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

PG

Open to youth!
$10 youth tickets available

111 min

Book Tickets

Friday June 27

7:00 pm
Hearing Assistance U18 May Attend
VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema
Book Now

Saturday June 28

5:30 pm
Hearing Assistance U18 May Attend
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Book Now

Wednesday July 02

5:45 pm
Hearing Assistance U18 May Attend
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.

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 - 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 - 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

East of Eden

Dir. Elia Kazan
115 min

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.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Rebel Without a Cause

Dir. Nicholas Ray
111 min

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), speaking for his generation.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Giant

Dir. George Stevens
198 min

This was the Yellowstone of its time: a big, sweeping modern Western built around an imposing ranch and family dynamics -- except Giant is much more subversive. James Dean strikes it rich as Jett Rink, much to the disgust of his former boss, Rock Hudson.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema
The Fugitive Kind
The Fugitive Kind film image; woman sits behind a brooding man with a guitar

The Fugitive Kind

Dir. Sidney Lumet
121 min

Sidney Lumet's movie brings together two of the greatest actors of the period, Brando and Anna Magnani, reason enough to check out this underrated poetical drama about a handsome musician who washes up in a small southern town.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Hustler

Dir. Robert Rossen
135 min

Prime Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson, a hungry pool shark who knows he's the sharpest guy in the room. Jackie Gleason and George C Scott have other ideas.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Hud

Dir. Martin Ritt
112 min

Landmark modern western with Brandon de Wilde from Shane worshipping the wrong hero, Paul Newman’s eponymous heel. According to Paul Schrader, this movie marks the birth of the cynical (anti-)hero in American cinema.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre