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Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Continue to watch the movie in AFI100, the Check out this 1955 color widescreen film.
The film tells the life of young people in the 1950s after World War II. A young man and his family had just moved to the new city when he was caught in the police station for being drunk. At the police station, he met two young men like him. One is a young boy and the other is a beautiful girl. The young man told a police officer his distress: their family's frequent moves always used themselves as an excuse, and the cowardly father and the nagging mother made him very reluctant to stay at home. After the police officer understood all this, he told the young man that he could come to him directly if he had any troubles in the future. The next day, the young man found out that the girl he met at the police station last night was his neighbor, making him suddenly feel that it was a good day. However, the girl got together with a group of students who were like gangsters. In the class, the young people made strange noises, which attracted the attention of the gangster students, and the boy at the police station yesterday was also looked down upon by the gangster students because of his cowardly behavior. After class, the gangsters decided to teach the two men a lesson. They first punctured the young man's tire, and then the leader attacked him with a dagger. The young man had to fight back, and the two scuffled together. The teacher on the side stopped them, so the two of them made an appointment to test their courage on the edge of the cliff at night. Before setting off in the evening, the young man was a little hesitant. He asked his father if he should go, but the hesitant father strengthened his determination. He came to the edge of the cliff to test his courage with the leader - drive the car to the cliff, whoever jumps first, who is timid! After the start of the race, the leader's clothes were scratched by the door handle, and he did not pick it out in time and fell off the cliff. It was only after the young man jumped out of the car that he discovered all this. After the tragedy, everyone fled. The young man who returned home decided to turn himself in at the police station after speaking to his parents, even though his parents strongly objected to him doing so. In the police station, the young man did not find the police officer who could talk to each other, but met the girl on the way back. It turned out that the girl also ran away from the house because she couldn't bear the abuse from her father. Since both of them wanted to escape from their families, they came to the place where the boy used to hide - an old abandoned house on the hill. The boy was unfortunately bullied by the gangster students on the way home. He returned home excitedly, took out a pistol, and went to the old house to find the young man. After the three met in the old house, they had a good time, and the young man and the girl also fell in love. Afterwards, the gangster students found the old house, and the excited boy shot one of them while evading and fled to the school. Young people and girls chased after him, and also came to the school. The police also learned everything at this time and surrounded the school. Under the coaxing of the young man, he The pistol was unloaded and the gun was returned to the boy. The young man again persuaded the boy to let him out of the school. But when the boy saw a lot of police outside the door, he lost control again and rushed out the door with a pistol, and was shot dead by the police on the spot. And just like that, the movie ends when the boy dies.
The film is called "Revolt without a Cause", but there is a reason for the revolt of the young people in the film. The film focuses on describing three characters: young people, girls, and boys. The resistance of each of them is mainly caused by family reasons. In addition, they are more or less affected by society.
The young male protagonist grew up in a discordant family. The young man's father was submissive, weak, timid, cowardly, and obeyed his wife's words. The young man's mother is a very strong woman, calling his father to and fro, and often rambles on and on, which is annoying. The grandmother is a peacemaker, acting as a reconciler. The young man's family, as he himself put it, is like a "zoo", who wants to live in such an environment? So he resisted, he was drunk, he wanted to escape from the family. Of course, he is also reluctant to let others call himself a coward, which is also the main reason for his fights with gangster students and the guts of the game. However, it can be seen from his behavior that he is not a coward, nor is he a coward as everyone thinks.
The girl's confusion comes from her father's disgust for him. The girl has reached puberty and has become a teenage girl, but she still thinks of herself as a little girl. She needs a kiss from her father and likes to be intimate with her father. And all of this will of course disgust the father, and of course it will make him disgusted with his daughter. All this can only be blamed on the family's lack of communication, and the father won't talk to his daughter? Mother won't chat with her daughter? Or does the girl figure out what state she's in on her own? Or girls get rid of these troubles with other female friends? In short, if there is a good family atmosphere and a few good friends, this problem is not a problem. It can only be said that this family is too old-fashioned, she is too withdrawn, otherwise, will all adolescent girls run away from home?
The reason for the boy's resistance is the lack of care and love from his family. His parents are divorced, and his mother is not at home all the year round. He lives with a nanny every day, which is unbearable for any growing boy. So, he found the hero and heroine who he thought could be his family. Boys invite young people to their homes, and then get angry at the departure of young people and girls, which is the most obvious evidence that boys rely on them. The boy grew up in such a family, it can only be said that it is a kind of sadness for him, because he is unable to change the status quo. He can't be like a young man's family, yearning for the change of his parents, nor can he improve the environment because of the communication between the girl and the family, so the boy is the loneliest person. And all of this explains his act of shooting those dogs on his birthday.
In addition to the three people primarily depicted in the film, other young people in the film also live in a morbid environment. The leader who fell off the cliff said "you have to find something to do", which shows how empty their lives are. Besides, the confrontation between gangster students and young people is meaningless at all, they are really bored and like to find fault. At the end of the film, the three gangsters bully the boy and hang a chicken in front of the young man's house, which is also the manifestation of this boredom. As the saying goes, they are purely "fed up and have nothing to do"!
Taken together, it can be seen that the young people of that era were living in a state of emptiness, loneliness, and boredom, and because of family reasons, they hated family and made them flee from family. And all of this made them lack the most basic moral principles and qualities, making them more and more violent, and finally turned into irresponsible violent conflicts. The leader who fell off the cliff, the gangster who was shot, and the boy who was killed by the police were all victims of it all. If they had a little sanity and morality, these tragedies wouldn't have happened. What the film wants to express is the living state of young people in that era. Through this film, we understand all of this.
Of course, the description of the living conditions of young people in the film is not limited to that era. Many contradictions in the film also exist in modern society. For example, the disharmony in young people's homes, the lack of parental care in boys, etc., these also exist in our times. It can be seen that some contradictions in family issues will not die out because of the change of the times. Analyzing the reasons, the main reason is that the society has not changed much - basically it is still a model of one parent and several children.
Although this film reveals the life of young people in that era, it is a rare youth film in the 1950s, but the film is not good-looking and has many shortcomings. First of all, the movie's portrayal of the heroine is divorced from life. At the beginning, she had a hot fight with the gangster students headed by the leader, but after the leader died, she became like glue with the young people, and she also fell in love, which is too crap! Your classmate died, you fell in love so quickly, is there any humanity? ! Secondly, the relationship between young people and boys is too close, and it is not true that friends and relatives call each other in one day! Third, the reconciliation between the parents of young people at the end of the film is too fake. Could it be because of the death of a boy that they will change their way of life? Not at all close to life. Fourth, the plot of the film is very trivial, which makes the narrative rhythm of the film very protracted. It always changes in different scenes, so that I can't find the main line of the story while watching it, and I feel confused during the process. Fifth, the three of the gangster students did not explain why they appeared at the gate of the police station. This is an obvious plot loophole. The above are the irrationalities and shortcomings that I can think of. In short, I feel that the story of this movie was pieced together in order to reflect the huge contradictions and conflicts, and it cannot stand careful scrutiny.
The only attraction in the whole film is the two duels. One is the young man fighting with the leader with daggers, and the other is driving the car to the cliff to test his courage. These two scenes, under the tense music rendering, deeply attracted my heart. Who will win and who will lose, and who will die, the suspense is set very well. Moreover, in these two confrontations, the camera and editing are also very good, pushing the tension between the characters and the environment to the peak of the film. Aside from these two scenes and the shortcomings mentioned above, the rest is pretty mediocre.
Finally, although the film was released in 1955, it was in color and widescreen, and it drastically changed my perception of 1950s cinema. Moreover, there are not many dialogues in this film, which also made me realize the characteristics of new era films: there is no more frequent and dense dialogues with the speed of a machine gun, it looks much more comfortable! This film, among the 1950s films I have seen, is very unusual!
The film's leading actor is played by James Dean. According to the information, he died young and only starred in three films in his life, but in 1999, he was selected by the American Film Institute as the 18th greatest actor of the century. But in my opinion, he didn't give me any special feeling, just an ordinary young actor. The heroine is Natalie Wood, the heroine in "West Side Story" that I watched two days ago. Compared with her in "West Side Story", she is more beautiful and younger in this film. Sal Mineo, who plays the boy, feels the same to me. After checking the information of the three actors, I found a strange coincidence-the three leading actors did not die of natural causes, but suffered accidents. James Dean was killed in a car accident, Natalie Wood was killed by falling into the water, and Sal Mineo was stabbed to death by a stranger on the road, what a strange thing! Are the three leading actors assassinated or cursed because they offended someone or a god when they made this movie?
Overall, this is a period film that reflects the problems that existed in the lives of young people in the fifties of the last century. Being selected for the AFI100 is also due to the historical significance of the film's theme, but from the point of view of the film itself, it is not a perfect film, but a mediocre film with many shortcomings.
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Rebel Without a Cause.Rebel.Without.A.Cause.1955.HDTV.MiniSD-TLF
2011-09-22
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