Film Review of "Rebel Without a Cause"

     The 1955 film “Rebel Without a Cause,” was filmed in a time of the transition of ideas about young people. Like many movies, it was based on the 1944 book by Robert Lindner. Stewart Stern (screenplay), Irving Shulman (adaptation) and, Nicholas Ray (director/story) bring this influential book to life to reveal the changing times. The main roll of Jim Start, played by James Dean, opens doors to a new perception of the way young men should behave. Because this movie was released in 1955, I had a hard time appriciating it. Quality of film making and acting has improved and I though it was unnecesarilly dramatic.

     Shortly after moving to Los Angeles with his parents, 17-year-old Jim Stark (James Dean) is brought into the police station for public drunkenness. When his mother, father and grandmother arrive at the police station to retrieve him, conflicts in Jim's family situation are introduced. His weak-willed father (Jim Backus) often tries to defend Jim, but Jim's self absorbed, overbearing mother always wins the arguments because his father has little backbone. Jim feels betrayed both by this fighting and his father's weakness, causing feelings of confusion about what is to be a man. This shows up later in the film when he repeatedly asks his father, "What do you do when you have to be a man?"

      When Jim starts at his new high school he becomes involved in a dispute with a local bully named Buzz Gunderson (Corey Allen). While Jim tries to deal with Buzz, he becomes friends with a shy boy, John, who is nicknamed Plato (Sal Mineo), who was also at the police station the night of the opening scene for shooting and killing puppies. Jim shows Plato kindness while others ridicule him. Because of his lack of parental figures, Plato comes to view Jim as a father-figure. Though it might not have been realized in 1955, it was clear to myself and my classmates that Plato is gay and has a crush on Jim.

      Jim meets Judy (Natalie Wood), whom he also recognizes from the police station the previous night, where she was brought in for being out alone after dark. Unfortunately Judy is Buzz‘s girlfriend. Judy like Jim and Plato has a troubled home life. She struggles with her distant, sexist father who refuses to show affection towards his daughter. The level of appropriate intimacy shown in 1955 is clear in the scene in which Judy comes home and her parents are preparing to go to sleep in separate beds.

      On a field trip with his science class to the Griffith Observatory, Jim and Buzz get into a Fight in which Buzz and his group of friends label him a “chicken” and challenge him to a “Chickie Run,” a race in which two people speed towards a cliff to see who will jump out of their car first. Jim reluctantly agrees not realizing what this game initialed. The race turns in to a spectacle for many of the students bud ends in tragedy for Buzz when a strap on the sleeve of his leather jacket becomes looped over a handle on the car door, preventing him from jumping out before the car goes over the cliff.

      Jim runs home and tries to tell his parents what happened, but quickly becomes frustrated by their failure to understand him and storms out of the house. After trying to get advise from his parents about what he should do, they fight and Jim goes to the police to find the sergeant, Ray Fremick (Edward Platt), who took his statement the previous night to tell him about the accident. But Jim is seen leaving the station by three of Buzz's friends. Mistakenly thinking that Jim told the police about the "Chickie Run", they decide to hunt Jim down to "silence him."

      Jim meets up with Judy and they go to an abandoned mansion to hide out. Plato finds them there. Their similar difficult home situration lead them to roll play a  "fantasy family" that they wish they had, with Jim as father, Judy as mother and Plato as child. Buzz’s friends soon discover them and terrorize Plato who finally brandishes his mother's hand gun that he took from the house, shooting them and a police officer.

     Plato runs and hides in the observatory, which is soon surrounded by the police. Jim and Judy follow him inside, and Jim convinces Plato to lend him the gun, from which he removes the round of bullets, and come outside to turn himself in. When Plato steps out of the observatory, he becomes agitated again at the sight of the police and attempts to run, exposing his gun. He is fatally shot by the police. Jim, devastated by this loss, is comforted by his father who promises to be stronger for his son.

     To my knowledge this melodramatic film has no central theme or lesson. It touches on many problems faced by normal families and teens of the era without focusing on a particular one. It’s name fits. Just like Jim this movie challenges the norm.