Force Fed Films: Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

The movie Puneet made me watch today was James Dean's Rebel Without A Cause. I've never seen a James Dean movie as far as I know, but it makes sense as he wasn't in very many due to his unfortunate early demise. I wasn't sure what to expect from this film. Is it famous just because it was one of his few films, or because it was actually good? I remember hearing that he had a massive amount of fans, but I think that was basically because he was one of those "heart throb" guys back in the day. Kinda like the Beatles I think, but on a smaller scale. Anyways, you'll find my thoughts after the jump.


Jim Stark (James Dean) is a young man with a family that doesn't understand him. He's so frustrated with the way his father will never stand up for himself that he lashes out on the world by getting drunk and getting in fights, especially if someone calls him "chicken". Because of this, his family keeps moving from city to city after he gets in trouble. This time may be different, however, when he makes an early friend in John "Plato" Crawford (Sal Mineo) and sees something special in neighbourhood girl Judy (Natalie Wood). Too bad the crowd she hangs out with is a bunch of knife fighting punks who call him a chicken!

Jim befriends Plato when no one else will

While I would never say this was a bad movie, it was pretty good, it just had a really hard time keeping my attention. Besides the core three, most of the actors were pretty cheesy in that false feeling way most really old movies can be. All the characters were caricatures instead of feeling like real people. I also felt it kinda boring that the majority of the cast were just teenagers. The film seemed to be off to a good start with a police officer offering to be around for Jim whenever he needed to talk, but that never really went anywhere after that.

Jim goes to a car meet with all the local teens to take part in a game of chicken

I think the problem with this movie for me, is that I just couldn't sympathize with the characters. They talk about running away from home and their parents are just nothing like my own. In Jim's family, his parent's roles are almost completely reversed, which causes all of his confusion. His dad is a real wimp. Judy's family is the traditional family of the 50s, which is quite unlike most families today I would think. Lastly Plato's family has left him. They didn't care about him, and since they're rich, they've gone on extended vacation and leave him in the care of the house nanny and send him money in the mail. None of these situations spoke to me, so it was really hard to put myself in any of their places to understand them. Also, I was never challenged to a game of chicken where we drove cars towards an ocean-side cliff.

Jim and Judy

Like I said, the movie wasn't bad, I just had a hard time connecting with it. The knife fight and the car race were exciting, but there wasn't really much else going on. The ending was kind of interesting, but similar to North By Northwest, sometimes the characters just didn't seem to make rational decisions and they acted in strange ways. It's really hard to put my finger on why I didn't really enjoy the film, as it seems to have all the pieces to make an entertaining movie. Maybe I was just expecting too much from it in the end, but beyond a historical curiosity about James Dean, I don't see much reason why this film is as famous as it is.