Rebel without a Cause (1955)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 111m
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo
Synopsis:
A youngster whose parents' response to his integration problems is to move him around from school to school gets into ever more serious trouble as a result.
Review:
A film responsible for much, and not just the Dean legend. Cunningly the makers have made other characters - the kids, parents and juvenile officer - into cyphers, so as to throw all the more into relief the unusualness of the Dean persona, at the same time as heightening the melodrama. On the debit side, the nature of the disorder in the lives of these three youths (Judy and Plato, as well as Jim) is only very vaguely plotted, and their conflict with authority unexpectedly played down; all of which makes the film somewhat short on bluster, added to which much of the dialogue resembles more a forty year-old's idea of young person's talk than the thing itself (cf. The Wild One, for example, where Brando's 'What you got?' is so much more succinct and less arch than Dean's 'You're tearing me apart!') Rosenman's music channels Bernstein's rhythms from On the Waterfront, while anticipating West Side Story and Herrmann's Marnie theme in the more wistful passages, but it is above all a Nicholas Ray achievement, with all the assets and liabilities that entails: overwrought emotions, dramatic contrivance, but also a privileging of anomie over material complacency in contemporary life (these kids are far from deprived). America was never the same place (in the movies) again.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 111m
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo
Synopsis:
A youngster whose parents' response to his integration problems is to move him around from school to school gets into ever more serious trouble as a result.
Review:
A film responsible for much, and not just the Dean legend. Cunningly the makers have made other characters - the kids, parents and juvenile officer - into cyphers, so as to throw all the more into relief the unusualness of the Dean persona, at the same time as heightening the melodrama. On the debit side, the nature of the disorder in the lives of these three youths (Judy and Plato, as well as Jim) is only very vaguely plotted, and their conflict with authority unexpectedly played down; all of which makes the film somewhat short on bluster, added to which much of the dialogue resembles more a forty year-old's idea of young person's talk than the thing itself (cf. The Wild One, for example, where Brando's 'What you got?' is so much more succinct and less arch than Dean's 'You're tearing me apart!') Rosenman's music channels Bernstein's rhythms from On the Waterfront, while anticipating West Side Story and Herrmann's Marnie theme in the more wistful passages, but it is above all a Nicholas Ray achievement, with all the assets and liabilities that entails: overwrought emotions, dramatic contrivance, but also a privileging of anomie over material complacency in contemporary life (these kids are far from deprived). America was never the same place (in the movies) again.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 111m
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo
Synopsis:
A youngster whose parents' response to his integration problems is to move him around from school to school gets into ever more serious trouble as a result.
Review:
A film responsible for much, and not just the Dean legend. Cunningly the makers have made other characters - the kids, parents and juvenile officer - into cyphers, so as to throw all the more into relief the unusualness of the Dean persona, at the same time as heightening the melodrama. On the debit side, the nature of the disorder in the lives of these three youths (Judy and Plato, as well as Jim) is only very vaguely plotted, and their conflict with authority unexpectedly played down; all of which makes the film somewhat short on bluster, added to which much of the dialogue resembles more a forty year-old's idea of young person's talk than the thing itself (cf. The Wild One, for example, where Brando's 'What you got?' is so much more succinct and less arch than Dean's 'You're tearing me apart!') Rosenman's music channels Bernstein's rhythms from On the Waterfront, while anticipating West Side Story and Herrmann's Marnie theme in the more wistful passages, but it is above all a Nicholas Ray achievement, with all the assets and liabilities that entails: overwrought emotions, dramatic contrivance, but also a privileging of anomie over material complacency in contemporary life (these kids are far from deprived). America was never the same place (in the movies) again.