Rebel Without a Cause - 2 Disc Special Edition
"James Dean shouts these words in an anguished howl that seems to owe more to acting class than to his character, the rebellious and causeless Jim Stark in "Rebel Without a Cause." Because he died in a car crash a month before the movie opened in 1955, the performance took on an eerie kind of fame: It was the posthumous complaint of an actor widely expected to have a long and famous career. Only "East of Eden" (1954) was released while Dean was alive; "Giant," his last film, came out in 1956. And then the legend took over." "The film has not aged well, and Dean's performance seems more like marked-down Brando than the birth of an important talent. But "Rebel Without a Cause" was enormously influential at the time, a milestone in the creation of new idea about young people. Marlon Brando as a surly motorcycle gang leader in "The Wild One" (1953), James Dean in 1955, and the emergence of Elvis Presley in 1956: These three role models decisively altered the way young men could be seen in popular culture. They could be more feminine, sexier, more confused, more ambiguous." "Because of the way weirdness seems to bubble just beneath the surface of the melodramatic plot, because of the oddness of Dean's mannered acting and Mineo's narcissistic self-pity, because of the cluelessness of the hero's father, because of all of these apparent flaws, "Rebel Without a Cause" has a greater interest than if it had been tidier and more sensible. You can sense an energy trying to break through, emotions unexamined but urgent." "Like its hero, "Rebel Without a Cause" desperately wants to say something and doesn't know what it is. If it did know, it would lose its fascination. More perhaps than it realized, it is a subversive document of its time." ---- Roger Ebert DVD 2-Disc Set
Curator's Comments: Read Roger Ebert's essay on this DVD Classic. Director: Nicholas Ray Country: U.S.A.
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