A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers filmed in CinemaScope. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments. The film stars James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood.
Jim Stark (James Dean) is a lonely desperate teenager, who supposedly hasn't a friend in the world when we first see him lying drunk in an L.A gutter... But his personality is such that within a twenty-four-hour period he makes friends with Plato (Sal Mineo) and Judy (Natalie Wood), two misunderstood teenagers completely different from each other and himself...
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| Chilling like a villian |
This movie is just as powerful as it was 50 years ago. Inside the cheesy braggadocio of an angry gangster is a confused kid. I can't think of a single person that did not feel alienated as a teenager. James Dean represents what every teenager would want to be. Individualistic: has a set of values and sticks to them Brave: engages in activities most of us would never consider (esp. chicky run) Kind: caring to Plato and Judy.
What's particularly satisfying about the film is its cohesiveness, binding together its many disparate events and characters with highly parallel themes and motifs. All of its central characters seem caught in psychosexual conflicts rife with familial gender conflict. Jim (James Dean) is caught between a weakling, effeminated father and a domineering but inneffectual mother. Judy (Natalie Wood) and her father are seperated by his uncomfortable relation to her sexuality. Plato (Sal Mineo), worst of all, is a practical orphan, who suffers all the more for his just under the surface homosexuality. (It's interesting to note here that Plato may be Hollywood's first sympathetic of a gay character.) All of them are driven by internal demons springing from these conflicts.
The supporting cast include Jim Backus as James Dean's well-to-do yet wimpish and henpecked father as well as a young Dennis Hopper as a member of a greaser gang. Jim Backus of course was Mr. Howell on the TV show Gilligan's Island. His ass has appeared in several films I've watched recently.
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| Mr. Howell secretly dresses as Lovey |
It wasn't only James Dean's tragic death that made him a legend. He was getting acclaim for his performance in East of Eden when he was killed on September 30, 1955. His stunning impact came after his death as fans were mesmerized by the promise of things to come in Rebel Without A Cause which came out about four weeks later and with Giant which Dean had just wrapped shooting on. This dead actor had film fans talking everywhere right up to the Oscars of 1957 ceremony where he was nominated for 1956's Giant. If ever a player left the scene with fans begging for more it was James Dean.
Nicholas Ray directs this picture in an almost surreal way. Bright, sunny scenes outside are contrasted with cold, dark interior shots. The camera mirrors the story and the spirit of the film in quite a unique way. When we see Jim, drunk out of his mind, lying on the cold street, the camera stares unflinchingly, never looking away. When Jim argues with his parents in a particularity dynamic scene, the camera seems distorted, out of place. Even when our three main characters escape to their ultimate fantasy, alone with each other outside of everyone and everything else, they are shrouded in darkness.
Seen today over 50 years later Rebel Without A Cause still remains the ultimate film in teen angst. I think it's destined to be so for generations to come.
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| If you pull a knife it better have some ketchup on it because you're going to eat it. |
Trivia:
The part where Jim and Judy find Plato wearing one blue sock and one red sock was not scripted. Sal Mineo actually put them on that way by mistake.
T-shirt sales soared after James Dean wore one in this film.
James Dean died on September 30, 1955, nearly a month before this film was released on October 27, 1955.
The opening scene in the movie with Jim Stark and the toy monkey was improvised by James Dean after the production had been shooting for nearly 24 hours straight. He asked Nicholas Ray to roll the camera, that he wanted to do something. Ray obliged and the improvisation went on to become the famous opening scene.
The whole film takes place over 24 hours. The opening scene in the police station take place around 3am. The ending scene takes place around 3am the next day.
All three lead actors, James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood, died prematurely under tragic circumstances; Dean died in an automobile accident in September 1955, Mineo was stabbed to death on February 12, 1976, and Wood drowned in the late autumn of 1981. In addition, Edward Platt committed suicide in 1974 and Dennis Hopper suddenly fell terminally ill in the fall of 2009 and died five months later.
James Dean was free to star in the film because Elizabeth Taylor got pregnant, which delayed production of Giant (1956).
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". Wood soon yelled to Ray, "Did you hear what he called me, Nick?! He called me a goddamn juvenile delinquent! Now do I get the part?!"
The empty pool in which the characters sit and discuss their lives first appeared in Sunset Boulevard (1950). The pool had been built specially for the earlier film, as a condition of renting the site from its owner, Mrs J. Paul Getty.
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."
Originally in the beginning of the movie, there was a gang beating up a father, who drops a toy on the sidewalk. The studio thought it was too violent, so it was cut. Jim Stark can be seen playing with the toy after he finds it on the ground during the opening credits
The film was originally going to contain a kiss between James Dean and Sal Mineo.
The movie's line "You're tearing me apart" was voted as the #97 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere magazine.
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.
Although playing a teenager, James Dean was actually 24 when the movie was filmed. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, however, were of the right age.
Director Nicholas Ray researched L.A. gangs by riding around with them for several nights.
The movie was originally to be shot in black and white, and some scenes had already been filmed that way, when the studio decided to switch to color. The official explanation at the time was that Twentieth Century-Fox, which owned the wide-screen CinemaScope process, had ordered that all films shot in the process had to be in color, but some also believe that Warners ordered the switch to head off comparisons with Blackboard Jungle (1955) and because James Dean's increasing popularity gave the film more prestige.
Frank Mazzola, who plays "Crunch" in the film, was an actual street gang member when he was a student at Hollywood High School. He was a member of a gang called "The Athenians." As such, he served as a technical advisor to Director Nicholas Ray and coached other actors in regard to street gang attitudes and mannerisms.
Jim Stark was actually first intended to be more of a nerd, wearing a brown jacket and glasses. However, when Warner Bros. told director Nicholas Ray to re-shoot in color, Ray, as well as costumer Moss Mabry, wanted him to wear red.
Originally based on a non-fiction work by Dr. Robert M. Lindner, about the hypno-analysis of a young criminal. Producer Jerry Wald intended to make a film of the work and commissioned several scripts, including one by Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), and Marlon Brando was set to star at one point, but the project was eventually shelved. When the studio bought Nicholas Ray's treatment "The Blind Run" it asked him to use the title of Lindner's work, but the film doesn't include anything else from the book.
The writing credits for the film are as follows: Stewart Stern (screenplay), Nicholas Ray(story) and Irving Shulman (adaptation). In an interview, published in Michigan Quarterly Review in 1999, Stern, however, claims that he had never even seen "The Blind Run", the treatment for "Rebel" supposedly written by Ray. The screenwriter says he was shocked when he learned that the director wanted to take the sole story credit as there had not been an actual story before he started writing the script. Stern admits that both Ray and Shulman had contributed to the story therefore he believes that the credit should have been divided between the three of them. Later, the film received an Oscar nomination for the story alone with only Ray being nominated for writing.
James Dean originally wanted his friend Jack Simmons, whom he was living with at the time, for the part of Plato.
Dennis Hopper and Natalie Wood had a brief relationship during filming. Wood also had an affair with Nicholas Ray, which was scandalous due to the fact that she was only 16 while he was 43 and older than her father.
In the police station scene, while the adults are talking to the cop, Jim keeps whistling Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, a classical piece known to audiences because of its memorable use in Apocalypse Now (1979). Dennis Hopper appears in both films.
Realizing the actor's power to touch youthful audiences, Nicholas Ray gave James Dean free reign to improvise his scenes. The cast often took its cues not from Ray, but from the Method-acting entranced Dean.
James Dean did not get malaria during filming, as some have reported. Nick Adams had a relapse of an old case of malaria he got while he was a merchant marine.
The 1949 Mercury Coupe James Dean drove in the movie is part of the permanent collection at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada.
When the crew began night shooting at the Griffith Park Planetarium in Hollywood, downtown Los Angeles residents saw the bright production lights in the hills and flooded switchboards with reports of raging forest fires.
James Dean got angry when Nicholas Ray stopped the knife fight scene after noticing that James had been cut on the ear and was bleeding. Dean said:"Don't you ever cut a scene while I'm having a real moment."
In Gilligan's Island: Castaways Pictures Presents (1965), Thurston Howell III, cries out, "Method actors! Never again!" as he directs the castaways in film production. This may be an inside joke in reference to James Dean. Jim Backus played Frank Stark in this film and had scenes with Dean that turned physical as a result of Dean's legendary and infamous spontaneous, method acting style.
The switchblade that James Dean used in the fight scene at Griffith Observatory was offered at auction on September 30, 2015 by Profiles in History with an estimated value of US$12,000 to $15,000, with a winning bid of US$12,000.[10] Also offered at the same auction were production photographs and a final shooting script dated August 17, 1955 for a behind-the-scenes television promotional film titled Behind the Cameras: Rebel Without a Cause hosted by Gig Young and that had scripted interviews and staged footage by the cast and crew (script winning bid US$225.)
Sal Mineo once said that on the day his death scene was shot, James Dean never let Sal out of his sight during the entire day.
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.
An alternative ending was shot in which Plato falls from the tower of the planetarium.
In the final scene where the camera pulls away from the observatory, director Nicholas Ray is the person walking toward the building. (possible director's trademark for it is rumored he appeared in all of his movies)
The "chickie run" was staged at a Warner Bros. property in Calabasas, California. The cars drove on flat land that led to a small bluff of only 10 -15 feet high. The cars drove over the small bluff, but the "cliff" supposedly overlooking the ocean was built on Stage 7 (now Stage 16) at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. The constructed cliff overlooked the stage's flooded water tank and the actors looked down upon the water from the edge. Even so, it became necessary to matte in shots of the Pacific Ocean in the final product.
