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James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Corey Allen ...( see more  see more... ) , Dennis Hopper

A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.

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87% liked it

50,340 ratings

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95% liked it

41 critics

PG-13, 1 hr. 51 min.

Directed by: Nicholas Ray

Release Date: October 27, 1955

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DVD Release Date: January 22, 2002

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Flixster Reviews (3,191)

  • hypathio7
    September 29, 2009
    hypathio7
    He has trouble fitting in. Does that make him a rebel? In today's culture that just makes him an outcast. This movie wasn't at all as good as I thought it would be from James Dean's reputation of coolness. I saw this picture last of the three major movies he appeared in befor...( read more)e his death. I didn't like his agonized, constantly plagued by inner torment style of acting. Maybe I've been clueless all this time about why James Dean is really such an icon. Maybe growing up in the conservative environment that I did led me to envision the legacy of Dean, with his leather jacket and comb always handy, as not much different than Fonzie on Happy Days. I realize since I've seen his brief filmography of movies that this is not what he represents at all. He tried to copy Brando who told him once that he needed to seek psychiatric help. I'm going to be stereotypical here, but it seems obvious to me that James Dean was a closeted gay or bi-sexual youth. Maybe it is just his instinctual acting in this role particularly where he seems equally smitten with Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. But is this his real legacy? Is he beloved and remembered by a certain part of the population and avoided by another part because of this part of him? Or is it simply because of his passionate, wild partying, risky, and cool life?
  • kenstachnik
    April 20, 2009
    kenstachnik
    Nicholas Ray is cinema!
  • groaningbitch
    February 17, 2009
    groaningbitch
    "rebel without a cause" is the iconic and probably most cliched classic of james dean in his cooperation with director nicholas ray who has maneuvered himself in the genre of juvenile delinquency since the 40s with flicks like "they live by night", "knock on any door" and "on the...( read more) dangerous ground", tackling astray adolescents under a sympathetic light with lines like "live fast, die yong, have a beautiful corpse." that notion happens to reflect dean's transient grasp of life. but viewing rebel in a comtemporary light, it might seem dated and laughably whining since nowaday youth tend to be too ferocious to give a damn on their sappy parents. rebel's value lies more upon the cult perspect of counterculture than the cinematic breakthru except james dean's eccentric egoist method of acting.

    basically rebel is about a troubled teenager named jim whose family movies around a lot just to dissolve his anti-social misfit tendency, but it fails becuz the boy's best wish is just to have his dad rise up against his domineering mother like a man with backbone. also he has a crush upon the neighbor gal(natalie wood) who is the girlfriend of a rascal, so to impress the gal, he joins the daring game of the juvenile mob since he cannot stand to be called as a "chicken". so mob-leader died of accident, so hoodlums are after jim everywhere while his one friend plato who seems to have in-closet crush on jim guns down several men within the bully crowd.

    rebel has three major fundamental scopes:

    firstly it revolutionalizes the facet of manhood by delineating young males of more fragile temperament as if it's saying you could demonstrate your vulnerability but still remain as a man. such as plato hangs alan ladd's picture in the closet, trying to imitate ladd's hairstyle to appear manlier even in vain. and its revolt against paternality is fiercely conspicuous, jim's annoyed with his dad wearing an apron to clean the leftover on the floor, scolding his dad, pushing him down to fistfight dad. but he's even more resentful to his mother who castrates his reverence for dad. frequently his only wish is just to see his father tells his mother to shut up! a misogynist to some degree, jim shows his great comtempt for this gender reversal by kicking thru his mother's portrait before he escapes home again. james dean's notion of manhood here is like you've gotta strut around to be a man of your own without your father as the role model, but his ambivalence would be his actual wish is primitively conventional, far from rebellious: he just wants his dad to be phallic so he could have a father image to look up to.

    secondly, the topic of juvenile deliquency is officially heated up as trendy by the success of rebel, and also the kids of 50s. the decade of economical surplus, had enough pocket money from their parents to attend movies, so this genre's become a money-sucker ever since rebel. it furthers the gap btween adulthood and puberty as dichotomy with hostility against each other with utterance like you grown-ups don't understand us. juveniles've become more hegemonic to draw the mass attention along with the popularity of beat literature and james dean. juveniles started to develop their own way of coolness to discriminate adults just like adults do juveniles. but ray's interpretation would be their rebellion is caused by the loss of faith and intimacy with their parents. to girl, father no longer kisses and allows the daughter to sit on his lap in puberty, so she's perplexed and emotionally deserted. for boy, he has troubles reconciling his identification of manhood since father's effeminated by mother. and the causes presented by ray are obviously dated, only existed in 50s. irrevocably corny.

    during this period of beat counterculture, france was having camus and sartre's existentialism to elucidate their emptiness while america was having a beat fever with teenagers expressing their existential void in an abitrary and also illiterate way by saying "who cares?!" meanwhile, it creates the new mode of high-school romane, girls cease their clark-gable-adoration(electra complex) by craving the sweet tenderness from the mushy "it" boys like james dean instead of the steel-willed fatherly masculinity in old phallic icons like bogie and gable. male icons since then have become more and more boyish.

    thirdly, rebel thoroughly alternates the outlook of male fashion as well. the red jacket, white t shirt and blue jeans had been the stylish fashion milestone copied by many with fanatic hommage to james dean who inspires the fad of leisure wear when men used to suits and fedora to be considered dignified, along with the vagabond fascination of jack kerouac's "on the road" to enocurage youth to be emancipated...meanwhile brando demonstrates how sexy he could be in proteriat sweaty t-shirt in "streetcar named desire", also with leather-jacket in "the wild one" consequently. the course of gentility in male costumes has began to be neutral then fade into the field for the antiquated ever since.

    additionally, rebel is also one of the first examples in popular movies to have homosexual character as one of the lead protagonists except hitchcock's "the rope" which doesn't sell well then. the role plato has a crush on dean, he orders a song on the radio to bare his fascination, but dean's reaction is to shut it off at once but make love to natalie wood. it's more of a reluctance than a homophobic repulsion since dean generously gives away his red jacket to keep plato warm in the end as solace for his covet for dean, and plato even remarks "could i keep it?" then he wears dean's red jacket and demises in the bullet shots.

    the macabre part would be the trio pretend to act like grown-ups to form a crippled lullaby in a desolate mansion, a twisted poetic compensation to the lack of norm in their life. it is rumored that the whole cast of rebel died young, mystically followed by dean's death (or suicide?)...but they neglect that dennis hopper(one of the hoodlums who bully plato) still lives and prospers as one of the main popular character actors.

    "rebel without a cause" is staled with banality since its formuli have been barrowed by great many movies with stronger dosage of gory violence, debauched promiscuity and spicy endings without redemption. so what's left to give you any shock effect of carthesis? not a bit.
  • johnd62
    September 26, 2008
    johnd62
    Never got it really, yes its one of the first teen films and yes it is important in defining the feelings of a generation. However you have to be honest with your self had it not been for the genius of James Dean would anyone remember this film? Yes Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo are...( read more) great too but from start to finish this is James Dean movie and the reason for seeing Rebel Without A Cause.
  • 76Majikat
    September 10, 2008
    76Majikat
    It took a me a little while into the film to see it?s big appeal and it did get progressively better. Admittedly I wasn?t completely bowled over by it, but it certainly had a certain attraction and it?s one the teens must have loved at the time of it?s release.

    I did manage ...( read more)to watch the whole film before I realized the leading lady was Natalie Wood, so I guess that proves, she didn?t really stand out too much to me.
  • Ivan6655321
    January 30, 2010
    Ivan6655321
    This is the only James Dean film (out of his only 3) where he haven't got an Oscar nomination, but it is surely the performance and charisma that skyrocketed him to popular culture. The story and characters, if watched today, will surely bear resemblance to many films made contem...( read more)porarily tackling teenage rebellion and alienation. "Rebel Without a Cause" is centered mainly on three teenagers just looking for proper care and understanding from their parents, but viewed as Juvenile delinquents by society. All 3 of them acts as if they are old enough to do things, but as mirrored by their fantasy in the decaying mansion, they were merely just kids trying to sense some light in an unforgiving world. After James Dean's untimely death, "Rebel Without a Cause" was heralded as a seminal performance by a young, gifted actor. But when viewed today, one will also sense an uncanny creepiness surrounding the film, as the three main stars' lives all ended in ultimate tragedy. In the film "Dragon: The Bruce Lee story", Bruce Lee (played by Jason Scott Lee), asked someone excitedly in a cargo vessel about America(which he unconsciously have no idea at first that he was born there), then shows a James Dean poster to the stranger. After a mere 15 years of Lee's life since his step to the land of dreams, he was treading the same path James Dean has gone through: fame and untimely death.
  • Yelverton
    January 20, 2010
    Yelverton
    A highly charged film. This one will definitely mess with your emotions.
  • mystardustc
    January 17, 2010
    mystardustc
    James Dean was great. To bad he died so young. I don't think another person at that time even the super overrated Brando would have ever thought to do Jim Stark's character like that. He took movie acting and thrusted it about 40 years ahead of time IMO. May seem cheesy now but w...( read more)atch a teen movie, any of them that came out before this one did and you will see what I am saying.
  • calumprice1
    January 8, 2010
    calumprice1
    James Dean is an unbelievable actor. Basically his whole career consists of only three movies he acted in just right before his tragic death. Yet still, almost 50 years later people recognize his name and face. He's an icon of the 1950's and in the same line with Marilyn Monroe o...( read more)r Elvis Presley. That's simply miraculous, movie history knows no other example of anything like it. I personally consider Jimmy as one of my favorite actors too. Of course he is a sensational talent and maybe it's partly because he really had only three big performances so no one ever saw him actually doing something wrong, choosing a bad role or whatever. I personally think that James Dean would have been nearly as big if "Rebel without a cause" was his only movie. His devoted, stylish and touching larger-than-life performance as Jim Stark is just startling experience to watch. Legendary "Rebel without a cause" is a timeless drama and in many ways it's far from being old fashioned. It's moving, beautiful and incredibly impressive, the best movie of its decade and one of the best movies ever made. Period. 10/10.
  • louara
    December 13, 2009
    louara
    This is my FAVORITE movie ! James dean rocks!

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Critic Reviews

January 20, 2006
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

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. full review

View more Rebel Without a Cause reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

  • lordbluerouge
    January 2, 2007
    lordbluerouge
    "What would he know about, 'man alone'?"- Plato,

    Thought this was a powerful line that accurately describes the anxiety and the confusion of the film.
  • shortcartoonist
    August 21, 2006
    shortcartoonist
    "You're tearing me apart!", what a great movie.
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Rebel Without a Cause Trivia

  • What is the colour of the iconic jacket worn by James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause?  Answer »
  • SAME NAME: Jason Biggs in American Pie James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause Leonardo DiCaprio in The Basketball Diaries Sean Penn in We're No Angels John C. Reilly in Magnolia  Answer »
  • Who takes the lead in the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause?  Answer »
  • Name the film being advertised... "He was new on the block, the pretty girl belonged to the leader of the gang and the leader of the gang called him 'chicken' to his face..."  Answer »
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