Rebel Without a Cause

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Nicholas Ray's 1955 drama, Rebel Without a Cause, follows twenty-four hours in the life of Jim Stark (played by James Dean), a troubled teenager who moves to suburban Los Angeles with his parents, and becomes drawn into a potent mix of teenage rebellion and emotional turmoil. The film is widely considered a cultural touchstone, celebrated for its iconic performances and its depiction of alienation and generational conflict in post-war America.

Glyn Davis examines aspects of Rebel that have previously been critically neglected: its mixture of performance styles, with Dean's as Jim Stark exemplifying the 'Method', alongside that of Natalie Wood as love-interest Judy and Sal Mineo as the disaffected 'sad young man' Plato; its relationship to Eisenhowers politics and the post-war culture of plenty, and its depiction of suburban Los Angeles. He considers the role of director Nicholas Ray, while also highlighting the contributions of other members of the films production, including screenwriter Stewart Stern, production designer Malcolm Bert, costume designer Moss Mabry, and composer Leonard Rosenman.

Davis explores Rebels complex depictions of rebellion, embodied not just in Deans Jim Stark, but in multiple other characters, and its foundational role in the emergent genre of the teen film. Considering Rebel's influence as a canonical work of LGBTQ+ cinema, he highlights the film's enduring legacy and why it continues to resonate with contemporary audiences, not only because of the tragic early deaths of its three young stars.

Author Bio

Glyn Davis is Professor of Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, UK. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of eleven books, including The Richard Dyer Reader (BFI/Bloomsbury, co-edited with Jaap Kooijman, 2023), The Living End: A Queer Film Classic (2022), Pop Cinema (co-edited with Tom Day, 2022), Queer as Folk in the BFI TV Classics series (2007) and Queer Print in Europe (co-edited with Laura Guy, Bloomsbury, 2022). From 2016 to 2019, Glyn was the Project Leader of Cruising the Seventies: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures, a pan-European queer history project funded by HERA and the European Commission (www.crusev.ed.ac.uk).