Rebel Without A Cause DVD

 The 50th Anniversary for this American classic.
"The Wild One" (1954), starring Marlon Brando had alerted a mass audience about the dual dangers of permissiveness and repression in relating to the young people of the 1950s. Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) extended the problem to include the comfortable urban middle class and suggested that the problem was rooted in some vaguely awesome shift in the universe. James Dean plays the role of Jim Stark, the adolescent son of a weak father and domineering mother. He has bouts of heavy drinking and runs afoul of the police. He soon develops an affection for classmate Judy (Natalie Wood) and a friendship of another problematic youth Plato (Sal Mineo). Underneath is a rather straightforward story of juvenile delinquency but "Rebel Without a Cause" has a raw power-primarily because, like Marlon Brando in "The Wild One", star and role coalesced in such a way that audiences became conscious of a new narrowing of the gap between art and life. Thus a type-rather than a star-is born. James Dean's performance as the confused adolescent who is the repository of family trouble is a minor wonder in the Hollywood film of the 1950s. Clad in a T-shirt and jeans and playing a role so eerily like himself, Dean became the idol of young moviegoers, who quickly developed a necrophilic cult around him after his death; he profoundly disturbed older audiences, who couldn't shake off this new young leading boy-man because there was something to pity and even to comfort. The film locates, quite clearly, the factors contributing to confusion: an excess of maternal comfort, inadequate fathers, and an alarming death wish. Behind all this is the ugly unsticking of things in the America of the 1950s, and with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, James Dean conveyed the sad awareness of this. The pain and confusion within the family isn't the cause, really; it's the symptom--thus the title, which deflects elsewhere our attention, away from the family. "Rebel Wthout a Cause" is finally a film about the need to belong and the general impossibility of belonging. "Just once I want to do something right," Dean cries to his father. "I don't want you to run away from me again, Dad." The ultimate pathos in the character is that he's run away from himself--or, more accurately, he's never belonged to himself in the first place. In another of Hollywood's sad ironies, Dean would be dead one month before the film's release in October 1955--crushed in an auto accident when he sped too fast and too far in his new Porsche. The cult that arose tells more about young people's identification with his disaffection than about any true examination or appraisal of his talent. In real life he was, according to Elia Kazan, who had directed him in his film debut "East of Eden" (1955), "a pudding of hatred." That's muted on the screen, and transformed into such a portrait of youthful pain and confusion that, whenever you see Dean now, you're looking at the face of one who's ceased to believe the possibility of love ever winning over pain. He represents perhaps the ultimate casualty of pop culture in the 1950s: driven by studio pressures, as much by his own ornery pouting, to live in an emotional igloo, and to die while he briefly enters a society and goes too fast for those coming in the opposite direction. [filmfactsman]
Submitted by filmfactsman (Beverly Hills, CA, USA)
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 James Dean Fans can't go wrong!
This is a classic that defined an era! If you are a James Dean fan you can no go wrong with this film. If you are a fan of a good movie you can't go wrong either. I hope that the new generations will watch movies like these to see what good acting really is all about.
Submitted by Randy (Fresno Ca.) 
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 the one that started it all
James Dean has been the first real rebel, he's the one who started it all the legend is in here
Submitted by zl11969 (BAGNOLO IN PIANO,RE,ITALY)
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 best in its era
i thought that the movie was great. it is one of the movies that really shows us what James Dean is all about. its conent is basic. and its not one of those kind of movies that people sleep through. this is the first time that i ever submit a review because its one of the very few movies that have caught my attention.
Submitted by a reviewer (corona,ca,usa)
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Have you seen this movie?