Riding the Rails

Recalling the Great Depression, Bob "Guitar Whitey" Symmonds laments, "we went from middle-class gentility to scrabble-ass poor, overnight." Symmonds, who still rides freight trains in his seventies, is one of 10 interviewees, a small sampling of the 250,000 teenagers who took to the road and rails during the lean '30s. Winner of 11 major awards, including Best Documentary from the Director's Guild of America and the Los Angeles Film Critics, Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell's engaging slice of Americana interweaves interviews, wonderful archival footage and a fine soundtrack featuring Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rodgers and Brownie McGhee. Vivid tales of battles with bulls (police), life in the jungles (hobo camps), and the loneliness (and romance) of riding freight trains are told with fondness, bitterness, and sometimes tears. Tough vagrancy laws (at one point, California even put up an unconstitutional blockade for six weeks), mission shelter policies which penalized teens (who could stay fewer nights and were allowed less meals) and the real dangers of freight train hopping are weighed against the camaraderie, adventure, and unparalleled sense of freedom felt by the interviewees. Although it doesn't quite live up to its hype (the segment on "Whitey" sneaking aboard a train and then being interviewed along the journey struck me as rather bogus; are we to assume that the film crew snuck aboard as well?), Riding the Rails is a ride well worth taking. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)