1955 teen drama
Rating: 16/20 (Jen: fell asleep; Dylan: 4/20; Emma: 8/20)
Plot: A troubled teen tries to adjust to yet-another new home where he makes a few friends and a few more enemies. It’s a strange land where people say things like “I’ll bet you’re a yo-yo” and engage in the gayest knife fights you’re likely to ever see. After tragedy ruins everybody’s fun at a chickie run, the titular rebel runs off with Natalie Wood and a mentally-unstable kid to wait for the next big movie tragedy.
With the Dennis Hopper bonus point. This is Hopper’s first movie role, and it’s also, I believe, the first movie that any of my daughters saw with Dennis Hopper. Wait a second. Did they watch Super Mario Brothers with me? Maybe they saw him as King Koopa, one of the roles that probably helped him die with pride. And what else does Super Mario Brothers have to do with Rebel without a Cause? Well, my father claims that this movie changed teenagers back in the mid-50’s, and he should know since he was around. I was around for Super Mario Brothers, and that was a movie that confused teenagers. And James Dean wears a jacket that’s red, the same color that Mario sports.
But I digress. This is a movie that is really easy to like although you could make the argument that it isn’t any good at all. And you could definitely make the argument that James Dean couldn’t act. He overdoes nearly everything in this, and he’s obviously stolen a lot of his facial expressions from James Franco and his methods from none other than Tommy Wiseau. Seriously, just check out how Dean rips off Wiseau with the big “You’re tearing me apart!” moment during an early scene at the police station. But how about that emotional range? He goes from “I got the bullets!” to “Hey, jerk-pot, what did you do that for?” to laughing about mismatched socks like a guy who has actually felt human emotion, and it’s a beautiful thing. But Dean’s a Hoosier, so you cut him slack, and there’s just something electric about him, probably because he’s really beautiful. He’s got a quiet energy in this, and he’s really good with props. And that wink he gives Natalie Wood after he drops her off following the chickie run, a scene where nobody acts like a normal person would. Or that shot of him lying on a couch while his mom comes down the stairs. Not to mention that there’s a shot where his crotch actually appears to be on fire. He also gets a great kiss although I’m pretty sure something had been applied to his lips during that scene. Or maybe he just has beautiful lips. I’m a staunch heterosexual man, but I’ll admit I was watching his lips more than Natalie Wood during that scene. I’ve seen my fair share of dated movies, and although the dated dialogue (Jen poked fun before dozing off) and style places this firmly in one decade and one decade alone, there’s a whole bunch of weirdness that makes this really interesting to me. Sal Mineo’s character seems to have a myriad of mental afflictions. The “Drown ’em like puppies!” line, for example. The “Hey, I’m a crab” kid or the “Down there! Down there is Buzz!” kid, guys who may have been the same exact kid for all I know. And maybe that’s the same kid who had a picture of a guy in his locker. Is that the same kid, too? I know it’s a different kid–an older one–than the guy who played Beau, Natalie Wood’s brother, really poorly. He’s Jimmy Baird, and even though he wasn’t a Hoosier, I’m giving him a pass on this one because he got to say “puss” in a 1950’s movie and become the rival of all his acting peers. This is definitely the type of film where a red jacket can throw you off your game and cause you to forget what is normal or abnormal behavior. And drive you completely insane wondering why there’s a diving board on the shallow end of the pool. Right to the what-the-hell “He was always cold” line, this makes you wonder if it’s really meant to be taken seriously. Or this dialogue gem which I think is probably supposed to be funny:
“You ever been in a chickie run?”
“Yeah, it’s all I ever do.”
Funny? I couldn’t tell because Dean didn’t seem sure how he was supposed to deliver the line. Regardless of the intentions, this still tackled a serious topic in the 1950s, and it wasn’t cartoonish teen violence. No, this is really a movie all about what it means to be a man, a movie about masculinity. Look at the dads in this movie. Dean’s is feminized, Plato’s lying about his father being a hero in the China Sea or a “big wheel” in New York, and we’re told that “a man’s got to be gentle and sweet.” Then, the faux-domestication in the abandoned mansion, a scene that somehow manages to be comic, bittersweet, and a little haunting all at once. It all helps elevate this movie to something closer to special. This movie has always been important as the one Dean made before his death–an idea he obviously stole from Heath Ledger–but there’s enough going on to make it worth watching aside from all that.
One weird thing that nobody in my family agreed was weird: a camera movement during a conversation when James Dean starts walking up the stairs. It’s a tilt, and I can’t recall seeing anything like it. Everybody else said I was making a big deal about nothing though.