Someone to look up to

In looking at the structures of Rebel Without a Cause, I am struck by a simple and yet persuasive formal and stylistic element employed by Ray to carry his message about “Today’s Most Vital

Controversy,” as is said in the trailer from the film. Visually Ray’s message is clear. Using a

consistent form and style for certain scenes, Ray sends a message that is even more clear than Chris Wood’s psychoanalytic reading of the film (Finding the Father in Rebel without a Cause,

Wood, 2000). It’s not just about finding the father in Rebel. It’s about finding someone in the world to look up to. A father figure perhaps, but even those can be caricature at times, also through this structured element. Ray’s use of wide angle lenses and stylized lighting sets each one of these scenes apart from the film. Ray’s comment thoughout the film becomes a very simple reworking of a discarded idea of blatant surrealism turned into a simple, subtle use of

light and lens and angle. Rebel Without a Cause becomes a statement of children of the 1950’s caught up in the turmoil of the times, searching for someone to look up to and not finding it in any single source.

As noted by Christian Keathly (Five Cinephiliac Anecdotes, 2006) this moment begins with Judy and her extreme red lips and coat. We first

address her with Officer Ray and her first act is to

look up to him. As they lead into his office though, the camera maintains this warping frame, and dark lighting. The dropped device was supposed to be an extensive surrealistic dream like sequence meant to represent the emotional state of the children in relationship to the authority in their life. Instead, Ray’s choice was to stylize and refrain from leaving the reality of the narrative completely behind.

A strange effect, the wide angle accentuates a tension in the medium shot by bowing the edges of the frame. Looking first at Judy’s interview, both characters are lit by practical spots and

maintain this spatial relationship as Judy goes on to tell her story. She is in the positio

n that we start with for all of the children in the station, seeking someone to look up to, to have notice them, to listen to what they have to say. They are surrealistic portraits in adult clothes and they are searching throughout each of these distorted scenes for someone. We do not have to leave

the narrative’s space to see into the emotional state of each child. The lighting and warping and camera angle communicate this without that departure.

As the film moves through the police station, we come next to Jim seated on the shoeshine stand. At

first we see him, mimicking the siren, the light and angle are fairly plain. It is a plain moment, as the officer addresses him and he continues to act out, contemptuous of the authority

represented. Then Jim crosses the room and we see Plato as

he avoids looking up to or accepting help from Jim. However, when Jim’s parents arrive, the style changes and now we have the warped angle and lighting in full effect, giving us a caricature of parental involvement as his father is forced to look up to him. Jim enhances the effect as the camera angle stays low and he places his father in on the shoeshine

stand and drunkenly mocks

him. “Who are we to respect in this scene?” becomes the question, it is all so warped and ridiculous. This is the most pronounced use of distortion and angle in the film as both sides of the frame bend upwards and inwards.

The scenes in the police station are setting the stage for the rest of the film as these children seek some kind of respectable authority in each scene. Just as Plato and Judy in their respective interviews, every expression of self and dream throughout the movie involves this looking up. It is a Bordwellian indoctrination to the specific language of this narrative, as this element is used extensively in the opening moments and gives usclues to the desires of the characters involved, as well as leaving us a trail to the resolution of the arc which we can recall later. The statement of form and style is readable both separately and as part of the narrative. These scenes are set up to provide resonance later in the film.

The early scenes are set against less stylized scenes where the children are unable to look up.

Plato avoids Jim’s compassion; Judy avoids Jim’s presence and is initially contemptuous of Officer Ray. It seems that director Ray’s statement is clear that these children have no one to look up

to. Each of these scenes carry the same style, the change in light, the change in angle as the police station sets the stage for this idea of searching for that person that they can look up to and believe in. It is part of a dialectic of style when we can see that these are children, and then we can see from inside their emotional state.

A search for a father figure is an over simplification of this film. Of particular note is the ending of

the meeting between Officer Ray and Dean’s character. The camera set-up that has followed us throughout the police station, the low angle, shifting light is pronounced at the meeting, but made subtle by the shot reverse shot editing of the scene. Ray’s argument seems more about

delinquency as a quest for answers, which he sets up beginning with police station quickly followed by the incredibly philosophical planetarium

scene. Here all of the children are looking up for answers, and later Jim discusses them with Plato. It is the emotional state that gets conveyed through lighting and angle. It is the overarching surrealism of emotional states that is represented by Ray’s direction that supports the action. It is not the surreality of Hitchcock’s

Spellbound sequence, or other Dali-esque works. It is a choice of subtlety and impressionism that works its way through the film to make Ray’s statement.

The 1950’s, saw the news fill with stories of a rise in delinquency-

Unless our cultural pattern changes, we can expect a steady increase in juvenile delinquency during the next six years. William MacKay, director of probation of the Third District Juvenile Court of Connecticut, declared Tuesday night.- The Hartford Courant, Mar 17, 1954

U. N. CRIME PARLEY ENDS; Strengthening of Family Urged to Fight Delinquency- The New York Times, September 4, 1955

The decade also saw a rise in ephemeral films and other films, like Blackboard Jungle (1955 also) that dealt with the issue. Each film sought its own way through the problem, either with the scare tactics of 1950’s ephemera, or with an alternate role model like Blackboard Jungle’s streetwise teacher.

In the case of Rebel though, Ray’s stylistic statement appears to be a mixture of family, authority and self: First at the station as he shows us the contempt for authority that the children have. Then to the planetarium as the children look up with equal contempt and some wonder at the stars with no answers, amongst themselves at the bluffs, amongst themselves in the dreamlike scenes at the mansion. Always looking up for answers, always coming away with disappointments, the struggle of the children and the ineffectual actions of the parents are highlighted by this form and style.

In the ending scenes of the planetarium, the surreal angle and upwards looking camera focuses on Jim. He is no caricature now. Instead, the final impressionistic camera and lighting movements focus on him as strong, and place the authority in the lower positions..Finally ending with “I’ll stand up with you son. I’ll be as strong as you need me to be.” In this final moment, the angle treats father and son as equals and hold the surreal for one last second as the shadows of the two men on the observatory merge. The answer is in the camera style as they must look up not only to family and authority but to themselves. Ray’s comment becomes a complex statement, carried throughout the film with a simple formal device of angle and lens and subtle surrealistic style. Deliquency is the product of changing times, and changing relationships as youth searches for someone to look up to for strength. Unlike Blackboard Jungle, where there is the streetwise teacher, unlike the scare-tactics of ephemera of the headlines and the classroom,

Ray offers a complex answer through a simple restructuring of the surreal and the impressionistic. The power of the stylistic expression also lies in the fact that we never leave the temporal or physical space of the film in order to express different states of mind or emotion. It is realism and surrealism blended in a coherent narrative context through subtle use of formal devices. It is a filmic language lesson given to the viewer in the beginning of the film that plays out in the end without the anvil of the blatant dream.