From crises including two World Wars and the Great Depression, the United States emerged in the 1950s as an unprecedented global power, intent on peace, and energized by remarkable prosperity. But new threats to domestic tranquility quickly arose in the immediate postwar period. Racial tensions ran high, Communist plots against the government were being routed out, and perhaps most shockingly the youth turned against society, violently so. Headlines abounded declaring that the youth were now a dangerous social problem. Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without A Cause" took an unconventional look at juvenile delinquency, one that located the problem in what had once been the peaceful suburbs. This project examines the immediate reception of this enduring depiction of teenage alienation, using sources that situate the film in its historical context.

Crowther, Bosley. “The Screen: Delinquency; ' Rebel Without Cause' Has Debut at Astor.” New York Times, Oct 27, 1955, 28.

 

            In his review of Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Bosley Crowther is both drawn to and repulsed by the film’s controversial content. Crowther explains the logic of the film, that James Dean’s Jim Stark is the product of family dysfunction, chiefly the role-reversal of his parents. He repeatedly mentions the film’s intense and suspenseful nature and the terrifying depiction of a warped younger generation. The famous “chickie run” scene, which features Dean and his leather-jacketed rival racing towards a cliff, is called one of the film’s most chilling moments, and it’s most authentic since such races have been featured in the same periodical before. While Crowther commends the film for episodes of emotional truth and accuracy he concludes by condemning the work as somewhat socially irresponsible. Like Blackboard Jungle (1955), he considers the film excessively violent, featuring brutal scenes that may influence younger viewers, and offend older ones. Crowther also rejects Ray’s unnecessarily critical treatment of parental figures, the police, and other authorities. The Stark parents are so obviously problematic that they detract from the realism that the picture otherwise achieves. Overall the film is not reviewed as bad, being punctuated by strong performances by the entire cast.

            This review demonstrates that film’s like Rebel were viewed as a cause of the juvenile delinquency epidemic, even as today it is considered as an explanation of the condition of the modern teenager. Crowther’s shock at specific sequences in the film show the requirements of decency at the time, and how Rebel challenged those norms. Even after editing the film according to Production Code standards, Rebel  was still highly controversial.

 

Rebel without a Cause: Nicholas Ray in the Fifties, by Peter Biskind. Film Quarterly © 1974 University of California Press. 

           

            Peter Biskind argues that director Nicholas Ray’s films are not as subversive as is commonly assumed by fans of the director and even film scholars. During the 1950s, family values reigned: the preservation of the family, with each parent in his or her gender-appropriate role was seen as the solution to emerging societal problems including homosexuality and juvenile delinquency. Biskind contends that Ray’s films never radically depart from these conservative notions. In his reading of Rebel Without a Cause (1955), the centrality of the family is consistently reaffirmed. The source of protagonist Jim Stark’s alienation is attributed to his problematic family life, where in his mother is dominant and over-bearing and his father is atypically passive. The conclusion of the film rights this deviance. The Stark patriarch learns from his son’s conduct how to be a man by 1950s standards, and his wife is finally quieted. Ray’s faith in the conventional family also explains why Sal Mineo’s Plato must die. Plato is orphaned by his parent’s neglect, and has no proper place in the pseudo-family formed by the romance between James Dean and Natalie Wood. He is the true outsider. As Dean and Wood are healed by their relationship, and can eventually reintegrate into the mainstream, Mineo meets a tragic end. To Biskind, the film occupies a political and moral middle ground, situating itself within the comfortable middleclass mainstream and failing to critique the family as a potentially problematic institution. Biskind does not view the film’s stance as a flaw, but rather a product of its time and the demands of the Hollywood machine in which it was created.

            The piece presents a complex and unconventional reading of what is often considered a truly “rebellious” film, contextualizing the response in the political atmosphere of the 1950s. It provides a historical perspective that complicates the typical reception of the film and its enduring  popularity.

            In the chapter entitled “Box Office,” Rathgeb describes the immediate box office success that Rebel Without a Cause (1955) experienced. The credit for this success was attributed to the rabid support of James Dean’s teenage, female fans, the resoundingly positive reviews the film received, and the relevance of its subject matter. In the midst of this success, the film was still being re-edited to accommodate censors in different national and international venues. The objectionable material included the switch-blade fight, which was re-cut to feature less violence and more crowd reactions, as well as the length of Buzz’s fall from the cliff and associated sounds. British censors especially felt that the film might be exporting juvenile delinquency to  their shores, and labeled the film “adults-only.” Some cities in the American south banned the film completely due to its graphic content. More than a box-office success, the film also produced a faithful fan base, drawing a remarkably high number of fan letters. The fan letters, from teenagers, parents, and delinquency professionals repeated a similar theme: that the film was an accurate portrayal of the youth’s problems that offered those who were suffering solace.

            This chapter demonstrates that Rebel Without a Cause was a critical and commercial success, citing a variety of newspapers reviews and box office figures from the time. Further emphasizing the positive reception of the film is Rathgeb’s inclusion of the content of the fan letters. Clearly, Rebel was an immediate source of identification for teenagers who demanded posthumous awards for the actor, or addressed him as if he were still alive. Finally, the warm domestic reception of this juvenile delinquency picture is in contrast to the British one, giving an international perspective on the social problem.