1955: Rebel Without A Cause

Rebel Without A Cause (Ray, 1955) 7/10

Why do we do this? (Jim Stark)
You gotta do something. Don't you? (Buzz Gunderson)

On the surface, one had reason to be optimistic in mid-1950's America. The economy servicing post-war Europe was booming, the post-Stalinist thaw was stabilizing world affairs and with the emergence of credit, ordinary Americans were able to purchase goods previously unavailable to them.

Within this era the teenager was born: distinguished through products such as records and clothes tailor made for the applicable pre-eighteen age bracket. And with the increased affluence of their parents and the opportunity to acquire jobs in America's burgeoning tertiary industries, teenagers began to not only spend money, but also become an important socio-political influence in American pop culture.

Simmering under the surface of this prosperous society was a seething discontent among young adults. In post-war Europe, this discontent often emerged about the morality of their parents generation, but in the United States this resentment grew from a society flooded with crass materialism. Parents who had fought overseas, returned home to families they hardly knew. In response to their absence, children were lavished with material goods to compensate for the absence of parents who worked in the city, while their kids grew up in safe, yet dull and isolated suburbs.

This combination of acerbity and boredom produced a quiet undercurrent of bitterness demonstrated in acts of undisciplined behaviour such as vandalism, gang membership, fighting and so forth. In 1954 producer Stanley Kramer took America's looming obsession with juvenile delinquency to extremes with the release of his stolid and ridiculous film directed by Lazlo Benedek entitled The Wild One: a film focusing on a teenage biker gang led by Marlon Brando that terrorizes a quaint California hamlet.

A year later director Nicholas Ray, a veteran of hardboiled socially-conscious Noirs at RKO, decided to enter the fray with his film about teenage deliquents. But unlike Bendek, Ray rejected the possibility of creating yet another juvenile exploitation film. Instead Ray attempted to senstively investigate the reasons as to why teenagers rebel and thus his film is one of the first major indictments of America's unspoken middle-class malaise.

Produced by Warner Brothers, the same year that MGM would release Richard Brooks' similarly themed Blackboard Jungle, Ray's film abandons much of the moralistic tendencies of Brooks' film and instead infuses Rebel Without A Cause with a degree of sympathy toward his anti-heroes: Jim Stark (James Dean), Judy (Nathalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo). Released only a month after his tragic death, the film would elevate aspiring Method actor James Dean into a cult icon with evidently more swagger than his character possesses in Ray's film.

Beginning at a local police station, the film immediately informs the audience of the problematic lives of its three principal anti-heroes as Jim is detained for drunkeness, Plato is detained for shooting puppies and Judy is questioned for running away from home. As Ray quickly demonstrates the cause for much of the kids' problems lie in their broken and divided homes. The theme of parental alienation is strongly developed by Ray throughout the film: Plato's parents are divorced with his mother continually leaving home to visit a sister in Chicago and leaving her son with a housekeeper; Judy's father is frightened by his daughter's sexuality in a hinted incestuous relationship; Jim's problems perturb his middle-class parents so much that they repeatedly move to a new town to leave the past behind. Furthermore his scolding mother and emasculated father lack a firm stream of communication with their son and each other on how to discipline him.

This sense of alienation causes the teenagers to join substitute families. Judy enters into a cordial relationship with a gang of knife-wielding hoodlums led by Buzz Gunderson (Corey Allen) and Jim is later persuaded to participate in their "chickie run." Only through this fatal hazing ritual will Jim be granted social acceptance in a community and thus the affection he is lacking at home. For Plato's his sense of familial isolation is far more delicate. Without any parents at home, he aims to have Jim and Judy become his new family. Proclaiming to Jim that he wishes his friend was his father, the socially awkward loner Plato even procures an abandoned mansion in the Hollywood Hills for them to "play house."

Home is a place where the teenager's sense of confusion is heightened by their aloof parents. For Jim in particular, his father's emasculated role in the family structure angers and frustrates him. Interestingly while his father wears an apron, Jim appears to be more bothered by his father's decision to clean and cook for his mother, while she is away. Thus, it can be argued that given Jim's precarious social relationships that his father's lack of conformity to orthodox gender roles threatens not only his father's sexuality, but also Jim's heightened ability to procure friends. Given his hot temper when provoked and his mother's emphasis on preserving social reputations, perhaps Jim has resorted to violence not as a method of rebellious interaction, but in order to defend his father's respectability and standing the community.

The spectre of sexuality is also firmly addressed in Rebel Without A Cause. Within the film, Ray subtly addresses unspoken and secret acts of culturally unorthodox sexual behaviour within 1950's America. The unwillingness of Judy's father to show his teenage daughter public affection is noted in his violent slap when she attempts to kiss him. Combined with her confused opinions of him, there are possibilities that hint at an incestous relationship: a fact which bothered Production Code officials during censorship proceedings.

With her pouty red lipsticked mouth, Wood's Judy represents an antithetical response to codes of teenage sexuality. Her decision to hang around "bad boys" like Buzz provokes the possibility that she engages in some type of secret sexual relationship with him in order to garner the affection absent in her own life. Furthermore, her rendez-vous in the abandoned home with Jim hints at the possibility of a secret sexual affair between them whist Plato sleeps outside.

Plato's sexuality is also flamboyantly analyzed by Ray. Throughout Rebel Without A Cause, Plato is posited as a closeted homosexual. The first time he witnesses Jim after the police station is through a locker mirror, while combing his hair. Plato's charmed response and his picture of a matinee idol singer in the locker begin Ray's hints at Plato's homosexual crush on Jim. Lying to others about his non-existent friendship with Jim, Plato departs from Jim's home in a tense manner: desiring a kiss from Jim's lips, but only garnering his address for future reference.

The motif of the jacket becomes crucial with Plato. When a drunken Jim offers him the jacket at the police station, Plato refuses. But afterwards, this offering becomes viewed as a sexual enticement and thus when Plato later asks for the jacket and Jim obliges the former garners not only satisifcation from his cemented friendship, but also the possibility of a deepening intimacy between one another. Yet, such a friendship is falted by the tragedy which enfolds in Rebel Without A Cause that alters the character's earlier perceptions of death.

Consistently in Rebel Without A Cause the central characters respond to death in philosophical language. Perhaps because of the fear of nuclear implosion in the Cold War era, the teenagers are psychologically aware of death's presence at all times. When Judy famously asks Jim if he lives at a certain house, he responds "Who lives?" Through acts such as the chicken run, the film's characters are regularly toying with death. Suicide, hangings and the destruction of the universe are frequently alluded to throughout Rebel Without A Cause. During a school field trip to a local planetarium, the end of the universe alarms some students, but amazes others. There is an atmosphere of finality in Rebel Without A Cause that is consistently questioned, admired and dissected by characters who often view death as a far better substitute to the troubled and alienated lives they lead.

In Rebel Without A Cause the concept of rebellion is deconstructed by director Nicholas Ray. While the families of the film's troubled youths see no cause for rebellion within a prosperous and safe society, the director's report is through a quiet denunciation of the actual causes of teenage outbursts: the sense of isolation and frustration from society, family and community in return for extended material privileges. Although the actions and responses shown in Rebel Without A Cause are dated, the finely-tuned psychology and sensitive rendering Ray offers in his excellent and colourful Cinemascope still persists. The career-shaping performances allotted by Dean, Mineo and Wood are exacting in their melodramatic flavour in a film noted for its circumspect and cognizant approach toward teenage angst.

* Rebel Without A Cause is available through Warner Home Video

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque