Rebel Without a Cause

Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 film, a type of coming-of-age film about suburban, middle-class teens. It's directed by Nicholas Ray and stars James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Dennis Hopper, and Edward Platt. I'd never seen anything but a few clips of this movie before and watched it because it's listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. It's a tough watch. Give me a standard horror movie any day over these deep dives into family dysfuction and societal breakdown That's the real horror. I watched it on HBO Max where I've found quite a few of the movies listed in that book.

trailer:

The Hollywood Reporter opens its review with this: "On Oct. 27, 1955, Warner Bros. released a teenage drama, 'Rebel Without a Cause,' just a month after star James Dean's untimely death in an automobile accident." Variety has an article. The Guardian opens by saying, "There is some stuffy, faintly reactionary stuff in this famed 1955 teen drama, but James Dean is truly extraordinary, and it has some brilliant scenes".

Film Site says,

The tale of youthful defiance, which could have been exploitative - but wasn't, provides a rich, but stylized (and partly out-dated) look at the world of the conformist mid-1950s from the perspective of the main adolescent male character - a troubled teen with ineffectual parents, who faces a new school environment.

Roger Ebert says,

The film has not aged well, and Dean's performance seems more like marked-down Brando than the birth of an important talent. But "Rebel Without a Cause" was enormously influential at the time, a milestone in the creation of new idea about young people.

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus score of 93%.