Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Jim Stark (James Dean) is the new kid in town. He has been in trouble elsewhere; that's why his family has had to move before. Here he hopes to find the love he doesn't get from his middle-class family. Though he finds some of this in his relation with Judy (Natalie Wood), and a form of it in both Plato (Sal Mineo)'s adulation and Ray (Edward Platt)'s real concern for him, Jim must still prove himself to his peers in switchblade knife fights and "chickie" games in which cars race toward a seaside cliff. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: For the knife fight between Jim (James Dean) and Buzz (Corey Allen), the actors used real switchblades and protected themselves by wearing chainmail under their vests. James Dean badly bruised his hand during the police station scene where he physically vents his rage on a precinct desk and had to wear an elastic bandage for a week. Frank Mazzola ("Crunch") had actually been a member of a Hollywood street gang, and taught James Dean how to fight with a real switchblade knife. T-shirt sales soared after James Dean was seen to wear one in this film. Jim Backus who played James Dean's father and was the voice of Mr. Magoo, taught Dean how to do the Mr. Magoo voice which Dean then used to deliver the line, "Drown them like puppies." Natalie Wood was first considered too naive and wholesome for the role of Judy. She began changing her looks and eventually attracted the notice of director Nicholas Ray, who began an affair with her but still would not guarantee her the part, though he eventually relented. Both Ray and Wood later claimed that he changed his mind after she was in a car accident with Dennis Hopper and someone in the hospital called her a "goddamn juvenile delinquent". The empty pool in which the characters sit and discuss their lives in one scene is the same pool that was specially built for Sunset Blvd. All three lead actors, (James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood) died under tragic circumstances. Dean died in a car accident at the age of 24 after only 3 movies. Sal Mineo was stabbed to death behind his apartment in a botched mugging, he was 37. Natalie Wood fell off of her yacht and drown at the age of 43.

According to Sam Kashner's "Vanity Fair" article about the making of this movie, Sal Mineo claimed that both his director, Nicholas Ray, and his costar, James Dean, encouraged him to play his character Plato as being homosexual and in love with Dean's character Jim. Mineo said that Ray encouraged him to use his own bisexuality to inform the portrayal, and that Dean told him to "Look at me the way I look at Natalie [Wood]." He also asked Dean what it was he wanted the most and he replied, "a drivers' license." He then told Dean to "look at him like he is your license." The article reports that Mineo "later commented that he had portrayed the first gay teenager on film."

This classic movie was very interesting. You hear all your life about things and assume how things happen. I assumed that I knew this movie. James Dean's reputation of living fast and stuff kind of clouds your judgement at times. I thought it was a teen angst movie with the teenagers railing against their families and making wrong decisions and all that stuff that is usually cliche in movies today. I was wrong. The three main characters, Jim, Plato, and Judy, are desperately seeking anything they can identify as parental love and it makes it so heartbreaking. The parents pretty much fail at everything. Judy's father won't show her any affection and stops her from showing him the same because it "isn't appropriate for a 16 year old girl" to kiss her dad. Jim's father is so browbeaten and hen pecked by his mother and wife that he is emasculated which causes Jim to have to prove himself when challenged by Buzz and the others. But the most heartbreaking is Plato's parents who pretty much just abandon him to be raised by a nanny. All three of the actors, Dean, Mineo, and Wood, put in powerful performances, with the best probably being Mineo whose all out worship of Jim is evident from the start. If I have an complaints of the film and it is a pretty small complaint is that everything seems to happen so fast. As near as I can tell, the movie starts the night before school, the next day is the first day of school where the juniors and seniors go on the field trip to the planetarium and the knife fight happens. Then later that night Jim and Buzz meet for the Chicken match at the bluff and the accident. And then Jim and Judy run away to the abandoned house and Plato finds them and is chased by the police to the Planetarium before dawn the next day so it looks like everything happens within 36 hours, which is not a lot of time for Judy and Jim to fall in love (Especially since Judy's Boyfriend Buzz was killed on night after school starts so it really only takes her 3 or 4 hours to get over Buzz and fall in love with Jim). Coming back to the parents for a final slam. Jim's mother and father do go out looking for Jim with Detective Ray and are present at the end with all the heartbreaking tragedy. Jim finally introduces Judy to them as his new friend and they look at each other and smile. Most people might see that as Jim's father standing up to his mother and she tacitly relenting to his new found manhood but I thought to myself, "dang, they look to relieved as if they are saying to themselves, 'Whew, he has a girlfriend, we're off the hook.'"