Rebel Without a Cause

This cult and box-office hit immortalized James Dean. As director Nicholas Ray’s best-known work, it began a trend of films about adolescent problems and, paradoxically, a wave of fluffy teen movies studios used to draw a new and young audience to theaters. Millions of American teens, bored with the insincere films of their parents that filled Hollywood screens of the 1950s and the fraying American Dream, identified with Jim Stark, the titular rebel and sensitive social reject. Young Americans saw on-screen forlorn teenage outsiders, struggling with their parents, teachers and themselves, all souped-up by the exceptional roles of Dean and the extraordinary Sal Mineo as Plato.

American Film Festival catalog

Nicholas Ray is a Hollywood legend and outsider beloved by French New Wave filmmakers, who saw in him one of the most important auteurs of American cinema. He shone with Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, and his oeuvre brims with existential and fatalistic noir films (In a Lonely Place, They Live by Night), Western variations (Johnny Guitar, The True Story of Jesse James), bold social commentary (Knock at Any Door, Bigger than Life), war movies (the great Bitter Victory), and even high budget biblical cinema (King of Kings). He stopped directing regularly in the 1960s, but would return with unusual films such as his avant-garde take on America in We Can’t Go Home Again or the mockumentary Lightning over Water made (on his deathbed) with Wim Wenders.

American Film Festival catalog