mournful and haunting.

    "Badlands" is incredibly understated and low-key, as detached as the characters portrayed. Director Terrence Malick conveys a simple, uninvolved story, packaged in a film that makes no effort to communicate either symbolism or thematic depth. Nor does the film render judgments about the characters or events. It's an approach that probably wouldn't work today. But it is effective, and through the years the film has gradually become more respected as an excellent character study of 1950's teen rebels without a cause.
    8paul2001sw-1

    "Saw her standing on her front porch, just a-twirling her baton..."

    The serial killer genre is the most overdone in modern cinema, but director Terrence Mallick took a real life story to make his powerful debut, 'Badlands'. He even toned it down, his interest being not in presenting a picture of pure (and wholly artificial) evil but rather in portraying a wholly human story. Murder is depicted here in all its banality - people shot (off-screen) through locked doors, by a young man acting for wholly normal motives but without the customary restraints on behaviour that we term morals. The result is a haunting, though occasionally pretentious, study of individuals drifting beyond the bounds of civilisation, their physical location (America's still-wild west) symbolically matching their mental isolation. Sissy Spacek is particularly good as the ordinary girl just along for the ride. A fine film, 'Badlands' is also genuinely disturbing, in a way that Hannibal Lector could only dream of.
    9dbdumonteil

    Badlands, you gotta live it everyday...

    It's really a shame that Terrence Malick didn't have the brilliant career he deserved at Hollywood. Shot with a nearly shoestring budget, "Badlands" remains one of the most dazzling debut movies of all time. Malick's legend based on his (long) absence has helped it to become a cult-movie. Inspired by a tragic short news item which took place in 1959 (a young couple who decides to commit a series of free murders to leave a mark in history), the odds are that Malick's first feature-length movie inspired Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino for their dangerous and irresponsible "Natural Born Killers" (1994). Concerning Tarantino, I read an interview about him in which he expressed his admiration of Malick's work. It shows that the author of "Pulp Fiction" (1994) has a great esteem for this talented and mysterious film-maker. At the same time, we can also note down that Malick's work inspired Bruce "the Boss" Springsteen two songs: "Badlands" on his "darkness on the edge of town" album (1978) and "nebraska" on the eponymous LP(1982).

    An American journalist had written that "Badlands" was the best mastered movie in the history of cinema since "Citizen Kane" (1941) by Orson Welles. One can judge this affirmation as exaggerated but it is nevertheless indisputable that Malick's opus strikes on numerous aspects: an assertive and opaque story, a fluid making, a relevant screenplay, an original photography which gives to the landscapes an image of desolation and lost paradise perturbed by a free violence. The work is also strongly steeped in a certain poetry.

    Concerning the two main characters, a French critic had written that it was difficult to feel liking for these two irresponsible. I think that this critic badly analyzed the film. Terrence Malick doesn't try to make them likable to us. He describes them without kindness and condescension. They haven't got an imposing personality and live only through an intermediary myth. It is particularly obvious for the young man (Martin Sheen) who is obsessed with James Dean. One can also say that Sissi Spacek's voice-over which tells this dramatic story is of an amazing neutrality. Then, unlike many criminal lovers, Sheen and Spacek will live at the heart of this violence and the latter won't bring them together or take them away.

    With "Badlands", Malick was judicious for the choice of the actors. In a way, his first movie enabled to put Sheen and Spacek on the map and it also launched their respective careers. Then, what happened to Terrence Malick after this sensational debut movie? A second movie, "Days of Heaven" (1978) starring Richard Gere as successful as "Badlands". After that, for twenty years, nothing. However, in 1998, Malick made a rather successful come-back with "the Thin Red Line" (1998). According to the latest news, he would currently shoot a movie about the first years of America's colonization in the beginning of the seventeenth century. If my memory serves me well, the movie will be released next year. Let's hope so...

    Like this?try these....

    "gun crazy" ,Joseph H.Lewis ,1950

    "you only live once" Fritz Lang,1936

    "Bonnie and Clyde" Arthur Penn,1967

    More like this

    Les moissons du ciel
    7.7
    Les moissons du ciel
    A Boy Named Death
    9.8
    A Boy Named Death
    Mission: Guerrero
    9.9
    Mission: Guerrero
    Closure
    9.3
    Closure
    Death's Sonata
    8.3
    Death's Sonata
    Little Luis
    9.8
    Little Luis
    Bridegroom
    8.0
    Bridegroom
    12 and Holding
    7.4
    12 and Holding
    Moffie
    6.8
    Moffie
    Trade - Les trafiquants de l'ombre
    7.3
    Trade - Les trafiquants de l'ombre
    Love
    7.1
    Love
    Le nouveau monde
    6.7
    Le nouveau monde

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The actor originally cast as the architect who rings at the rich man's door did not show up, so Terrence Malick played the part himself. Malick later wanted to re-shoot the scene with another actor, but Martin Sheen refused to re-do the sequence with anyone else.
    • Goofs
      The passenger train that passes Kit and Holly on the trestle is pulling Amtrak cars. Amtrak was not established until 1971, and this film takes place in 1959.
    • Quotes

      Holly Sargis: One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad's stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody... this very moment... if my mom had never met my dad... if she had never died. And what's the man I'll marry gonna look like? What's he doing right this minute? Is he thinking about me now, by some coincidence, even though he doesn't know me? Does it show on his face? For days afterwards I lived in dread. Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, and this never happened.

    • Connections
      Edited into Gone with the Wind: The Remarkable Rise and Tragic Fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd (2015)
    • Soundtracks
      Musica Poetica
      Written byCarl Orff and Gunild Keetman

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    FAQ

    • How long is Badlands?Powered by Alexa
    • What is "Badlands" about?
    • Is "Badlands" based on a book?
    • Did the couple who were forced into the bunker die?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • June 4, 1975 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • Spanish
    • Also known as
      • Mundos bajos
    • Filming locations
      • Rocky Ford, Colorado, USA
    • Production companies
      • Pressman-Williams
      • Badlands Company
      • Warner Bros.
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $450,000 (estimated)
    • Gross worldwide
      • $54,396
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 34 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.