East of Eden

This overwrought domestic drama is based on the last 80 pages of John Steinbeck’s novel, set in Salinas, 1917. Cal Trask’s forlorn attempts to win the affection of his self-righteous father (Raymond Massey) represented James Dean’s first leading role in the cinema, and his emotionally raw performance ennobled misunderstood youth everywhere. Julie Harris was top-billed as Abra, the girl who comes between Cal and his brother, Aron.

Writing to Steinbeck, Kazan told him: “I looked thru a lot of kids before settling on this Jimmy Dean. He hasn’t Brando’s stature, but he’s a good deal younger and is very interesting, has balls and eccentricity and a “real problem” somewhere in his guts, I don’t know what or where. He’s a little bit of a bum, but he’s a real good actor and I think he’s the best of a poor field. Most kids who become actors at nineteen or twenty or twenty-one are very callow and strictly from NY Professional school. Dean has got a real mean streak and a real sweet streak. Dean has the advantage of never having been seen on the screen.”

The young actor died in an auto accident two months after the film was released, with two more films in the can: Giant and Rebel Without a Cause.

An amazingly high-strung, feverishly poetic movie about Cain and Abel as American brothers… Dean seems to go just about as far as anybody can in acting misunderstood.

Pauline Kael