Review of Rebel Without a Cause (1955) by Ws W — 16 Oct 2009

?You?re tearing me apart.".

"Rebel without a cause 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. I think that's Dean's finest film. His performance in this movie was amazing and established him as a legend and a myth Script was realy good with powerfull direction. Classic film".