OK. The movie is a classic. Everyone says so. I guess there are classics not everyone can appreciate. For me, this in one. I have the same reaction to it that I had to a novel everyone told me is a classic, "Catcher in the Rye." I was forced to read it in high school, and that is why it comes to mind. That book I actively hated. (I was never so pleased as when my daughter was forced to read it and she told me she hated it too.) "Rebel Without a Cause" just annoys me. It supposedly depicts the period - a little earlier, I admit, but not much - the time when I grew up and entered high school. I went to high school in NYC. Our high school was in Harlem, not the suburban milieu of "Rebel's" rebellious teens. But I had friends who went to high school in Queens and in the suburbs, out on the Island. High school then, and I suppose still today, was not always a calm place. There were bad kids. "Juvenile delinquents" we used to say. But never was any delinquency as delinquent as these high-schoolers' daily amusements. Knife fights over casual disagreement, guns, chains, murderous vendettas, maniacal, suicidal games with cars. And what stupid games! The dead Buzz was probably happy; he won the game, right? None of my friends had cars anyway. All this without the benefit even of organized gangs. Gangs, at least, appropriately use switchblades. Here it's just an average day, high school hijinks. Never happened. Maybe it did in southern California. I wouldn't know. It didn't happen in New York, and we were said to be the land of West Side Story. My high school was on the west side, 135th Street and Convent Avenue. It didn't happen there. I never saw it, never heard it, never read it in the papers. My suburb friends never saw it either. OK. "Rebel Without a Cause" isn't reality. It's Hollywood reality. That's not what it's billed to be. It's whole appeal, presumably, is that it rips aside the veneer, reveals the angst - I had plenty of angst in high school; it revolved around girls, or the lack thereof, not knife fights - the angst of modern American youth. How in blazes did I miss it all? Because it's nonsense. As Mark Twain once said about the characters of his least favorite author, there are real Indians and there are Fenimore-Cooper (ridiculously unreal) Indians. There are teenagers and there are Hollywood teenagers. (And where, where did they come up with Ed Platt's police captain/social worker who specializes in consoling troubled teens? He's about as believable as everything else.)
OK again. Take it at that, a fanciful story of teenage angst. What angst? Who can care about Jim Stark's problems? They're ridiculous. So, Jim, your father is a bit henpecked? Live with it. Dad wears an apron when he does the cooking. Oh, my God. Guess Jim will have to wallow in angst. What else makes Jim the icon of alienated youth? Let's see. He doesn't fit in with the "in" crowd of juvenile delinquents. Who does? Relax. No. Jim will have to drive his car over a cliff. But wait. Maybe he will reconsider. No. He must accept the mortal challenge because "it's a matter of honor." Hilarious! No high school kid I ever knew - and I was around at the time - none of us ever talked like that, like Sir Lancelot when knighthood was in flower, like George Brent in "Jezebel." "Affair of honor." We would have split our sides laughing. That's it for Jim, as far as I can tell. Take him over a knee and spank him. Then there's Judy. I give up. What's her problem? Father thinks she's too old to hug. As for "Plato," he's not angst-ridden. He's insane. I'm sorry, even Nicholas Ray can't rescue this material. Only one thing is outstanding in this movie, and that is Jim Backus. I like James Dean far better in "Giant." That whole movie is better. It makes much more sense, which isn't hard compared to RWAC.
OK again. Take it at that, a fanciful story of teenage angst. What angst? Who can care about Jim Stark's problems? They're ridiculous. So, Jim, your father is a bit henpecked? Live with it. Dad wears an apron when he does the cooking. Oh, my God. Guess Jim will have to wallow in angst. What else makes Jim the icon of alienated youth? Let's see. He doesn't fit in with the "in" crowd of juvenile delinquents. Who does? Relax. No. Jim will have to drive his car over a cliff. But wait. Maybe he will reconsider. No. He must accept the mortal challenge because "it's a matter of honor." Hilarious! No high school kid I ever knew - and I was around at the time - none of us ever talked like that, like Sir Lancelot when knighthood was in flower, like George Brent in "Jezebel." "Affair of honor." We would have split our sides laughing. That's it for Jim, as far as I can tell. Take him over a knee and spank him. Then there's Judy. I give up. What's her problem? Father thinks she's too old to hug. As for "Plato," he's not angst-ridden. He's insane. I'm sorry, even Nicholas Ray can't rescue this material. Only one thing is outstanding in this movie, and that is Jim Backus. I like James Dean far better in "Giant." That whole movie is better. It makes much more sense, which isn't hard compared to RWAC.