Tag: James Dean

East of Eden (1955, Elia Kazan)

As intentional as Kazan gets with his direction of James Dean, he’s orders of magnitude more intentional on Julie Harris. Harris is top-billed and the natural protagonist, but Dean’s a supernova. He’s the lead, he’s the star, he’s dynamite, a press agent’s dream. Only he’s got a really quiet part for most of the movie; he’s an extrovert we only ever get to see as an introvert because the movie’s from 1955 (and about 1917) and when he’s not being a top-notch farmhand, he’s bedding every Hispanic girl in town. The film manages to find some honesty in how racism is playing a factor, but it can’t exactly address it.

It’s not just it’s 1955… men are men, after all. And East of Eden is a gloriously turgid mix of toxic masculinity, chauvinism (in both senses), and some kind of religiosity. The religiosity is mostly in the ground situation and revealed backstory; it’s important and it informs everything, but more in how it protects Dean’s twin brother, Richard Davalos, and their father, Raymond Massey, from ever having to take personal responsibility. Massey’s been a single dad since they were born—their mother died in childbirth, he told them—and he’s parented with the Bible. Except Massey’s a very kind, empathetic, curious person—Massey’s performance is startling in its earnestness and warmth, even when he’s being a complete jackass to Dean—so he’s had to arrange his life a certain way. It works with Davalos, who models the piety of his widower father as a way to navigate through as well—masking his core-deep insecurities and jealousies—but not with Dean. Because Dean’s the same as Massey, only Massey wants Dean to be like dear departed mother, Jo Van Fleet.

Who, it turns out, lives just a train ride away.

Van Fleet is a successful madam in the shitty coastal town, while Massey and sons live in the more Christian in-land farming community, where you can meet a nice girl like Harris.

The film opens with Dean following Van Fleet home, where she sends out Timothy Carey to deal with the lurking teen. Carey might be looped; he’s uncredited and Eden’s full of looped audio (quite obviously because Kazan wanted something just right; the film’s exquisite in its precision); either way he’s awesome. He runs Dean off, with some exposition to at least foreshadow and establish this plot line with Dean and Van Fleet. It’s a great sequence.

Once Dean’s back on the right side of the mountains, the film introduces Davalos and Harris. They’re a morally upstanding teenage couple, very chaste, very appropriate; Harris finds Dean concerning—so peculiar he’s scary—while Davalos just thinks his twin is a hilarious goof, at most a prankster.

Davalos and Dean is Eden’s most complicated relationship and the one the film gives the least amount of time. The film’s about Dean getting up the courage to confront Van Fleet, but more about how the many-layered revelation of Van Fleet affects Dean’s relationship with Massey. And, unintentionally, Davalos and Harris. They become collateral damage in this brewing family drama no one realized was brewing. Van Fleet’s the catalyst for the explosion, which is appropriate as she’s the one who got it brewing in the first place.

At least, the way the men see it.

Once Dean has a heart-to-heart about his parents with sheriff Burl Ives (who’s phenomenal in this picture), he starts trying to play the good son. And those attempts—the successes of those attempts—are going to bring ruin to everyone. Some more ruined than others. And there’s enough ruination going around it’s not all Dean’s fault. He is, after all, a sixteen or seventeen year-old kid who has a lot going on in his life and the easy access to alcohol. Massey’s good and evil dichotomy runs Dean and Davalos’s lives, with Harris’s outsider perspective and questioning starting to make Dean ask some questions. In conjunction with the rest of the world making Dean ask some questions too.

War’s almost on and Dean has a profiteers take on it. Davalos and Massey are devout pacifists, but Dean’s a mercenary. Only he’s not because he doesn’t understand what’s going on because he’s a kid. He’s a drinker and a fighter and a lover, but he’s still a kid, something Van Fleet sees in him and is willing to help him too. The relationship with Dean and Van Fleet, Dean and businessman Albert Dekker, with sheriff Ives, they’re all helping push his character development. Right up until we remember Adam had two sons (literally, of course, Adam is Massey’s character’s name) and then everything explodes. Even though we’ve only ever seen Davalos from Dean’s perspective and in Dean’s scenes… he’s had his own subplots brewing and boom.

The third act is then this tightly constrained melodrama where Kazan does everything he can to max out the intensity without getting too loud. And it’s where that direction of Harris gets so important.

Harris has figured out what’s going on with this family and she knows how to fix it but she has to get Dean, Davalos, and Massey to do that work. So it’s not just Dean’s going to be a golden god and get all the camera’s attention, it’s also the story doing it too. It’s treating Harris as a function.

Kazan doesn’t let it.

He, cinematographer Ted D. McCord, and editor Owen Marks figure out this way to showcase Harris, especially in the second half, when it becomes obvious she ought to be the protagonist of this story. Except men.

Harris is great. Dean is singular. No one’s made the adjective. Massey’s great. Ives, Van Fleet, Dekker. Davalos is fine. He functions. Lot of help from Kazan. With everyone else, it’s Kazan figuring out how to best convey his actors’ performances; with Davalos… he’s making it work.

Lois Smith is excellent in a small part.

Technically, it’s almost perfect. There’s a repeated shot of Dean riding the train back to the bad town two scenes and a few hours after we saw it used for him coming home to the good town; it’s now night, the shot’s day. It’s bewildering. Kazan and crew make up for it. He and McCord do a lot with camera angles, including some really awesome showy stuff; the repeat footage gets a pass.

And Paul Osborn’s script. Like, East of Eden has got to be a pain to adapt, but Osborn finds a chunk of the story (presumably the end, I’ve never gotten through it) and writes this great family drama; when I said earlier Kazan had to defend Harris against the script, it’s not Osborn working against her even, it’s the plot. Osborn makes sure Harris has excellent material. It wouldn’t work otherwise.

It’s just not easy to contend with Dean and his presence in the film, visually onscreen and then in general with the plot. He’s so exceptionally good and the film’s able to do so much more because it can leverage him.

East of Eden’s exceptional. I think I’d forgotten just how exceptional.

Armstrong Circle Theatre (1950) s04e12 – The Bells of Cockaigne

The Bells at Cockaigne plays it very safe. It’s an inspirational “play for television” about lovable old Irishman in the U.S. Gene Lockhart daydreaming about winning an apparently still legal in 1953 numbers racket the newspapers run. Lockhart’s going to use the money to go home to Ireland and his little village one last time.

Lockhart sounds like he’s doing an ad read for a leprechaun. He really goes crazy with the accent. It’s not good, but it’s also not offensively bad. It’s a tolerable bad accent.

Now, Lockhart’s top-billed but the Bells is actually all about young kid (kid meaning late teens, maybe early twenties) James Dean who’s got a sick baby daughter and no money. He and wife Donalee Marans need a miracle but they’re not getting any so Dean’s going to play poker with his coworkers after they get paid. Oh, right, it’s payday. Vaughn Taylor’s the paymaster. He talks to Lockhart a lot.

It’s all very predictable and very positive. There’s nothing to it. Except Dean. Dean’s performance has these transcendent moments, where for a minute it’s not obviously a nonsense bit of positivity to play to a Christian nation in 1953. Where it’s actually Dean playing this part. Young, naive, out of his depth. Bells finds some honesty, thanks to Dean, when it’s not even looking for it.

Lockhart’s fine. Taylor’s not as good as Lockhart but only bad a couple times. Marans isn’t good. You really don’t watch this one and think the director did very much to help his actors with their performances. For Marans, it matters. Probably for Taylor too. Not Lockhart. Definitely not Dean. Watching Dean at the poker game, where he’s got the nervous active style going opposite all the comparatively motionless stiffs… it’s something.

The Bells of Cockaigne succeeds, despite having no ambitions at such a thing, and it’s all thanks to Dean. And it not being particularly bad in any way.

Giant (1956, George Stevens)

Giant has a fairly good pace for running three hours and twenty minutes. Even more so considering almost the entire second act is told in summary, with stars Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean gradually getting more and more old age makeup. At his “oldest,” Hudson has a bulk harness, which is simultaneously obvious and effective. Hudson’s performance always needed a little heft. The literal visual presence of it helps.

The first half of Giant is Taylor’s. The film starts in early twentieth century Maryland. Texas cattle rancher Hudson arrives to buy Taylor’s stallion. Again, literally. It’s not clear why Hudson wants the horse because once he gets it home, there’s clearly no need for it. But Taylor decides she wants to marry Hudson right after meeting him; she’s engaged to Rod(ney) Taylor, who gets like four lines.

Taylor is Taylor so Hudson marries her, even though she’s already challenged him. Well, not him, but Texas. She pointed out they stole it from Mexico. That conversation ends up being this lengthy subplot through the entire film. And really Hudson’s only complete one. Giant starts as his movie but it’s Taylor’s after her second scene.

When they get back to big empty, pre-oil Texas, Taylor immediately runs into trouble with Mercedes McCambridge. McCambridge is Hudson’s (presumably older) sister who actually runs the ranch. Though Hudson doesn’t seem to understand it. At that point in the film, Giant becomes this glamorous yet discomforting look into the situation of intelligent women. They have to marry dim bulbs.

Besides realizing being a racist prick isn’t good, Hudson’s only arc for the three hours is worrying about who’s going to take over the family ranch. And it’s never dramatic because almost everyone in the second half–once the kids, who arrive about an hour in, grow up into teens then twentysomethings. Giant doesn’t dwell much on the years in between toddler and late teen because Pearl Harbor happens and young men need to be old enough to go off to war.

Taylor’s got a lot going on in the first half, before the aging makeup. She’s got to deal with McCambridge thinking she’s trying to take over the de facto matriarchy, Hudson being a chauvinist and a racist, her husband and his sister starving the Mexican-American workers on the ranch while intentionally depriving them of safe living conditions, problem ranch hand James Dean giving her the eye, and, soon, Hudson’s only parenting instinct to be to instill toxic masculinity.

And she’s great. The script’s always a little too scared to throw down about Hudson’s racism, almost like director Stevens knows it’s going to get too awkward afterwards so why not save it until the end. So Taylor’s got to navigate around that softness while still developing her character. It culminates in Taylor heading back for a “visit” in Maryland, taking the kids. Rodney Taylor gets another line. Real character development on the kids happens, which is cool. And the last time some of the three kids ever get any.

The second half, about when it’s the forties and oil has struck, eventually deals with youngest daughter Carroll Baker deciding to rebel by pursuing James Dean. Dean, in his old age makeup with an awesome pencil mustache, is, of course, old enough to be her father.

That the three kids, both as babies and then adults, look more like not just Taylor and Dean’s kids, but also Taylor and Taylor’s is sadly never a thing. Hudson whines at one point about a grandkid not looking like him but, come on, none of his kids ever have.

Giant’s not a soap. While Dean clearly has the hots for Taylor, her arc with him (in the first half, when she still gets arcs), is more about her coming to terms with her disappointment in Texas. Young Dean is a dreamer who wants to get far away. Old Dean is not a dreamer. The movie doesn’t really do the dreaming thing. Everyone’s too rich. It just happens.

Dean’s fantastic. He’s a villain, of sorts, but a supporting one. He’s not Hudson’s antagonist, at least not after the film’s done establishing the Texas ground situation on Taylor and Hudson’s arrival. But the thoughtfulness of the performance, which carries over (and gets even better, actually) into the aging makeup, is something to behold. There are some flashy scenes, but it’s also impressive in the quiet moments when the film’s still giving Dean an active subplot.

He loses it just before the film starts jumping ahead. He figures into the second half a lot, but he’s not an active presence. Third act, yes. Third act is when he gets to show-off what screen acting can actually be in old age makeup. But in the second he’s all background. He’s no longer in current contention for ranch heir.

Dennis Hopper plays the disappointing son–first he became a doctor and then he married a Hispanic girl (Elsa Cárdenas in the film’s most thankless role, which is saying a lot considering Sal Mineo’s “part”). He ends up figuring into the third act a lot. He’s all right. Better than Baker, who isn’t able to make the minx believable. Old man Dean is a creeper and he doesn’t hide it. It’s never believable Baker would think it was so hot.

Other than Dean being dreamy, apparently. And it’s no wonder. Taylor and Hudson’s old age makeup puts them in their, I don’t know, late sixties? They’re supposed to be fifty (at the most). Only Dean looks close to appropriate.

Screenwriters Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat bring up the aging in dialogue once or twice, with one full conversation, but it doesn’t play into the rest of the film. It’s never subtext. It’s either obvious or absent. Hudson’s increased drinking, however, seems like it might be a thing, especially since he and Dean both become massive functioning alcoholics simultaneously but separately.

In the finish, the film decides it wants to be about Hudson and his racism, but without ever, of course, being too judgy about it. Giant’s not telling people not to be racist at home, just out in public when some of the good ones might be around. But it does go so far as to tell them it’s still not really okay to be racist at home. Mind who’s around, of course. Good old uncle Chill Wills is all right, wink, wink.

And it almost kind of sort of gets somewhere. Even though it ignores this subplot actually had everything to do with Taylor before the film took it away. Giant comes through for Dean at the end. It comes through for Hudson. Well, his character at least. But it never comes through for Taylor.

Like, Dean is perving on Baker because she’s Taylor’s kid. It’s a thing. And Taylor never gets to deal with it. Stevens really lacks confidence in the leads’ abilities in the oldest aging makeup. So much so he doesn’t even try. He steps back. It works for Dean. It works for Hudson.

It doesn’t work for Taylor. It’s a bummer.

Most of the acting is good. Besides Baker. Earl Holliman’s a little ineffectual as well. But Paul Fix and Judith Evelyn are good as Taylor’s parents. Wills is good. Jane Withers, playing a character who clearly had a lot more to do in the novel, is fine.

Excellent photography from William C. Mellor. Stevens’s direction is good. It’s just a lot of story and a lot of movie. They get through it, but they don’t excel with it. William Hornbeck’s editing is perfunctory, which really doesn’t help by the third act, when the film proves unable to be soapy even when it wants and needs to be.

Still, taking everything into account, Giant’s worth it for Dean’s performance. It’s worth it for some of Taylor’s. It’s a damn shame there isn’t more to hers. The film really needed to be more confident treating second-billed Hudson like he’s second-billed.

This post is part of the Elizabeth Taylor Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Robert Montgomery Presents (1950) s05e13 – Harvest

Dorothy Gish isn’t just top-billed in Harvest, host (and narrator) Robert Montgomery introduces the episode hyping her presence. So it’s a tad disappointing when it turns out Gish gets less and less to do throughout the hour-long television play. When she does get things to do, they happen off-screen. Instead of giving her an arc, writer Sandra Michael actually takes away from Gish in the third act, giving time to a newly introduced character.

It might be okay if there were something more interesting going on, but there’s really not. Most of Harvest has to do with nonagenarian Vaughn Taylor preparing for his one hundredth birthday. Mentally preparing, not party-planning. Taylor’s in a bunch of makeup and sort of dodders around, talking too loud about how grandson James Dean isn’t going to take over the family farm.

Dean gets a lot to do. He’s in love with city girl Rebecca Welles, who just can’t understand why he’d want to stay on that smelly old farm anyway. Dad Ed Begley doesn’t know Dean doesn’t want to be a farmer–writer Michael knows Begley and Dean ought to have some scenes together because the characters have things to talk about, but Harvest skips every single one of those conversations. Instead, Begley either tells Gish or Taylor he’s talked to Dean.

The action takes place around the house, specifically the kitchen, occasionally the front porch. Harvest takes some side trips–into the city, out into the field, 1,000 miles away to check in on Gish and Begley’s other sons–but it’s mostly just the kitchen. Where Gish prepares coffee, Begley sits silently, Dean sits jittery, and Taylor dodders.

Harvest doesn’t take any of its characters seriously enough. If it’s going to be about homesteader turned farmer Taylor turning one hundred and watching his family farm collapse, the writing needs to be better and a better actor needs to be playing the part. Director Sheldon doesn’t do much with his actors, but no one’s anywhere near as problematic as Taylor. While Begley is mostly scenery (which is almost better than when he gets lines because Michael writes them so poorly), he’s better than Taylor’s “best” scenes.

Dean’s okay. Harvest cuts away from his character development just as it gets interesting. Gish is okay. She really doesn’t have anything to do but make coffee in a percolator but she does it with a level of engagement far beyond anyone else. Begley looks lost.

Welles is pretty bad.

Montgomery’s narration is obnoxious, but no worse than the frequent choir singing reminding the viewer how blessed are the starving farmers and aren’t they quaint. Keep hope alive for tomorrow is Harvest’s motto (or some such thing). Instead, it seems like the television play just wants to avoid responsibility for its content.

Sheldon’s direction–outside his lack of interest in the performances–is fine. Harvest never feels cramped, one primary set or not.

Kraft Television Theatre (1947) s07e11 – A Long Time Till Dawn

A Long Time Till Dawn is usually able to keep disbelief completely suspended. It’s a television play and Rod Serling’s teleplay is more ambitious than the budget or the constraints of the medium. Most of the sets are interiors and fine–a diner, a living room, a bedroom. They can even get away with a front porch, though it is where Dawn stretches its visible credulity the most.

The porch scenes are also a stretch due to Ted Osborne’s performance. Osborne is just a small town man. His daughter-in-law (Naomi Riordan) has suddenly come to live with him, running away from New York City, back to small town New Jersey. It just happens she leaves New York the day before her husband (James Dean) gets out of a six-month stint in prison.

Riordan’s timing never gets discussed. It’s apparently just narrative efficency, not her trying to hide from Dean. Though when Rudolf Weiss, playing Dean and Riordan’s kindly New York neighbor (a delicatessan owner), tells Dean about Riordan leaving it’s like a) she doesn’t want Dean to know where she went and b) she’s been gone a while.

Weiss tells Dean about Riordan’s departure just after copper Robert F. Simon has stopped by the diner to warn Dean not to become a repeat offender.

So of course Dean has to beat up Weiss to find out where Riordan has gone. Then he heads home to Osborne and Riordan’s dread and hope. Simon follows soon after to investigate Weiss’s assault. Because even though everyone can just drop everything and go to small town New Jersey, Dean and Riordan never did it before Dean’s small time crook phase.

From the dialogue, it seems like that phase was about a sixth of the three years Dean and Riordan spent in New York. Serling’s teleplay has very, very little logic going for it. Ditto Dunlap’s direction (the finale has Osborne talking about some character who was just onscreen but Dawn forgot to take notice).

At its best, Dunlap’s direction is utterly mediocre. More often it’s a problem. Dean’s excellent, Simon’s excellent, Weiss is excellent. Riordan is okay. Osborne is not. He gets these lengthy monologues and he clutches the melodrama heartstrings so tightly their effectiveness withers.

Up until the third act, though, it really seems like Dawn is going to make it. But it doesn’t. The third act set pieces are poorly executed–thanks to Dunlap and the budget–and Serling’s denouement, largely thanks to Osborne, is a fail.

It’s a shame. Dean’s phenomenal, even when the writing is a little weak. When it’s more than a little weak, not even he can do anything with it (not with Dunlap’s direction “aiding” him), but his performance is mostly great. Simon also makes a lot out of his part. Serling gives the characters a lot of texture–except Osborne, which is bad–and Simon takes advantage.

A Long Time Till Dawn needs a better director, a better performance in the Osborne part, and a few rewrites.

Studio One (1948) s05e46 – Sentence of Death

Sentence of Death unfolds gradually. The action mostly follows Betsy Palmer, playing a naughty blue blood who the tabloids love to cover. She’s slumming it and having a nice private dinner at a drug store. She’s there when someone holds it up and kills the owner.

Enter cops Gene Lyons and Ralph Dunn. Lyons is the younger, more sensitive one. Dunn is the older, lazy one. They round up suspects based on previous behavior and new widow Virginia Vincent identifies James Dean as the murderer. Palmer does not, but also doesn’t say it isn’t him for sure.

Dunn railroads Dean with Lyons nodding along, albeit hesitantly.

Jump ahead until after Dean’s convicted and on death row (hence the title) and Palmer happens to see the man she saw that night. She tries to convince the cops without much success and has to threaten to use her tabloid platform if they don’t investigate. Eventually she convinces Lyons to look into the matter.

When Sentence opens, Palmer’s just annoying. Adrian Spies’s teleplay goes out of its way to make her unlikable. Same goes for Dunn. Dean gets some great material–or just does great things with it–as he realizes he’s in a lot of trouble. For most of that time, before the story jumps ahead, Lyons is just along for the ride. He perturbed banters with Palmer, not much else.

Once they partner to investigate, however, Lyons gets a lot better. Dunn’s failures as a responsible cop wear Lyons down. He also can’t help finding himself interested in Palmer, who proves to have a bit more depth than anyone thought she did.

Palmer’s good once the action gets started. Dean’s only got a couple scenes, he’s excellent in both. Lyons gets good too, though more than anyone else in Sentence he gets too stagy, too exaggerated. Director Matt Harlib doesn’t do much to rein in performances.

Sentence of Death has a surprising twist at the end, some excellent character development, and some nice performances. The wrap up is a little rushed. Not too much, but a little.

General Electric Theater (1953) s03e12 – The Dark, Dark Hours

The Dark, Dark Hours is the story of two desperate beatnik gunmen who just pulled a job and one of them took a bullet. They need a doctor and they find Ronald Reagan. The beatniks are James Dean and Jack Simmons. Simmons is the shot one. Dean’s the moody one whose undoubtedly tragic life has led him to being a beatnik outlaw.

Sometimes they need to listen to some bops to get right.

Meanwhile, Reagan’s got a wife, Constance Ford, who thinks he’s letting these two punk kids push him around. Is Reagan a coward or is he just following the Hippocratic Oath? Does it even matter?

Dean gets some speeches, Reagan gets some speeches, Ford gets some speeches. Reagan and Ford get close-ups from director Medford; they’re good solid people, not beatniks like Dean. Dean is mostly in medium shots, usually having to share the frame. He only gets close-ups after his comuppance.

Dark, Dark Hours isn’t so much predictable as never surprising. Medford directs the episode pretty well, particularly the opening with Dean and Simmons arriving at the house. Medford doesn’t bring much tension to it. Arthur Steuer’s teleplay doesn’t have much tension–really, it’s just speeches from Dean about being a sad beatnik thug. He’s probably on the reefer or something.

Dean’s fine. It’s not like he’s got some great monologues to perform. Same for Reagan. Ford’s too annoying.

It’s not a terrible twenty-five minutes but it’s also not particularly worth seeing.

General Electric Theater (1953) s03e08 – I’m a Fool

I’m a Fool gets off to a somewhat promising, somewhat precarious start. Eddie Albert is an onscreen narrator–precarious–talking about his younger days–his younger self played by James Dean–promising. Dean is leaving his small-town for the booming metropolis of Sandusky, Ohio, where he hopes to find a good job and a better future.

The (television) play makes a big deal about whether Dean will be a staying in touch with mom Eve March and sister Gloria Castillo but it turns out not to matter at all. Pretty much nothing turns out to matter at all.

Immediately upon arriving in Sandusky, Dean heads to the track. Albert’s narration makes it kind of sound like Dean’s going to bet the money Castillo gave him to eat because she was worried.

Nope. He wants a job there because he loves horses. Only he doesn’t know anything about horses and appears to be afraid of them. Luckily, nightwatchman and general track employee Roy Glenn befriends Dean and gets him a job. They become good friends until Dean one day encounters young Natalie Wood and decides he wants to be a fancy dude not a racetrack employee.

So Dean leaves the racetrack, abandoning Glenn, and gets a better job and fancy clothes and tries being a dude. Glenn’s not sore at him, even gives him a tip on a race, which Dean passes along to Wood and her friends. They’re from out of town, which makes no sense since Dean and Glenn passed them at their house. There’s also no fallout from Dean passing on Glenn’s tip, even though the narration makes a big deal of it.

Arnold Schulman’s script for I’m a Fool isn’t good, but Albert’s performance as the narrator is worse. Melodramatic self-flagellation gets tiring fast, especially since none of Albert’s foreshadowing ever amounts to anything.

Dean does okay, especially in the first half; then Albert gets too obnoxious. Wood barely makes an impression.

The most impressive thing is actually Don Medford’s direction. Even though I’m a Fool is on a sound stage with pop-up sets and forced perspective angles to suggest depth, Medford moves the cast around it ably. Great lighting too.

Shame Albert’s there sitting on a stool ruining the whole thing. Well, everything Schulman and, presumably, source author Sherwood Anderson aren’t ruining.

Campbell Playhouse (1952) s02e02 – Something for an Empty Briefcase

For a while, it seems like Something for an Empty Briefcase is going to have some grit. It’s set in a rough New York neighborhood, albeit constructed out of cardboard (Briefcase is a “TV play”). Lead James Dean is a recently released ex-con who’s looking for one big score to get him into a new life. So it’s strange when it turns out that big score is mugging Ohioan immigrant Susan Douglas Rubes. She’s willing to risk her well-being to pursue her ballet dreams. Dean’s just looking for a score. And a Briefcase. He really wants a briefcase.

It later turns out Dean’s a great pool hustler so there’s no reason he’d have to mug Rubes or anyone else. But S. Lee Pogostin’s teleplay is pretty weak. Dean’s got some great scenes in the first half and Rubes seems like she’s going to have some good material, but it all goes in the second half.

Instead of being about Dean and Rubes, it’s about Dean and local crime lord Robert Middleton. Dean wants out. Middleton won’t let him out. And previously mildly annoying didactic themes increase until they’re drowning out everything else. Dean’s performance suffers, though nowhere near as bad as Rubes’s.

Dean’s supposed to be a numbskull punk, Rubes is the one smart enough to make her dreams happen. But she gives him a dictionary (for his Briefcase) and it changes his life. Well, not as much as the next book he gets. No spoilers but it’s real obvious.

The writing for Dean and Rubes is uneven the first half, but not bad. Both actors do well with it, though Dean gets a little erratic at times. Director Medford follows Dean through his performance, not really directing him. Well, hopefully he’s not directing him because the histronics are way too loud. Also because Pogostin’s writing isn’t there.

Something for an Empty Briefcase is almost half good, which isn’t bad all things considered.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray)

For a film with pioneering use of widescreen composition–the shot with the cars moving past Natalie Wood–and one of the better film performances (James Dean), Rebel Without a Cause is a curious failure. It’s loaded with content–there’s the stuff with Dean and his parents, the stuff with Wood and her father, the gang, Sal Mineo, the police, the stuff with Dean and Wood, Dean and Mineo, Mineo and his home life. It goes on and on until it finally gets to the ludicrous conclusion. The film’s entirely nuance-free. It’s probably the finest example of “Technicolor filmmaking.” Even if it was shot in Warner Color.

There are countless problems with the film’s details–like Corey Allen’s affable gang leader, Wood going from amoral sociopath (cheering on the bullies, something she never shows any regret for–her actions towards Dean, yes, but not the ones she supported). Then there’s the film’s almost unimaginable lack of subtext. There’s a frequent and rather misogynistic conflict between Dean’s parents, Jim Backus and Ann Doran. Dean’s constantly suggesting Backus needs to assert himself more and it leads to Backus sitting on the couch in a flowered apron trying to defend him. It’s like the film’s parodying itself (but it is not).

For every second he’s on screen–which is thankfully most of them–James Dean commands the film in a perfect performance. He’s in the first shot and from there on in, I don’t think there’s a single scene where Dean doesn’t do something amazing with his performance. The script occasionally gives him great material–the early scene with Edward Platt, some of the scenes with parents Backus and Doran (Backus’s browbeaten husband gets to be a bit much very quickly), and most of the scenes with him and Wood. Wood’s got a story arc all her own–the film drops it after a while, which is a bad move; the fast forward romance between her and Dean is well-acted by both, but it comes off false. The film opens with Dean, Wood and Mineo at the police station, all three with some definite problems–as the story progresses, it forgets about Dean and Wood’s problems and concentrates solely on Mineo’s, given their Cinemascope potential. The conclusion for Dean and Wood comes off goofy, but Rebel‘s been goofy for almost an hour and a half so it’s not exactly a surprise, but it is a disappointment….

The film has two conceptual failings–first, it’s a teen gang movie where we’re supposed to believe Allen’s a scary tough guy (not to mention gang fights happen at scenic spots, cheered on by a dozen middle class kids); second, it’s a continual present action. The film takes place over a day and a half. There’s the whirlwind friendship between Dean and Mineo, the whirlwind romance between Dean and Wood–both of those can get a pass (it’s a movie, after all), but the film forgets these people have been up for thirty hours. Stern’s script, so strong in the first act, kills off a kid in front of twenty other kids, none of whom freak out–no crying, not even from the kid’s girlfriend. It’s an abject oversight–Rebel Without a Cause would have been a much better film if it’d taken responsibility for that plot development and dealt with it, instead of ignoring it for the Mineo emphasis.

The story problems do bring down the film, but they can’t really vandalize Dean’s performance (or Wood’s to some degree). Like I said before, Dean’s enthralling. But Ray doesn’t keep him on screen enough, talking enough, to camouflage the plot deficiencies (the frequent, poor scenes with the teen gang on the loose jar). But Ray does a great job directing Rebel Without a Cause and that achievement–significant as it may be–doesn’t overcome the writing. Maybe because the film came from Ray’s story, so he’s embracing all the shortcomings.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Nicholas Ray; screenplay by Stewart Stern, based on an adaptation by Irving Shulman of a story by Ray; director of photography, Ernest Haller; edited by William H. Ziegler; music by Leonard Rosenman; production designer, Malcolm C. Bert; produced by David Weisbart; released by Warner Bros.

Starring James Dean (Jim Stark), Natalie Wood (Judy), Sal Mineo (Plato), Jim Backus (Frank Stark), Ann Doran (Mrs. Carol Stark), Corey Allen (Buzz Gunderson), William Hopper (Judy’s Father), Rochelle Hudson (Judy’s Mother), Dennis Hopper (Goon), Edward Platt (Ray Fremick), Steffi Sidney (Mil), Marietta Canty (Crawford family maid) and Virginia Brissac (Mrs. Stark, Jim’s grandmother).

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