‘You’re tearing me apart…’
The problem with teenagers is that as soon as you yourself stop being one they all become incredibly annoying. As a consequence of this, if you encounter something within popular culture that is meant for adolescents as an adult, it becomes very difficult to relate to that thing. I can’t imagine many people in their 30s and 40s finding much to enjoy in Catcher in the Rye or the American Pie franchise. And so it is with Rebel Without a Cause, the ultimate symbol of teenage rebellion…
Despite being incredibly good looking, healthy and the product of a loving, caring family, Jim Stark (James Dean) is angry. This anger manifests itself in knife fights, sulking and lots of references to chickens. Similarly disillusioned are Plato (Sal Mineo) and Judy (Natalie Wood) who at least have a reason for their discontent (dead parents and slut shaming respectively).
Nicholas Ray’s iconic film starts off well with Dean a commanding presence and his fish-out-of-water character arc remaining reasonably compelling. Every archetype that would go on to define movies for and about teenagers are present and correct. The jocks. The bullies. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s all here. And for the first 45 minutes or so, Rebel Without a Cause is deserving of the hype. The three main players are all varying degrees of excellent, with Natalie Wood threatening to steal the show while Sal Mineo is happy to play second fiddle, but the film kinda falls apart in the third act, when everything becomes shrouded in darkness, both literally and metaphorically. Even for a film about teenagers, the film’s conclusion is wildly melodramatic and over-the-top, to the point where I had stopped caring about any of the characters long before the final denouement. Having said that, we are talking about a film released in 1955 here, it shouldn’t be judged too harshly, I suppose.
Rebel Without a Cause is a film utterly defined by its co-stars, and while both James Dean and Natalie Wood deliver career defining performances, if you were to take them out of this picture, you wouldn’t have much leftover. A flawed triumph.