REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

I've been encouraged to occasionally write reviews that are a bit more in depth than my usual fare, and so it is with this in mind that I offer the following retrospective for Nicholas Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. I hope you find this interesting.

Let me begin by stating that most critics distinguish, more or less, between “commercial” and “personal” cinema. Ray worked within the commercial Hollywood studio system and his projects were given the green light by executives sitting behind massive oak desks on the Warner Brothers lot, among others. However, even a cursory examination of Ray's dozen or so features reveals a psychological substructure that is uncommonly personal, rich and complex—far more so than the rank and file (i.e. single-mindedly “commercial”) film released by studios then and, especially, now.

Perhaps no other filmmaker has rendered the basic American contradictions, both political and social, with Ray's unique insight and impact. To begin with, his characters are generally the sons and daughters of the American dream—but it is a dream gone sour. And at the heart of Ray's personal vision is a disillusionment, a distrust, a despair of everyday Americans' suffering, not only their inner, private agony, but the agony forced on them by environmental or economical or emotional depravity. This is hardly the kind of storytelling one would expect from Tinseltown.

Let me also dispute “conventional wisdom” that states: “It's all in the script.” Without any disrespect for the importance of the screenplay, I must comment that it is never “all in the script.” If it were, why make the movie in the first place?

The visceral impact of such films as REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, JOHNNY GUITAR, BIGGER THAN LIFE and THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS is not easily achieved. What separates these powerful, memorable films from run-of-the-mill cinema is Ray's use of editing techniques, color, locations, décor, and, particularly unique to him, the time of day.

Coupled with his undeniable command of the actors appearing in his films, these highly stylized details help bring his protagonists (inevitably outsiders of one kind or another) both respect and sympathy. He does this by forcing his audience to share the emotions of these “outsiders,” and thus he is able to show more clearly the thin line between meaningful revolt and self-destruction, and, in the extreme, the exact moment when idealism plummets into paranoia.

The exposition of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE has amazing speed and lucidity. The first scene—behind the credits—is a close-up of Jim (James Dean) as he lies in the road; the second is a brief linking shot as he is taken into the police station; and the third introduces us to Plato (Sal Mineo) and Judy (Natalie Wood). Less than ten minutes later we have learned about the family backgrounds of Plato and Judy, and have even met Jim's parents and grandmother, together in a single shot which conveys most of the details of a complex relationship.

The problems of these youths are mostly familial and certainly Freudian: Judy cannot comprehend the sudden withdrawal of her father's affection and his affronts to her physical and emotional maturation; Plato is the angry, neurotic child of absentee parents; Jim rebels against a family constantly at odds with one another.

Ray's use of extremely subjective point of view shots and extreme camera angles effectively reveal the subliminal emotions inherent in the text. Extreme close-ups of Jim, Judy and Plato intimately involve the audience in their turmoil, while low and high-angle shots of the three in relation to others betray the instability and volatility of their situations.

Judy's feelings of isolation and betrayal, for example, are augmented by the position she occupies, relative to her family, within each frame. When Judy's affectionate embraces are rebuked by her father, his place in the lower middle of the frame suggests his implacability. The inclusion of Judy's little brother in the center of the frame further upsets its balance; there simply doesn't seem to be room for her. Judy's exclusion from the family circle is further exaggerated by her standing while the others sit. Later, when Judy returns home, the flat, direct lighting in the hall contrasts with the cozy, indirect lighting in her parents' bedroom from whose intimacy she is now excluded.

Ray's intense sensitivity to time makes one feel that the night is something much more than just the absence of sunlight. In REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, night is the time of confusion and insecurity. The film begins at night with a young man falling down drunk in the middle of a dark street. We follow him through two other “nights”, the artificial one in the planetarium and the real one during which Jim engages in the “chicken run”—itself an extraordinary evocation of confusion, the blind and the dangerous rush along a path of possible extinction. By contrast, morning offers the prospect of a new beginning, such as Jim's hopes for a fresh start because he is beginning life at a new school.

The location of the film's climax is back at the planetarium where Ray draws a memorable parallel between the isolated and insecure conditions of his characters and that of the whole of mankind in the universe. Members of the lecture audience view the depiction of the end of the world with indifference, contempt, or terror as the commentator rambles on:

…destroyed as we began in a burst of gas and fire…the earth will not be missed…and man existing alone seems an episode of little consequence.

It is against this concept of a man's life as an episode of little consequence that Nicholas Ray rebels, not only in this film, but in his entire body of work.

Robert A. Nowotny studied film criticism at the University of Texas at Austin. His comments on Nicholas Ray are heavily influenced by the writings of V. F. Perkins, Ann Laemmle, Marjorie Baumgarten, Michael Goodwin and Naomi Wise. He also admits to being heavily influenced by a six-pack and the persuasiveness of a good salesman. It is the latter two that are responsible for his once purchasing a Mercury Zephyr from an old fraternity brother named Ed Vera. Stupid, stupid, stupid.