Director Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" was an influential picture for young adults circa 1955, and it still looks good today, what with cigarette-smoking high school misfit James Dean sauntering through in a white tee-shirt and blue jeans, topped with an iconic red windbreaker. However, the picture itself is a melodramatic wallow, something more for moony-eyed 12 or 13-year-olds to embrace rather than audiences over 21. Dean's Jim Stark wrestles with an overwrought mother and a spineless father while trying to fit in with the kids at his new school in Los Angeles; in the popular clique, pretty Natalie Wood longs for a little danger in her life (she has parent-problems, too, including a father who disdains affection). Ray wades through the romantic boy-girl stuff, though he gets riveting moments from Dean, particularly in his scenes with jellyfish-dad Jim Backus. The j.d. Stuff (knife fights, chicken races, etc.) may have been fresh at the time but now seems rote, while Sal Mineo's character of a Stark-smitten juvenile with absentee folks is a writer's conceit (his gooey, over-the-top sincerity borders on caricature). Dean is the whole picture, really; was Ray, who also originated the story later adapted by Irving Shulman and written by Stewart Stern, really attuned to these directionless young people or just playing things by ear? There's so much movie-magazine gloss sticking to the film's surface, it's difficult to tell. Three Oscar nominations, including Best Motion Picture Story for Ray, and for Mineo and Wood in the supporting categories. **1/2 from ****
Review of Rebel Without a Cause
