Rebel Without A Cause

The Arc is in Camera

Using the camera to do more than just document the story is the power of cinema. In Christian Keathly’s Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees he notes that the first few drafts of Rebel without a Cause were “filled with lengthy Surrealist scenes that were intended to dramatize the various anxieties of the characters.” (Keathly, 168). These scenes were the viewer stylistic visual expression of those ideas. Ray dropped these dream-like, slow motion, camera effects-driven scenes originally conceived which would have departed from the film’s temporal space. Instead his choice was to remain inside the diegetic space. Inside that space, however, the camera placement, lens use and lighting choices come together to bend and color our perceptions of each moment. These stylistic elements then carry through the film a subtler message of the narrative, and express the emotional states of the characters with an hallucinogenic power appropriate to the Surrealist inspiration that Ray was working from.

The missing Surrealist scenes were supposed to dissolve out of the films real space and be filled with symbolic representations of each of the children’s emotional states. The scene described in detail by Keathly (Keathly, 169) recalls immediately Hitchcock’s use of the Surrealist dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) that was designed by Salvadore Dali. The missing scenes are not truly gone though, but subdued by and incorporated into the narrative of the film. The original intent of those scenes was to provide insight into the anxieties and emotions of the three main characters. This intention carries on without ever departing from the narrative space. It is a subtle sublimation of the surreal into what looks and reads as realism.

Using these stylistic elements, Rebel becomes an episodic series of color drenched dreams. The message that Ray creates with his dream sequence is one of seeking someone to look up to. Chris Wood’s psychoanalytic reading of the film (Finding the father in Rebel Without a Cause, 2000) suggests that these children are all looking for a father figure. Ray’s message though seems to be more about finding someone in the world to look up to. A father figure perhaps, but even those figures are made ridiculous by Ray’s camera at times. Judy's father is oblivious to his daughter's needs. Jim's father is a comedy. Plato has no one except the nanny. The women in all three cases are two dimensional at best. Ray’s vision becomes one of children caught up in the juvenile turmoil of the 1950’s searching for someone to look up to and not finding it.

Beginning in the police station, the children, James (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and Plato (Sal Mineo) are surreal portraits in adult clothes. In the first interview, with Judy, what we notice immediately is the color. Judy’s red lips and red coat command most of the attention. The saturation of the color does charge the scene. In a subtler way the stylized cinematography transparently accentuates the tensions of the scenes.

Judy’s first act is to look up at Officer Ray. She is lead into his office. In this place, the dropped scene dissolves the wall behind Judy and places her in a dungeon-like prison setting. Here though, the effect remains, without the trouble of special effects and editing. Judy is isolated, but by lighting. The rest of the police station around her is dark in comparison. She avoids contact with other people in the station, and when she looks up at Officer Ray, she does so with contempt.

The missing element or rather the subdued surrealistic element is replaced by a very simple, consistent system with a very simple message. It is a system of actions and camera angle that remains consistent throughout the film. This action is the simple act of looking up. In the police station, Judy and Plato both encounter Jim and look up to and then avoid his contact. They are still seeking authority that they can respect. In the police station, this act of looking up becomes focused on Officer Ray.

The camera follows Judy into the office where she is interviewed and introduces the stylistic element that will stay with the viewer for the rest of the film. It is subtle, and yet enhances the message of separation from authority that the children have. This style is the use of a wide angle lens that distorts the image, and lighting that focuses the viewers attention. It also conveys an emotional state at the same time. In the first moments of Judy’s interview, the frame itself is pulling the two well lit people in the room apart. There is an actual visible tension between them, as if they both occupy a drop of water about to burst. Inspecting this frame gives away its very unrealistic, surrealistic light. The end of the desk is lit from the floor, Judy and Officer Ray both have lights on them and in most cases appear to illuminate one another. The desk lamp light really only illuminates itself. This is the lighting and visual state of a dream office.

When the film moves to Jim seated on the shoeshine stand, at first the lighting and angle are fairly plain. It is a plain and realistic moment when the officer addresses him for mimicking a siren outside. Jim continues to act out, echoing Judy’s contempt for authority. Jim crosses the room to try and give Plato his coat, but as with Judy, Plato reacts by hiding his face from Jim. However, when Jim's Parents arrive the style shifts and now the viewer is returned to the warped frame and lighting. This scene gives us a caricature of parental involvement, as Jim’s father is forced to look up to him. The camera angle is low and the edges of the frame bow outwards accentuating the tension between characters even more. Jim enhances this effect with his actions as he places his father on the shoeshine stand and drunkenly mocks him. “Who are we to respect in this scene?” becomes the question. The framed scene is bent and ridiculous; the shot is unreal in its feel and look. On examination, as with Judy and Officer Ray, the characters appear to illuminate each other. Once again, the characters occupy this space that is about to burst apart. The shots appear very much like reality, but it is the reality of a dream where light and vision do not necessarily obey the rules, but rather they obey the feelings of the dreamer.

Later, when Jim finds someone to respect in Officer Ray, this is powerfully enacted cinematically. The changes in lighting are drastic in Officer Ray’s office when we examine the shots outside of the time line. The lighting is subtle from shot to reverse shot. If we look at the changes without the narrative, independent of the editing which hides the changes in light, the power of the cinematography becomes clear. The light is changing in the background all the time,. guiding us through a dream state of emotional values. Jim finds someone to look up to. The lights come on. It is classic and melodramatic theater, hidden in the editing of cinema. Jim finds someone to look up to. The viewer shares his emotional and visual experience.

The scenes in the police station are setting the stage for the rest of the film, as these three children seek some kind of respectable authority in each scene. The police station is an opening road map to the story’s outcome. The thickness of the surreal elements in these first few scenes give the viewer a framework of visual cues with which to construct what David Bordwell identifies as the fabula (Bordwell, 29-31) of the story. This powerful combination of action and style forms an identifiable visual cue to the movements of the story. Each time the story seeks to express the emotional state of the children, the action involves looking up, either successfully, or unsuccessfully. It is Ray’s statement, and as a structure it is readable both separately and as part of the narrative. It is narratively and aesthetically meaningful at the same time.

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 educational films and feature 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 Sid Davis’s1950’s educational films (Alcohol is Dynamite, 1958 ), or with an alternate role model like Blackboard Jungle’s "streetwise teacher." Ray also made an earlier picture dealing with juvenile delinquency starring Humphrey Bogart (Knock on Any Door, 1949). Knock on Any Door however focuses on not being able to get out of the ghetto, and is very straight forward, black and white and very much a production of Bogart's.

Ray’s interest in the surrealist movement actually starts just after Knock on Any Door, “I wish Luis Buñuel had made Los Olvidados (1950) before I made Knock on Any Door (1949), because I would have made a hell of a lot better film." While Los Olvidados is not necessarily a surrealist film, Buñuel was a surrealist filmmaker, and the surreal often crept into his films even without overt Dali-esque episodes. Consider scenes from Las Hurdes, Buñuel ’s 1933 surrealistic documentary, where there is always a question as to what is real in the film. In one scene, the narrator is describing the treacherous mountains where not even mountain goats are capable of safe travel. A mountain goat falls off the side of the mountain. Yet, there is a puff of smoke in the corner of the frame. Creating a question in the mind of the viewer using Surrealist techniques is clearly what inspired Nicholas Ray after watching Buñuel's work, even though their political and social agenda's are obviously different.

Although Ray follows along the lines of Sid Davis’s model in the end (the child who fails to find someone to look up to dies), Ray’s statement is complex in form and narrative, moving organically through the story line, letting the story itself grow up with Jim. In part, Plato’s death is more like Buñuel’s puff of smoke. Nicholas Ray is not Sid Davis, and also doesn’t want to remake Knock on Any Door. He also isn't Luis Buñuel, and he doesn't want to remake the sadness and corruption of Los Olvidados. The message becomes a mixture of family, authority and self. First at the station as he shows us the contempt for authority each child has. Then to the planetarium as the children look up with equal contempt and some wonder at the stars with no answers. It is impossible to look up to something that ultimately finds you insignificant seems to be the message of the planetarium. Then amongst themselves at the bluffs. Here, they look to themselves and the only way to look is down into the black ocean. Then the three children together at the mansion. They find some comfort here, looking up to each other in the fantasies of home and of teenage love. They are always looking up for answers, always coming away with disappointments. The struggles of the children and the ineffectual actions of the parents are highlighted and shaped by the cinematic form and style. The children look up and we look upwards with them, synesthetically sharing their dream as vision becomes feeling.

In the ending scenes of the planetarium, the surreal 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 Jim's father saying “I’ll stand up with you son. I’ll be as strong as you need me to be.” In this final moment, the angle of camera and lens treats father and son as equals and hold the surreal of one last movement. As the viewer looks up to them, 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 through the film with a simple formal device of angle and lens and subtle surrealistic style. Delinquency is the product of changing times and relationships as youth searches for someone to look up to for strength. Unlike Blackboard Jungle, where there is a street wise teacher, unlike the scare-tactics of educational films, the headlines and the classroom, Ray offers a complex and artful expression through a simple restructuring of the surreal and impressionistic. The power of this stylistic expression also lies in the fact that we never leave the temporal or physical space of the film in order to express different state 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.