Synopsis~
This landmark juvenile-delinquent drama scrupulously follows the classic theatrical disciplines, telling all within a 24-hour period. Teenager Jimmy Stark (James Dean) can't help but get into trouble, a fact that has forced his appearance-conscious parents (Jim Backus and Ann Doran) to move from one town to another. The film's tormented central characters are all introduced during a single night-court session, presided over by well-meaning social worker Ray (Edward Platt). Jimmy, arrested on a drunk-and-disorderly, screams "You're tearing me apart!!!!!" as his blind-sided parents bicker with one another over how best to handle the situation. Judy (Natalie Wood) is basically a good kid but behaves wildly out of frustration over her inability to communicate with her deliberately distant father (William Hopper) (the incestuous subtext of this relationship is discreetly handled, but the audience knows what's going on in the minds of Judy and her dad at all times). And Plato (Sal Mineo), so sensitive that he threatens to break apart like porcelain, has taken to killing puppies as a desperate bid for attention from his wealthy, always absent parents. ~ Hal Erickson (this is only part of the whole Synopsis...for the whole thing, Click here.)
Review~
A clenched fist of teenage alienation and cultural disillusion, Rebel Without a Cause questioned the complacent state of 1950s American society with the subtlety of a blow to the jaw. A truly landmark film, Rebel went where almost no Hollywood film had dared, exposing the anger and discontent beneath the prosperity and confidence of post-war America, picking at family values that dictated that happiness was best found in the nuclear family's well-appointed suburban home. The alienated kids in Rebel were part and parcel of these homes, angry, wounded animals who rejected the very comforts that were supposed to make America superior to the rest of the world. If the notion that comfortable, middle-class white kids could harbor such feelings of anger and nameless yearning wasn't discomforting enough, even more so was the notion that their parents were ill-equipped to understand or help them. From Plato's neglectful mother and father to Jim's ineffectual parents to Judy's pathologically repressed father, all of the film's parents are seen as people whose conformity to the values of 1950s society masks their own discontent and—in the case of Judy's father and Plato's parents—underlying deviance. Thus the teenagers are not so much the problem themselves as heirs to the problems created by the older and supposedly wiser generation. As the film was defined by the burning performances of its teenage leads, it is sadly ironic that their flames were extinguished shortly thereafter, so that Rebel has become as much eulogy as angry declaration. Sal Mineo, sad and touching as the lost boy infatuated with Dean's Jim Stark, was murdered near his Hollywood home, while Natalie Wood, who brought female sexual yearning to the screen in ways that had never before been seen, drowned in a mysterious boating accident. And of course Dean, at his most iconic in blue jeans and red jacket, died in a car accident before the film was even released. That Rebel Without a Cause remains a classic is in no small part due to Dean's raw, soulful performance, made more timeless by his mortality. Although the problems of the film's teenagers may seem trifling when compared to those of their modern-day counterparts, Rebel's anger still throbs with conviction, a brooding reminder that, beneath complacency, there is chaos trying to break free. ~Rebecca Flint |
