by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray
CAST: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Certified Fresh
PLOT: After moving to a new town, a troublemaking teen forms a bond with a troubled classmate and falls for a local girl who is the girlfriend of a neighborhood tough. When the new kid is challenged to a dangerous game of “chicken,” his real troubles begin.
To begin with, yes, Rebel Without a Cause is dated. It is lurid, obvious, and heavy-handed, leaving very little to the audience’s imagination when it comes to the film’s message. On the other hand, there are some not-so-subtle references to even deeper issues at play that make this dated, hammy film still relevant today. I had always thought Rebel was simply about a troubled teenager pleading for compassion from an uncaring society. Who knew it also dealt with a forbidden homosexual attraction and implied incest? For a movie made when the Production Code was still being enforced, that is a LOT of subtext to unpack.
Jim Stark (James Dean) opens the film being hustled into a police station for public drunkenness in the wee hours of the morning. Here, he will cross paths with two other teenagers: Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo). Over the next 24 hours, Jim will change their lives irrevocably just by trying to stay out of trouble, which has no problem finding him.
It’s here, when Jim’s parents arrive to bail him out, that Dean delivers his immortal line, “You’re tearing me APAAART!!!” I’m kinda glad we got that out of the way so early so I didn’t have to anticipate it for the rest of the movie. We also get the first of the film’s heavy-handedness, as Jim converses with a sympathetic cop, Ray (Edward Platt), who asks him the kinds of probing questions that only a psychiatrist would ask. They become unlikely friends as they bond over the foolishness of Jim’s parents, who are so clearly out of touch with his inner turmoil.
During a field trip to the Griffith Observatory (the movie takes place in Los Angeles), Jim winds up in a knife fight with a local tough guy, Buzz, whom he eventually overpowers. (The reason: Buzz called him “chicken,” just like Marty McFly…just throwing that in there.) Buzz wants another chance, so he challenges Jim to a “chickie-run.” That night, the two of them will drive a couple of stolen cars at high speed towards a high cliff drop; first one to bail out of their car is a chicken.
Before that can happen, we get the first of two surprising plot devices. Jim runs into Plato at school, and it becomes instantly clear that Plato is attracted to him. I promise I’m not reading too much into it. The fact this wasn’t toned down even more in a movie from the mid-‘50s is a little shocking to me. Plato looks at and hangs around Jim the way a girl with a crush latches on to the object of her desire. Plato even has a fan-photo of Alan Ladd in Shane hanging in his locker. It’s so obvious that I found myself wondering whether the movie would go so far as to let Plato try to kiss Jim. Later, the screenplay makes it clear that Plato was just looking for a father figure, but dude.
Later that night, after the fateful “chickie-run”, Jim tries to explain to his parents what happened, but they’re unable to respond with anything but disbelief, and his mother even threaten to move again. It’s abundantly clear that Jim’s parents are out of touch, a point that his hammered home again and again. This approach at first seems overpowering, but director Nicholas Ray apparently was trying to lend the film an emotional, operatic sensibility to give the lead characters more of a mythic stature.
This is also conveyed through the film’s use of color Cinemascope, creating a frame that is just begging to be seen on the big screen where the colors and figures wouldn’t just pop, they’d EXPLODE. If this was not a popular drive-in movie, it should have been. That might actually be the best way to watch this movie, if at all possible.
There’s also a curious scene involving Judy’s home life that implies something unsavory is going on. Judy approaches her father at the dinner table and tries to give him a kiss hello, but he rebuffs her: “Aren’t you getting a little old for that kind of thing?” She feels hurt and tries again and gets a slap on the face for her trouble. She runs out of the house and the father says something like, “She used to be so nice, now she’s nothing but trouble!” A father who can’t accept an innocent kiss from his daughter has more going on underneath than the daughter, I can tell you that. It’s an eyebrow-raising moment that does more to shed light on Judy’s behavior than anything else in the film.
The message of the film is simple, and it’s directed squarely at the parents: listen to your kids. The parents in this movie do nothing but express sadness and dismay at their kids’ behavior, and never once do we see any real compassion, except when Jim’s dad (wearing his wife’s apron – more subtle coding?) tries to comfort him before the “chickie-run.” But his words are hollow and meaningless, because he doesn’t take the time to ask the real questions that need to be asked. Rebel Without a Cause was released at a time when popular opinion said that juvenile delinquency was largely a product of kids raised in slums or ghettos. Rebel demonstrated that it didn’t matter where the kids were raised, it’s HOW they were raised that caused their problems.
I give the movie a 7 out of 10 because, while I acknowledge its place in film history, especially with regard to its star, I do feel the dated qualities hard. But I give it props for delivering an important message, in a film that was powerful enough to lead some communities to ban screenings at local theaters for fear it would give the youth community bad ideas. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees…
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 