2024 Film Diary: Rebel Without a Cause
The French subtitles on the version I saw added the unspoken subtext: “We have to do something to know who is a man.”
I’ve seen this movie a lot. It was one of the first films that made me interested in “old Hollywood,” due to a resurgence of its iconography amidst 35th anniversary celebrations in 1990. This also coincided with the debut of Beverly Hills, 90210, which in later seasons would directly lift the Griffith Observatory as a romantic backdrop, but from the start imbued Luke Perry's Dylan McKay character with aesthetics and tics borrowed from both the character Jim Stark and the actor who played him, James Dean. And who could forget (other than everyone) Paula Abdul’s video for her 1991 single “Rush, Rush,” which recreates scenes from Rebel Without a Cause featuring Abdul in the Natalie Wood role of Judy, Keanu Reeves in the role created by Dean and Tom Irwin, the hot dad from My So-Called Life as the sympathetic juvenile cop. Notably there is no equivalent to Sal Mineo’s character Plato in either of these 90s takeoffs, which are chiefly concerned with the erotics of straight teen angst.
All of this preamble is to say that I am quite familiar with Rebel Without a Cause, both as a film and as a library of iconography and mythology. And yet on this viewing, I found it to be almost unbearably intense to watch.
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