Skip to main content
Rebel Without a Cause film image; man and woman leaning together

A man aflame runs direct to camera. A girl of sixteen, stripped to the waist, is whipped by three teenagers. Two cars packed with kids race toward each other in a dark tunnel, skidding into a head-on crash.

None of these opening scenes from Nick Ray’s original story outline made it into the movie of course, save for the heavily modified ’chicky race’, but you get a sense of what he was after. Kids turned bad in the 1950s – and their newly comfortable middle-class parents couldn’t understand why. Ray points the finger right back at them: “You’re tearing me apart” rails Jim Stark (James Dean). Mom’s a cold shrew; Dad’s wearing a pinny.

“If he had guts to knock Mom cold once, then maybe she’d be happy and stop picking on him,” mumbles Jimmy into his shoulder. Yet compared to his macho peers Dean himself represents a softer, more sensitive masculinity that’s on more than speaking terms with Sal Mineo’s evidently gay Plato.

Watching Rebel today, the film’s psycho-dynamics feel coercive, but in grasping for tragedy it does tap an intense adolescent poetry of tumultuous sexual confusion and frustration – channeled through Dean’s extraordinary iconic performance and Ray’s boldly expressionist approach to Cinema-Scope, turning the camera on its head more than once.

Dean was dead before the movie even opened. Natalie Wood died at 43, Mineo at 37. To all intents and purposes Ray’s directing career was over before the decade was out. It remains his most famous picture, even if most of its fans probably couldn’t name the director.

An unmissable film, made with a delirious compassion.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

Director

Nicholas Ray

Cast

James Dean, Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood, Dennis Hopper

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

1955

Language

English

19+
111 min

Book Tickets

Friday June 27

7:00 pm
Hearing Assistance
VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema
Book Now

Saturday June 28

5:30 pm
Hearing Assistance
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Book Now

Wednesday July 02

5:45 pm
Hearing Assistance
VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema
Book Now

Credits

Screenwriter

Stewart Stern

Cinematography

Ernest Haller

Editor

William H. Ziegler

Original Music

Leonard Rosenman

Art Director

Malcolm Bert

Also in This Series

Getting Real charts the evolution of screen acting in American film from 1945-1980, diving into the psychological realism which took audiences somewhere deeper and more authentic than ever before.

Notorious

Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
102 min

In the first of our new Film Studies series, Ingrid Bergman is pimped out by US agent Cary Grant to Nazi-sympathizer Claude Rains (ironically the most likeable character in the film). Hitchcock's classic is a prime example of classic Hollywood star power.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

All About Eve

Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
138 min

Arguably the best backstage melodrama of them all, this story of a young actress on the make seems to have been dipped in acid before the cameras rolled. Bette Davis is the uncomfortably peaking diva Margo Channing and it's her finest role.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Sunset Boulevard

Dir. Billy Wilder
111 min

Hollywood on Hollywood: the tale of a screenwriter, Joe Gillis (William Holden), who stumbles into the orbit of a now-forgotten movie star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), and realizes this silent film diva could be his meal ticket.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

A Double Life

Dir. George Cukor
104 min

In this fascinating lesser known George Cukor picture matinee idol Roland Colman plays a quintessentially English classical theatre actor, Tony John, whose dedication to playing Othello on Broadway leads to jealous fits off-stage.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Red River

Dir. Howard Hawks
133 min

Mutiny on the Bounty out on the range. Cattle driver Tom Dunson (John Wayne) is a pioneer, a self-made man who sees no reason to trust anyone but himself. In just his second film, Method man Montgomery Clift is Dunson's adopted son Matt Garth.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

12 Angry Men

Dir. Sidney Lumet
96 min

12 strangers (all of them white men) deliberate on the likelihood that a Puerto Rican teenager murdered his father. It's an open-and-shut case for 11 of them. But Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) is not convinced.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Heiress

Dir. William Wyler
115 min

Olivia de Havilland won the Oscar for playing Catherine, a shy and insecure young woman who blossoms under the courtship of handsome gentleman caller Morris (Montgomery Clift). Her wealthy father, Ralph Richardson, looks on with severe skepticism.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

A Place in the Sun

Dir. George Stevens
122 min

George (Montgomery Clift) takes a job in his uncle's firm. But before he can break into the family's charmed inner circle and fall in love with socialite Angela (Elizabeth Taylor), he becomes embroiled with a factory girl (Shelley Winters).

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

A Streetcar Named Desire

Dir. Elia Kazan
122 min

"I don't want realism. I want magic!" declares Blanche du Bois, the tragic heroine who meets her nemesis in her sister's husband, Stanley Kowalski, in Tennessee Williams' great play. Brando's performance as Stanley is a turning point in American acting.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

On the Waterfront

Dir. Elia Kazan
108 min

Marlon Brando's definitive performance as Terry Malloy, a New York dockworker (and once a promising boxer) who loses faith in his union and his smarter but corrupt older brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) after a whistleblower is murdered.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre