After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark (James Dean) is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato (Sal Mineo), and falls for local girl Judy (Natalie Wood). However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough guy Buzz (Corey Allen). When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid’s real troubles begin.
In his brief career, James Dean is known primarily for his appearances in only three films: “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” and “Giant” before he died in a car crash in 1955 at the age of 24. The director of “Rebel Without a Cause,” Nicolas Ray, also helmed such iconic films as “They Live by Night,” “In a Lonely Place,” and perhaps the strangest and coolest western ever made, “Johnny Guitar.” Ray is credited with significantly influencing French New Wave cinema, and “Rebel Without a Cause” remains the most important work ever undertaken by Dean or Ray.
The story involves a set of troubled teenagers, featuring Jim Stark (Dean), who has moved to a new town with his nagging mother (Ann Doran) and passive father (Jim Backus before playing Thurston Howell III in “Gilligan’s Island”) in an effort to start over. At one point, Jim’s father takes a meal on a tray up to his wife, wearing a yellow patterned apron with white lace – an obvious metaphor for his subservience.
Jim befriends a girl named Judy (Natalie Wood), who struggles with her own dysfunctional family. Judy’s mother is played by Rochelle Hudson, and her repressed father by William Hopper, a couple of years before he landed the role of Paul Drake in the “Perry Mason” series. As John “Plato” Crawford, Sal Mineo also has issues of his own, not least of which is trying to come to terms with his gayness – subtlety depicted as it would have to be in that era.
“Rebel” breaks from previous stereotypical films by setting the drama about teen angst not in the slums but in an affluent neighborhood. Shortly after the opening credits, Jim’s parents arrive at the local police station to pick up their son after being summoned from a country club gala. Outward signs of wealth, however, do not mask the tensions simmering on all sides – and not only with the high schoolers. Jim’s mother incessantly needles her husband with petty criticisms – her eyes all daggers – while the live-in grandmother does much the same to her daughter-in-law.
Dean’s searing, pent-up frustration connected with young moviegoers as no film had before. The characters were relatable to a generation on the cusp of the turbulent 1960s. Shot in and around the rolling hills and landscapes of Los Angeles, the production design feels like a time capsule of the 1950s in America – from the leather and denim clothing to the stylish automobiles with wide whitewall tires to the post-World War II ranch homes and two-story houses.
Dennis Hopper makes brief appearances as one of the delinquents portrayed during the course of events. In a short Turner Classic Movies documentary, Hopper describes his interactions with Ray over 25 years and the director’s powerful worldwide effect on the movie industry.
I had the opportunity to hear Ray speak to a small audience of students at the University of Texas at Austin in 1977. By then, Hollywood shunned Ray after the disastrous release of “55 Days at Peking” in 1963. He sat at the bottom of the auditorium in a folding chair, hunched over somewhat with his legs crossed, wearing an eyepatch and sporting a lit cigarette that dangled from his mouth. The aging director remarked casually that “Rebel Without a Cause” was considered by many to have blazed a fresh trail for filmmaking in the 1950s. Ray also mentioned his association with Dennis Hopper, the creative force behind the hugely successful “Easy Rider” – among the most daring and groundbreaking works of the 1960s. Later during the Q&A, a student asked Ray – given his involvement with maybe the two most seminal motion pictures in each of the previous two decades – what he thought would be deemed the most significant film of the 1970s. He responded that he hoped to produce and direct that one himself – a witty retort that brought the house down. It was a nice moment. Ray died two years later of terminal cancer.
Ray crafted the “Rebel” story, with Stewart Stern and Irving Shulman completing the screenplay and adaptation. Because of James Dean’s rising popularity after the release of “East of Eden,” Warner Brothers decided to shoot the picture in the recently introduced and more expensive widescreen Cinemascope format instead of B-movie black-and-white, which Ray had initially planned to do. As a result, scenes such as the one inside of the Samuel Oschin Planetarium at the Griffith Observatory come alive on the 4K Ultra HD™ + Blu-ray™ discs. Equally so for nearly all of the movie.
Dean died before the film was released, so he never saw the final version or could appreciate its impact on the movie industry in the U.S. and the rest of the filmmaking world. Martin Sheen, Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage, Robert De Niro, and Leonardo DiCaprio have all acknowledged how Dean inspired their respective acting careers. Although initially opening to mixed reviews, “Rebel Without a Cause” has since become a timeless classic and a fine showcase for one of the most influential and gifted actors ever to hit the big screen – Jimmy Dean, James Dean.
Now available on 4K Ultra HD™ for the first time
