Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

NICHOLAS RAY, OPUS 11
**** 1955. Original story and direction by Nicholas Ray. Three nominations for the Oscars. James Dean and Natalie Wood, in conflict with their parents, meet Sal Mineo, a neurotic kid. They'll have to deal with a local gang and the police forces. Plato's myth of the Cavern revisited by Nicholas Ray. Behind the usual clichés of a movie about juvenile delinquents, the director tells us again the Greek myth that opposes the world of the shadows (night, planetarium, abandoned mansion) to Reality. Highly recommended.

Good underlying story, but a highly overrated classic film.
Although Rebel Without a Cause has to be given credit for its groundbreaking portrayal of teenage angst, all in it's is a pretty wooly affair with some hammy performances and gloppy sentimentality.

To begin with, Nicholas Ray never could say anything with much subtlety -- he's like one of those beat poet cliches from the 1950s who take themselves oh-so-serious and are like down with system, man. So, from the first frame RWAC slathers on the message with a cake spatula. We are supposed to be totally sympathetic to the troubled James Dean character and his existential plight through being a 20-something teenager. He sees the ridiculous marriage of his parents as a stark warning of the horrors that surely await in his future. If this were handled really well it could have a lot of traction, but unfortunately it is played sporadically and is too hyperbolic (in all the wrong ways) to have much resonance.

Along for the ride is a horribly miscast Natalie Wood, who cannot seem to deliver a single one of her lines correctly. She too is a confused young teen, but about what we have no idea and she just spends the movie alternately acting like a brat or a dweeb. This unrelenting subplot of the film is simply godawful.

Sal Mineo gets the most demanding part, that of the true outcast. If the film has one strength it is in this character's delusional nature which is a brilliant interpretation of many of the most disturbed High Schoolers I knew. Alas, Sal Mineo does little to endear Dino to the audience and the film doesn't spend enough time on his pathos. It still treats him as a curiosity and suffers from the same hepcat detachment that runs through the entirety of Ray's direction.

I love the 1950s, and I love the idea behind Rebel Without a Cause, but in the end the film does not live up to its reputation and is mired by so many layers of hokum (the soundtrack...total dreck) that it simply not a real tour-de-force. And I still don't get what all the fuss is about the totally overwrought James Dean. For my money, "The Wild One" is a much more fun film that covers similar ground. Still, for people looking to see that their teen angst had a timeless lineage, it will be tempting to see Rebel Without a Cause as a masterpiece for manipulating that same emotion.

REBELS WITH A CAUSE
This film has always bugged me for any number of reasons.First, the title is a total misfit. Every adolescent star has a cause for rebellion. Dean's father (Backus) is a real piece of work, his mother is Napoleonic,and Granny does nothing but help reinforce Mommy.Woods'father belongs in ICU AT Bellevue, or behind bars for abuse.Mineo is the proverbial misit whose psychiatric treatments have been cut off.Secondly,even though director Nicholas Ray gave Dean plenty of room to improvise, we are left with 2 dead, 1 wounded, one knife attack, multiple arrests, with the elder Backuses smiling at day's end, all within 18 hours in suburbia 1955. Realism? Next, we have a superb acting job by the 3 protagonists, but silly, often unprofessional acting by all that surround them. Who's running the zoo? Finally, I'll go to my grave believing that "East of Eden" was Dean's best effort, with this film a mere symbol of what might have been.