Review of Rebel Without a Cause (1955) by Veronique K — 17 Feb 2009

"rebel without a cause" is the iconic and probably most cliched classic of james dean in his cooperation with director nicholas ray who has maneuvered himself in the genre of juvenile delinquency since the 40s with flicks like "they live by night", "knock on any door" and "on the dangerous ground", tackling astray adolescents under a sympathetic light with lines like "live fast, die yong, have a beautiful corpse." that notion happens to reflect dean's transient grasp of life. but viewing rebel in a comtemporary light, it might seem dated and laughably whining since nowaday youth tend to be too ferocious to give a damn on their sappy parents. rebel's value lies more upon the cult perspect of counterculture than the cinematic breakthru except james dean's eccentric egoist method of acting.

Basically rebel is about a troubled teenager named jim whose family movies around a lot just to dissolve his anti-social misfit tendency, but it fails becuz the boy's best wish is just to have his dad rise up against his domineering mother like a man with backbone. also he has a crush upon the neighbor gal(natalie wood) who is the girlfriend of a rascal, so to impress the gal, he joins the daring game of the juvenile mob since he cannot stand to be called as a "chicken". so mob-leader died of accident, so hoodlums are after jim everywhere while his one friend plato who seems to have in-closet crush on jim guns down several men within the bully crowd.

Rebel has three major fundamental scopes:

Firstly it revolutionalizes the facet of manhood by delineating young males of more fragile temperament as if it's saying you could demonstrate your vulnerability but still remain as a man. such as plato hangs alan ladd's picture in the closet, trying to imitate ladd's hairstyle to appear manlier even in vain. and its revolt against paternality is fiercely conspicuous, jim's annoyed with his dad wearing an apron to clean the leftover on the floor, scolding his dad, pushing him down to fistfight dad. but he's even more resentful to his mother who castrates his reverence for dad. frequently his only wish is just to see his father tells his mother to shut up! a misogynist to some degree, jim shows his great comtempt for this gender reversal by kicking thru his mother's portrait before he escapes home again. james dean's notion of manhood here is like you've gotta strut around to be a man of your own without your father as the role model, but his ambivalence would be his actual wish is primitively conventional, far from rebellious: he just wants his dad to be phallic so he could have a father image to look up to.

Secondly, the topic of juvenile deliquency is officially heated up as trendy by the success of rebel, and also the kids of 50s. the decade of economical surplus, had enough pocket money from their parents to attend movies, so this genre's become a money-sucker ever since rebel. it furthers the gap btween adulthood and puberty as dichotomy with hostility against each other with utterance like you grown-ups don't understand us. juveniles've become more hegemonic to draw the mass attention along with the popularity of beat literature and james dean. juveniles started to develop their own way of coolness to discriminate adults just like adults do juveniles. but ray's interpretation would be their rebellion is caused by the loss of faith and intimacy with their parents. to girl, father no longer kisses and allows the daughter to sit on his lap in puberty, so she's perplexed and emotionally deserted. for boy, he has troubles reconciling his identification of manhood since father's effeminated by mother. and the causes presented by ray are obviously dated, only existed in 50s. irrevocably corny.

During this period of beat counterculture, france was having camus and sartre's existentialism to elucidate their emptiness while america was having a beat fever with teenagers expressing their existential void in an abitrary and also illiterate way by saying "who cares?!" meanwhile, it creates the new mode of high-school romane, girls cease their clark-gable-adoration(electra complex) by craving the sweet tenderness from the mushy "it" boys like james dean instead of the steel-willed fatherly masculinity in old phallic icons like bogie and gable. male icons since then have become more and more boyish.

Thirdly, rebel thoroughly alternates the outlook of male fashion as well. the red jacket, white t shirt and blue jeans had been the stylish fashion milestone copied by many with fanatic hommage to james dean who inspires the fad of leisure wear when men used to suits and fedora to be considered dignified, along with the vagabond fascination of jack kerouac's "on the road" to enocurage youth to be emancipated...meanwhile brando demonstrates how sexy he could be in proteriat sweaty t-shirt in "streetcar named desire", also with leather-jacket in "the wild one" consequently. the course of gentility in male costumes has began to be neutral then fade into the field for the antiquated ever since.

Additionally, rebel is also one of the first examples in popular movies to have homosexual character as one of the lead protagonists except hitchcock's "the rope" which doesn't sell well then. the role plato has a crush on dean, he orders a song on the radio to bare his fascination, but dean's reaction is to shut it off at once but make love to natalie wood. it's more of a reluctance than a homophobic repulsion since dean generously gives away his red jacket to keep plato warm in the end as solace for his covet for dean, and plato even remarks "could I keep it?" then he wears dean's red jacket and demises in the bullet shots.

The macabre part would be the trio pretend to act like grown-ups to form a crippled lullaby in a desolate mansion, a twisted poetic compensation to the lack of norm in their life. it is rumored that the whole cast of rebel died young, mystically followed by dean's death (or suicide?)...but they neglect that dennis hopper(one of the hoodlums who bully plato) still lives and prospers as one of the main popular character actors.

"rebel without a cause" is staled with banality since its formuli have been barrowed by great many movies with stronger dosage of gory violence, debauched promiscuity and spicy endings without redemption. so what's left to give you any shock effect of carthesis? not a bit.