1955 was a pivotal year for the history of American popular culture. At this particular point, the American entertainment industry began to shift its focus to the younger generation, who, in the years of post-World War II boom, were largely unaffected by the deprivations of previous decades and began to drift from the values and social mores of their parents. This process would be completed in the next decade with the appearance of the Baby Boomers. A powerful symbol of this trend was the arrival of rock'n'roll music, which also coincided with the spectacular rise of a new screen idol, James Dean. Dean's death in the same year actually made him an icon of an entire generation. The best known of his three starring roles is in Rebel Without a Cause, a drama directed by Nicholas Ray, one of the most iconic and influential films of 1950s Hollywood.
The plot follows 24 hours in the life of three troubled Los Angeles teenagers. It begins in a police station where Jim Stark (played by Dean) is brought for public drunkenness and where he meets Judy (played by Natalie Wood), a girl who ran away from home, and John “Plato” Crawford (played by Sal Mineo), an effeminate teenager who killed a litter of puppies. Jim Stark’s family has recently moved into the city, and in the morning he finds that Judy and Plato attend the same school. He is attracted to Judy, while Plato, being a misfit, sees an outsider as a kindred spirit and tries very hard to befriend him. Judy, on the other hand, hangs out with a gang led by Buzz Gunderson (played by Corey Allen), who gets into conflict with Jim, ultimately resolved in spectacular fashion, but with unexpectedly tragic results.
While not the first Hollywood film to deal with juvenile delinquency, it was the first to approach this problem not only as a strictly social issue but also as a psychological one. The problematic teenagers in the film do not belong to the "wrong side of the tracks" but actually come from a "proper" and "decent" middle-class milieu. All three protagonists have issues that stem from their problematic parents: Jim's father Frank (played by Jim Backus) is henpecked and never stands up to his wife, Jim’s mother Carol (played by Ann Doran); Judy's father (played by William Hopper) not coming to terms with his daughter growing up and discovering her sexuality; and Plato being abandoned by his parents and left in the hands of a black maid (played by Marietta Canty), who, despite her sincere efforts, fails to compensate for the lack of family.
Originally developed by Warner Bros. as an adaptation of the eponymous 1944 book by prominent psychologist Robert M. Lindner, the actual film had nothing other than the title to do with its nominal literary source. Instead, it became a very personal project for Nicholas Ray, a filmmaker whose work often showed great sympathy for youth and social misfits, very much like the characters of the film. Ray had very personal experiences with dysfunctional families, including catching his 13-year-old son Tony in bed with his then-wife and Tony's stepmother, Gloria Grahame.
Another personal aspect that affected Ray's approach towards the film was his sexuality. Ray, although a notorious womanizer, had few sexual experiences with men, which, by his own admission, helped him to understand and recognise homosexuality in other people. This included Sal Mineo, a 17-year-old actor who would, years later, become one of the first Hollywood celebrities to publicly announce his bisexuality. Mineo's portrayal of the troubled, gentle, and slightly effeminate Plato, who keeps a picture of male Hollywood star Alan Ladd in his high school locker and treats Jim as a role model, friend, surrogate father, and, potentially, something more, is considered to represent the first character of a gay teenager in American cinema, establishing a trope that would become very popular in subsequent years. Although, thanks to the slightly watered-down but still enforced censorship standards of the Hays Code, Ray couldn't be explicit, Plato's sexuality became quite obvious in subsequent years.
Ray also showed a propensity not only to deliver new content but also a new style of filmmaking. Warner Bros. originally envisioned Rebel Without a Cause as a low-budget black-and-white film, but, impressed with the popularity of James Dean after his first role in East of Eden, allocated a much larger budget, which Ray made visible through lush colour cinematography by Ernest Haller and, even more importantly, through CinemaScope, a widescreen format which was, until that time, quite unusual for films that weren't musicals or period epics. Ray also put Los Angeles to good use, especially Griffith Observatory, which plays an important part in the plot.
The greatest asset of the film is James Dean, who delivers his greatest and most impressive role. Using immense talent and masterful handling of Method acting, he manages to portray a vivid character who is introduced as a pathetic drunk, continues as a confused young man, and ultimately decides to do the right thing, becoming the closest this film has to a hero.
Dean has easily overshadowed other cast members, including those who owe their subsequent careers to this film. It was a breakout role for 16-year-old Natalie Wood, who used her off-screen romance with Ray to add a personal and very convincing touch to the character of a confused young woman, at odds with the potentially incestuous aspects of her relationship with her father. Mineo also delivered a powerful performance, becoming nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The supporting cast also does an excellent job, which includes Corey Allen as Jim's unfortunate rival, Edward Platt as a sympathetic police detective, Jim Backus as the protagonist's father, and a young Dennis Hopper in one of his first prominent roles as a member of Buzz's gang.
Apart from dealing with issues of the generation gap, the film also touched on some broader and more pressing problems. Scenes in the planetarium, which deal with the apocalyptic future destruction of Earth, touched something very much on the minds of people under the shadow of the Cold War, while the "chicken game," so effectively depicted in the film, became a powerful visual metaphor for nuclear brinkmanship between the two superpowers.
Although critics initially weren't that enthusiastic, the film, released a few weeks after Dean's tragic death in a car accident, was enthusiastically embraced by the public, making it a hit. Soon afterwards, Ray was hailed by French film critics, and the theme of generation gap and youthful rebellion, which would become immensely popular in Hollywood and world cinema in the decades to come, was firmly established.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
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