Review: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Directed by: Nicholas Ray
Written By: Stewart Stern, Irving Shulman, & Nicholas Ray
Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, & Jim Backus
Runtime: 111 min
Rating: PG-13
Trailer
Criterion reminds us, “there was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless.” The same can be said for Antonioni’s L’avventura and its magnificent use of film form; or Citizen Kane, for showing us the merits of deep focus and low-angle photography. Perhaps we’ll one day speak of The Dark Knight and its effect on the superhero genre (some already are). But the film that may most deserve this acclaim is Nicholas Ray’s 1955 masterpiece, Rebel Without A Cause.
Before Rebel, there was a flurry of juvenile delinquency films intent on convincing American audiences that troubled youth existed only on The Other Side Of The Tracks. We watched crime boil over in slum tenements and Blackboard Jungle’s inner-city classrooms, and left it behind in the theater like popcorn grease wiped clean on an armrest. But Ray, plagued by juvenile problems of his own – he found his wife in bed with his 13-year-old son – came to Warners with a different idea: to show troubled teens like never before; to show them in a place where we’d never seen them: our backyards.
And from this idea grew Rebel Without A Cause, focusing on Jim Stark (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and Plato (Sal Mineo), three teenagers coming of age in, and burdened by, an era of increased prosperity, where everything, and nothing, was at their fingertips. They had television, cars, cigarettes, poodle skirts. But they didn’t have parents. Sure, Mom and Dad were there in body, occupying separate twin beds, doling out paper-thin advice, but something was missing. Jim comes home from a knife fight to find his father Frank (Jim Backus) cleaning the floor in an apron – one of many signs of the confused, meandering masculinity characterizing the era. Judy’s father no longer feels comfortable kissing his daughter on the lips. For fear of enjoying it? Or maybe “The Atomic Age!” that her little brother mentions – a time of dread, of panic at the prospect of death-by-atomic-bomb and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) – has so numbed him that he’s incapable of expressing fatherly love. And Plato – poor, poor Plato, whose parents left him long ago, manifests his desire for a strong male presence in a nearly overt homosexuality. Inhabiting a world of color – in CinemaScope, nonetheless – these teens find life tragically empty, and resort to drastic measures to liven it up. Knife fights remind them they’re alive enough to bleed. Buzz’s death in a “chickie run” reminds us just what Falstaff meant when he decried Honor. And this is just the beginning: lives are lost, and others are found. Still, even as we see Jim, Judy, and Plato play house in a hollowed-out mansion, we know it cannot last. In that era, something, anything, had to interject. If not nuclear holocaust, then a gunshot.
To talk solely about the plot, of car races and shootouts and Jim’s struggle to adapt to another new school, is to ignore the events surrounding the production. There’s talk of a curse being involved in the deaths of Dean, Wood and Mineo at various, far too early, points in their lives. Some will say that the young leads weren’t acting – they were just living out their lives on screen. Maybe that’s why it feels scarily real; why it resonates to this day. A trip to the Griffith Observatory and you’re guaranteed to see that red jacket, that hair, those jeans, on someone, cigarette dangling from their mouth as they pose by a bust of a talent considered no more than a poor Brando imitation by some, a virtuoso of the Method by others, and an enduring cultural icon by all. Were it not for Ray’s film, we might never know what it truly meant to be young in the 50s; to try and find yourself in a time when no one was there to be found. There were no blogs, no tweets, no means of expressing the pain every teen felt. So they made do with screams. Or an existential observatory trip to the stars – one of many scenes screenwriter Stewart Stern layered with subtle musings on teenage angst, and Ernest Haller beautifully captured in WarnerColor. The color red, and the repressed vitality it represents, explodes off the screen. Lest we forget, bombs were the order of the day.
After Rebel? There’s The Breakfast Club. Dawson’s Creek. The O.C. There are framed quotes from Dean reminding us to live like there’s no tomorrow; like we’ll see that mushroom cloud at any moment. So when you visit Griffith Observatory, and see that bust of Dean, notice how close it is to the edge of a cliff, never falling over the edge, but staying damn close to it. Is there any other way to live?
Clarence Hammond
© Cinephile Magazine, 2009
*These are the best books I’ve read on Rebel, full of tales about the production, and detailed arguments for the film’s lasting impact. Their information informed this piece:
-The Making of Rebel Without A Cause (2004) – Douglas L. Rathgeb
