In one of the best roles of all time, James Dean’s red jacketed youth of “Rebel Without a Cause,” captured the confused, angst-ridden sentiments of teenagers in the 1950’s. Released in 1955, this film classic depicted the day’s adolescents outside the cookie-cutter image that “Happy Days” proliferated. James Dean’s Jim Stark isn’t the stereotypical perfect, straight-laced teenager with the perfect family. Instead, he is full of inner angst and turmoil at the hand of his embarrassingly emasculated father and overbearing, demanding mother. In one gut-wrenching scene, James Dean howls at his parents after being dragged into a police station after night of heavy drinking: “You’re tearing me apart!” The audience can immediately feel his pain.
In another perfectly shot scene, his mother stands above him on the stairs, Stark a few steps below, and his pitiful father is at the bottom. The teen doesn’t face his father but angrily seethes, “Dad, stand up. Stand up to her,” demanding his father to assert his dominance over the mother. With his father at the bottom of the stairs and his mother at the top, it is the symbolic representation of who holds the power in this family, with Stark stuck in the middle of the two. Director Nicholas Ray shows his understanding of photography in this scene, as well as one other scene where the camera is upside down because it is Stark who is lying upside down. As he turns to sit upright, so does the camera, always in tune with Stark’s perspective.
Stark’s inner turmoil is immediately felt in the famously unwritten opening scene, with Dean curling up in the middle of a street, clutching a toy monkey. From there, his crisis with his family is an extension of the personal crisis within himself. The existential undercurrent rippling beneath the story of Jim Stark is voiced when he meets Natalie Wood’s popular Judy for the first time. He asks her, “Where do you live?” And she merely replies, “Who lives?” Throughout the film, James Dean’s performance is beautifully tortured, searing, and transcendent.
The story starts with Stark being hauled into a police station for public drunkenness. The next day, Stark starts at a new high school, after having moved several times in the past due to his misbehavior at prior schools. Stark, trying to fit in, rubs some members of the popular crowd the wrong way, resulting in a knife fight during a field trip and a “chickie run,” a dangerous game that results in tragedy. From there, Stark becomes better acquainted to Judy.
Natalie Wood plays her character with a beautiful veil of haughtiness covering the delicate insecurity that lies within. She has her own problems with her family, as she cried at one point that her father doesn’t love her anymore. Also not to be overlooked is Sal Mineo as Plato, the outsider who idolizes Jim Stark. Although it is implied but never fully touched upon, Plato is also in love with Jim. Having not had a secure family of himself, he looks up to Stark as his father, and he thinks he can create his own sort of family with Stark and Judy. This yearning for some type of family leads to a tragic Shakespearean conclusion in the film’s final act.
Effortlessly directed by Nicholas Ray, “Rebel Without a Cause” was supposedly going to be shot in black and white, but the switch to color was fundamental and vital to the film. The color red is worn by the three leads, an indication of their inner anguish. Ironically, all three leads would suffer from untimely deaths. Dean, most famously died by a car accident in his Porsche, Mineo by stabbing, and Wood would drown despite her lifelong phobia of water.
“Rebel Without a Cause” will continue on its legacy of being a film classic, no matter how old it gets. The tragic death of its lead crystallized this performance as one of the greatest of the bright young star’s career and in time, one of the best performances in film history.
Rating: 5 stars/5
Where to Find It: Out on DVD
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