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Summary: Defining Film of the Fifties
Review: This is one of those films that has achieved legendary status that everyone should see. Starring Fifties film icon James Dean, it tells the story of several young people (Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, etc) who don't fit into their families or what society considers acceptable behaviour. It was one of the first films to deal with alienated youth, and although elements of it are dated and very much a part of Fifties culture, it still maintains its power and appeal. Of course, a great deal of that power and appeal comes from Dean's most famous and defining performance. He brings so much raw energy and emotion to his character, and he has a screen presence that is so unique you can understand why he continues to be such a larger than life figure in film, even with only three starring roles to his credit. Wood and Mineo also contribute memorable performances, but it really is Dean's show. Rarely have actor and role been so closely matched and inexorably linked. It's the stuff of legends.
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Summary: Teenage Soul
Review: His performance may have been hotter in East of Eden, but here James Dean defines the meaning of cool for generations of bewildered teenagers. Never mind the sops to convention that compromise the film's ultimate force. Instead it's there on screen, in the Dean persona, the hesitant gesture, the understanding smile, and a sensitivity that at times becomes achingly, painfully real. Dean didn't play Jim Stark, he was Jim Stark. How fortunate that this avatar of teenage angst was paired with director Nicholas Ray, the patron saint of 50's youth. Together they lift the material to classic heights, such that a bust of Dean now appears at Griffith Observatory (the site of the knife fight) in Los Angeles. Times may have changed, and the film may have dated, but the central performance remains trans-generational, as Dean taps into a universal core. (For the sociologically curious wishing to measure the country's thirty-year loss of innocence, compare this film with the youth-based 1987 film River's Edge. The parallels and contrasts are revealing.)
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Summary: let down
Review: What a let down, after hearing so much about this movie. It is so intellectually contrived, with Sal Mineo being named "Plato" and the planeterium metaphysics. It's cheap existentialism. And Dean has charisma, but should learn not to lurch about so much in his movements, nor keep his face so busy with contstant moving of his eyes and eyebrows. Any fan of John Mellencamp should observed James Dean's line on the stairs in the mansion, where he says to Mineo, "Well, then there..." In Mellencamp's song JACK AND DIANE, that's the line Mellencamp sings (in a perfect Dean impression): "And he did his best James Dean, `Well, then there Diane, we ought, run off to the city...'"
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Summary: Outstanding vista on modern youth
Review: A cult film with James Dean about the youth of his time, the fifties. The first element is the total severance of those young people from reality, from any balance and happiness, due to the disrupted families they live in One is living in a family where the father is totally dominated by a neurotic mother who looks for peace and accuses her son to be the cause of her troubles. Hence she is constantly forcing her family to move on, to go away from one place to the other as soon as the son has a problem somewhere, and he has a problem only to attract the attention of his father and to make him realize that he must stand firm for his own sake and for his son's sake, firm in front of his wife of course. The second is a child abandoned by both his father and his mother and left behind in the care of a black servant and nurse who does not have the authority and of course the blood connection with him that could lead to some balance and real parental love. So this young man does all kinds of pranks to make his parents come back and not just send him checks. The third one is a girl and she has the same problem in her family. The father is too strict and uninterested in her anymore because she has grown and he has decided that he has to keep his distances from her and yet he keeps her on kind of a leash. The mother in this case submits to this situation. The first young man is new in the town and in the high school, the « university down town ». This problem is very well explored in its consequences. At once the new boy is tested by the band of bullies of the school, to which the girl is connected. They downtread him, attack his car, look down upon him and provoke him into a challenge. The challenge ends badly for one of the bullies who dies of his own dumbness and stubbornness. This sends the others on the war path and on a vengeance trail. The outcome is dramatic for the second boy of the three young teenagers of the beginning, though the other two come together after the first one tries to save the situation by bringing the second one out of his hiding place. We can note the police in this situation is not up to the situation and makes an enormous mistake which means death. This film is still very effective. In the new generation of young people today, we still have the problem of disrupted families, at en even higher level, and we have the absence of both a positive orientation towards positive social goals due to the lengthening of education, and a stimulating and responsible position in life due to the school system that suspends any kind of socially-positive outlook and perspective. The problem of bullies is still the same and has gotten even worse (school violence is here to prove how bullies push some weaker members of the school community into completely irresponsible and criminal reactions to assert their value and worth, in the worst possible way). The only thing we must say is that these young people are not self-destructive as some would like us to think : they are destroyed by a general situation that deprives them of any valorisation, of any possibility to be productive and creative, useful in a word in and to society. They are kept in some in-between limbos that lead to neurosis and psychosis with a strong paranoid tendency leading to suicide and aggressivity. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
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Summary: A Classic Tale of Teenage Rebellion
Review: James Dean is truly one of, if not the greatest actors of all time. His onscreen presence captivated me. And he really shines in "Rebel Without A Cause." I found myself actually crying at some of the scenes as if I felt exactly what James Dean's character Jim Stark was feeling. Sal Mineo, Plato gives a magnificent performance as well. His mother is always away and his father left when he was little and he desperately wants a father and he finds that type of father figure in Jim Stark and a mother figure in Natalie Wood's character Judy who is also exceptional. Rebel Without a Cause is a classic story of teenagers desperately trying to identify and also be loved by their parents.
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Summary: loved it
Review: the first time i saw this movie i was 8 years old sitting on my couch in indiana. My father told me that james dean was the greatest actor to ever come out of indiana and when i saw just how good he really was i couldn't argue he made my laugh and then he brought a tear to my eye if you want to show your young one who a great actor was give them a copy of this video and they'll know hope you like my little review thanks for listening
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Summary: Good History Lesson . . .
Review: for younger viewers -- teenagers especially. The film does fairly accurately depict the era of the '50s. The leather jackets, the cars, etc. But teenagers haven't changed that much, they just know a little bit more. This is a well-made film which depicts the "generation gap" which has and will exist between parents and their children. And it's sad to note that the three major characters all died early deaths -- Dean in a car wreck, Mineo was stabbed to death, and, of course, Natalie drowned in a tragic accident.
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Summary: Quintessential punk rebel
Review: This is a great movie. James Dean plays the quintessential teenage punk rebel. He is the sensitive soul misunderstood by parents and the society that surrounds him. His efforts to fit in with other students fail and this leads to problems. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo turn in realistic portrayals of teenagers without a cause. This film shows a darker side of the '50s than the vision espoused by the Happy Days sitcom. These kids are feeling a lot of alienation and angst. This is Seattle grunge 40 years before Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain. The pain they feel is very real. The screenplay by Stewart Stern reveals great sympathy towards these kids. They are good kids who have gone bad because they don't fit in. People always tell you that the high school years are the best years of your life. That isn't true for all kids, however, as this film poignantly illustrates. It is heartbreaking but powerful. It is vintage James Dean and becomes more wrenching due to Dean's early death. One can only guess how good his career would have been if he hadn't died so soon.
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Summary: The portrait of an age!
Review: This is clearly a film about the rebeliousness of young adulthood, greatly portrayed by James Dean, Natalie Wood and the rest of the cast. It has the capacity to touch every viewer and it's truer today than ever!
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Summary: Rebel oversight
Review: Although, The dvd version, gives more movie for your money through widesreen, Theres not much to the so called theatrical trailer, most of the attention goes to Dean & Wood, they only mention Sal Mineo as an after thought. Eventhough Dean was the lead actor, the dvd cover picture should have included all three rebels Dean,Wood,Mineo
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