Rebel without a Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray)

The movie that turned 24 year old James Dean into one of the most important icons of the 20th Century, alongside Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. As the frustrated, anguished Jim Stark, he became the epitome of nonconformity and rebellion. 

The film tells the story of three younger people (played by Dean, Nathalie Wood and Sal Mineo) who stand up against their parents, with tragic results. They have different reasons to rebel, but what unites them, is that they all feel deeply dissatisfied with society and the life their conformist parents had planned for them. 

The film was shot in the ultra-wide (2,55:1) Cinerama format, introduced shortly before; many contemporary directors felt uneasy with the format and mainly used it for panoramic shots, but  Nicholas Ray was one of the finest directors of the Fifties and he and his cinematographer Ernest Haller use the widescreen to perfection, both during the indoor and outdoor scenes, with some daring camera movements perfectly underlining the disarray of the situation.

The movie brought Dean eternal fame, but no luck: he crashed his Porsche only days before the movie’s premiere. His performance often feels a little forced, marked by mannerisms, most of them copied from Marlon Brando (especially the Brando from On the Waterfront, released one year before), but he had both the looks and the screen-presence to become the young man who inspired an entire generation. And of course his premature death contributed to the legend as well.

Wood and Mineo did not fare any better than Dean: Wood, who was only 17 when the film was made, died under mysterious circumstances during the making of another movie, and Sal Mineo - only 16 at the time - was stabbed to death by a street thug who didn’t know who he was.