Rebel Without a Cause
| Rebel Without a Cause | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Nicholas Ray |
| Produced by | David Weisbart |
| Screenplay by |
Stewart Stern Irving Shulman (adaptation) |
| Story by | Nicholas Ray |
| Starring |
James Dean Natalie Wood Sal Mineo |
| Music by | Leonard Rosenman |
| Cinematography | Ernest Haller |
| Edited by | William H. Ziegler |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
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Release date
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Running time
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111 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.5 million |
| Box office | $4,500,000 (US rentals) |
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American melodrama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers filmed in CinemaScope. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments. The film stars James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood.
The film was a groundbreaking attempt to portray the moral decay of American youth, critique parental style, and explore the differences and conflicts between generations. The title was adopted from psychiatrist Robert M. Lindner's 1944 book, Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath. The film itself, however, does not reference Lindner's book in any way. Warner Bros. released the film on October 27, 1955.
Over the years, the film has achieved landmark status for the acting of cultural icon James Dean, fresh from his Oscar nominated role in East of Eden and who died before the film's release, in his most celebrated role. This was the only film during Dean's lifetime in which he received top billing. In 1990, Rebel Without a Cause was added to Library of Congress's National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant".
Behind the opening credits, the film opens on a suburban Los Angeles street with teenager Jim Stark (Dean) drunkenly lying down on a sidewalk. He is arrested and taken to the juvenile division of the police station for "plain drunkenness". At the station he meets John "Plato" Crawford (Mineo), who was brought in for shooting a litter of puppies with his mother's gun, and Judy (Wood), who was brought in for curfew violation (she was wearing a bright red dress with matching lipstick and was mistaken for being a streetwalker). The three each separately reveal their innermost frustrations to officers; all three of them suffer from problems at home:
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Wikipedia