Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Film Review

DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray

BOTTOM LINE: 

Wood, Dean, and Mineo form a nuclear family under the shadow of Griffith Park Observatory. Sal Mineo’s Plato is Hollywood’s first adolescent gay character. Dean’s most emblematic performance under the soaring direction of Nicholas Ray. With Jim Backus and Ann Doran as Dean’s parents, William Hopper as Wood’s father, and future Oscar nominees Dennis Hopper and Nick Adams as part of the gang at the infamous “Chicken Run.”

The stunning color cinematography is by the great Ernest Haller (“Gone with the Wind,” “Mildred Pierce,” “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”?), and the original score is by Leonard Rosenman, who also scored Dean’s other 1955 movie, Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden” – he “invented” the Dean sound! The script, by Stuart Stern, was built around an original treatment by Irving Shulman and story concepts by Shulman and Ray. One of the quintessential LA movies.

POST TITLE: 55 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967) (Part 1) – TheBrownees

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SUBCATEGORY: Queer Film

STREAMING: Amazon Prime and Apple TV