Rebel Without a Cause (1955) on Netflix
New in Los Angeles, Jim Stark is picked up for public drunkenness and meets Plato and Judy at the police station. At Dawson High, a bully named Buzz Gunderson challenges him.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.6/10104,271 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
After moving to Los Angeles, teenager Jim Stark is arrested for public drunkenness. At the police station he meets Plato, a neglected boy, and Judy, who clashes with her father. Jim's own parents argue constantly, and his father refuses to stand up to his mother. At Dawson High, Jim becomes friends with Plato, who looks up to him, while Judy belongs to a gang led by Buzz Gunderson. On a school trip to Griffith Observatory, Buzz challenges Jim to a knife fight. Jim wins, but Buzz then proposes a "chickie run" with stolen cars. Jim asks his father how to defend his honor, but his father advises him to avoid confrontation.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before casting Natalie Wood as Judy, director Nicholas Ray had considered Debbie Reynolds, Margaret O'Brien, Kathryn Grant and Pat Crowley for the part.
- Natalie Wood nearly lost the role of Judy because Ray thought she seemed too wholesome, until a car accident put her in the hospital, where a doctor called her a "goddamn juvenile delinquent" and she used the line to demand the part from Ray at his bedside visit.
SPOILER
Actor Sal Mineo later said his character Plato was conceived as gay, calling him, in his words, effectively the first gay teenager depicted in film, which he believed was tied to the character's fate in the story.- Warner Bros. initially treated Rebel Without a Cause as a cheap B-movie and shot it in black and white, but switched to color mid-production once studio head Jack L. Warner realized James Dean was becoming a star, forcing many scenes to be reshot.
- The abandoned mansion where Jim, Judy and Plato hide out was the William O. Jenkins House, previously used as a filming location in Sunset Boulevard, and it was torn down just two years after Rebel Without a Cause was shot there.
- British censors cut most of the switchblade fight and gave the film an X-rating, New Zealand banned it outright in 1955 over fears it would incite teenage delinquency before allowing a cut R16 version on appeal, and Spain banned it until 1964, forcing it to be smuggled in for private screenings.
- Columnist Army Archerd wrote that the 1955 box-office success of Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle set off a "chain reaction" in Hollywood, with every studio afterward rushing out its own film about troubled youth.
- Leonard Rosenman's score has outlived the film's original release, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing a suite of his music and staging screenings of Rebel Without a Cause accompanied by a live orchestra.
