Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Directed by Nicholas Ray. Starring James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran, Edward Platt, Corey Allen, Rochelle Hudson, William Hopper, Virginia Brissac, Frank Mazzola, Dennis Hopper, Jack Grinnage.

Seminal youth alienation film depicting teenagers who feel isolated and betrayed, unable to communicate with their parents or peers, too maladjusted to find appropriate venues for their defiance. As with all of the era’s juvenile delinquent pictures, it has not aged especially well, but succeeds at depicting an impotent malaise creeping through the social structure and does more with suggestions and undertones than the film’s more explicit brands of melodrama intended to ignite the screen. The young actors do respectable work, and although his mannerisms are more clearly indebted to Marlon Brando here than in any of his other performances, Dean’s shifty, internally expressive traits were never better suited for a role than here. Ray’s slick direction may be at odds with the coarse and emotionally raw nature of the material, but the beauty of the Cinemascope images is easy on the eyes and validly presents a vibrant surface sheen underneath which all the turmoil can churn. Script by Irving Shulman from a screen story by Ray; title was borrowed from psychiatrist Robert M. Lindner’s book, “Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath,” but is otherwise unrelated.

80/100