Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Barry Germansky
Contributor
You’d be hard-pressed to find a film with a title more ironic than Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause.
The title captures the frame of mind of the film’s superficial adults who are at odds with the idealistic young people around them. Ray, one of cinema’s most deliriously passionate mavericks, sides with his film’s sensitive rebels.
Rebel is the masterpiece that put James Dean on the cultural map and created the modern image of the “teenager.” Dean portrays Jim Stark, an outcast who wants to escape the superficiality of the adult world and find a new home that will support his emotional needs.
As he undergoes various coming-of-age rituals and tries to face his bumbling father (Jim Backus), Jim teams up with fellow misfits Plato (Sal Mineo) and Judy (Natalie Wood) to start a surrogate family based on mutual understanding. The corruption of the adult world, however, tries to separate and destroy them at every turn.
James Dean’s influential performance is poetry in motion. His angst and emotional vulnerability are unprecedented in terms of convey- ing the hardship of articulating his discontents. Montgomery Clift may have been the first tormented rebel actor, but Dean explored a slightly different path with the flamboyance and spontaneity of his body language. Dean’s slouching sessions through dark corridors mirror his character’s conflicted soul.
Nicholas Ray paints the movie with strokes of Romanticism that play on the emotions first and introduce sophisticated contradictions later – the parents want their children to play by the rules, but they’ve been rendered soulless by those very same rules. Vibrant colours are employed in everything from Jim’s fiery red jacket to the blue back- drops of the lonesome night scenes. Ernest “Gone with the Wind” Haller’s cinematography frames multiple contrasting colors and shadows with expressionistic brilliance.
The only thing that’s dated about Rebel Without a Cause is the 1950s fashion scene – which is to say that nothing about the film is dated in the slightest. Its critique on cold and calculating materialism is even more relevant in today’s market-dominated society. Rebel reminds us that we need to do a lot more feeling.