James Dean makes teenage distress awkward, funny and difficult to dismiss. His acting can be excessive, but in Rebel Without a Cause the embarrassment feels painfully credible: a young man keeps revealing more than he means to.
Fi1m perspective
In the opening police station scene of Rebel Without a Cause (1955), James Dean makes Jim Stark's wish to be understood look humiliating. We were moved by the effort, because he seems unable to explain himself without revealing more than he wants to. He is funny as well as hurt, which gives some relief from a film inclined to treat teenage distress as an emergency. Dean leaves room for us to find Jim exhausting without letting us dismiss him.
East of Eden (1955), directed by Elia Kazan, gave him his breakthrough leading role as Cal Trask. Rebel Without a Cause fixed his association with alienated teenagers; his final completed role was Jett Rink in Giant (1956). His Method-influenced acting used improvisation and physical gestures to follow a character's changing feelings. Those habits risk becoming mannerisms, but in Jim's struggle to make himself understood we can see what the restless acting is for.
Nicholas Ray lets Jim behave foolishly without treating his feelings as foolish. He gives Natalie Wood's Judy and Sal Mineo's Plato the same patient attention, and the three performances are the reason we recommend the film. William H. Ziegler's editing gives the police station encounters time to grow uncomfortable. That patience matters: we have to spend time with Jim's difficulty in expressing himself, rather than simply register that he is upset.
Dean's gestures can still seem exaggerated, and the writing does not always help him. Stewart Stern's screenplay for Rebel Without a Cause makes the parents responsible for almost everything, narrowing its account of why Jim is unhappy. Yet Dean makes the pressure to prove himself credible, particularly the fear of being thought a coward. Start with Rebel Without a Cause, and notice how much of the performance depends on Dean being funny.
Biography
James Dean was an American actor. He was born on 8 February 1931 in Marion, Indiana, and died on 30 September 1955 in a car crash near Cholame, California.
Dean appeared in three major films. He played Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Jett Rink in Giant (1956). He received posthumous Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for the first and third of these roles.
Before his film career, Dean studied theatre at the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked in television and on the stage.
