How ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ Immortalized Teen Angst

On October 27, 1955, The New York Times published its review of Rebel Without a Cause. The headline read simply: “Delinquency.” Critic Bosley Crowther described director Nicholas Ray’s film as “a violent, brutal and disturbing picture of modern teenagers.”

“Young people neglected by their parents or given no understanding and moral support by fathers and mothers who are themselves unable to achieve balance and security in their homes are the bristling heroes and heroines of this excessively graphic exercise,” Crowther breathlessly wrote, adding that Rebel “is a picture to make the hair stand on end.”

Seventy years later, Rebel Without a Cause is recognized as an undisputed classic. It is among the “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” films in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry and was one of the American Film Institute’s 100 best American movies produced during the first century of filmmaking. It stands as a monument to star James Dean, defining his screen persona and legacy. And it is widely considered to have given rise to the modern teen movie, simultaneously revolutionizing the way teenagers were depicted on film and accelerating the cultural understanding of teenagers as a demographic—the term teenager had only entered popular use a decade earlier.

Crowther’s 1955 review was typical of the film’s reception at the time of its release. Critics largely praised Rebel’s performances—most notably Dean’s, but also those of costars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo as youngsters in crisis.

The film asks, “Why are these relatively affluent teenagers who should be happy with their lot—why are they so dissatisfied and why are they getting involved in bad deeds?” explains Glyn Davis, professor of film studies at the University of St Andrews.

Adolescents acting out was hardly a new phenomenon, but in affluent postwar America, the issue—especially as it related to middle class young people—became a national preoccupation. In 1953, the U.S. Senate went so far as to establish its Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, particularly focused on the emerging pop media that teenagers consumed.

It is difficult from a historical perspective to tell whether this was merely a media-driven moral panic, notes Davis, who wrote a book about Rebel Without a Cause for the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series. He cites cultural historian Thomas Hine, who observed in The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (2000) that after World War II, teens came to embody adults’ fears that young people might “go totally out of control.”

The press amplified public fears that juvenile crime was spreading. Articles like “Juvenile Crime: Is Your Boy Safe?” (Newsweek, November 9, 1953) and “Growing: Delinquency Is Blamed on Homes” (Daily Times-News, November 10, 1953) warned of the trend. But as Davis notes, even Hines remains uncertain whether concerns about juvenile delinquency in the 1950s were justified.

Regardless, Hollywood capitalized on the moment, producing what Davis describes as a “trilogy” of notable films centered on teenagers running amok: The Wild One (1953), Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause.

Among these films, Rebel stands out as the only one told from its teenage characters’ perspectives, sometimes literally, Davis says. In one famous moment, Dean’s character, Jim, is upside down on the sofa, and the film cuts to an upside down point-of-view shot. Ray also cast real teenagers—Wood and Mineo were both 16 during production—lending to the film’s authenticity.

“‘Without a Cause’ is a great title, but the causes are pretty evident from the get-go when you realize how dysfunctional these three families are,” Davis says. “We very quickly get what their family dynamics are and how there are problems for all three of the leads with their family setups, and that that is the source of the problem.”

Davis notes that while the film shows the appeal of rebellion, it also leaves us with its dire consequences: The violent deaths of two high school students within the span of 24 hours. All this dysfunction stems from Freudian ideas—in Jim’s case, an overbearing mother and a weak father; for Wood’s character, Judy, a withholding father uncomfortable with his daughter’s blossoming maturity; in Mineo’s character, Plato, it’s the absence of parents. These concepts might seem dated and misogynistic to audiences today, but it’s useful to consider Rebel in the context of the postwar popularity of psychoanalysis, Davis says. During this period, “psychoanalysis became identified with the ‘establishment’ in psychiatry and society, reconciled with conventional moral and religious values and sexual conventions,” writes Nathan Hale in The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States.

Rebel is particularly notable for its conflicting depictions of masculinity. While Jim’s father is faulted for his lack of assertiveness and Mineo’s nascently queer Plato is killed off, the film also offers a sensitive, empathetic masculinity in Jim.

Viewed today, Rebel Without a Cause is a fundamentally conservative cautionary tale. But its authentic depiction of what Davis describes as “youthful cynicism towards, and frustration with, middle class complacency and suburban banality” spoke to teens in the 1950s. They flocked to cinemas to see Dean, who had died in a car accident at 24, just weeks before the film’s release.

Wood and Mineo, who each received Academy Award nominations for their performances, would also die under mysterious and tragic circumstances in the following decades. Wood drowned off Catalina Island in 1981, and Mineo was fatally stabbed in 1976 outside his Los Angeles apartment—a murder many had speculated was related to homophobia.

The untimely deaths of its three stars seem today to undercut what Davis describes as Rebel’s “pat,” falsely tidy ending, with Jim and Judy essentially walking off into the sunrise together. This morbid legacy has also added further poignancy to their portrayals of troubled, alienated young people careening toward an uncertain future.

Wood and Mineo did live long enough to see the impact Rebel Without a Cause had on Hollywood. The film is considered by many to be the first modern teen movie. Following its success and that of The Wild One and Blackboard Jungle, Hollywood studios began cranking out films for and about teenagers.

“You get this fascinating boom in that brief period in the late ’50s where you could not generate enough teenage movies,” Davis says, “and they coalesce into particular subgenres—horror films, rock ’n’ roll movies, even more films about delinquents, hot rod movies, musicals.”

Many of the tropes we see in teen films come directly from Rebel Without a Cause, Davis explains: the new kid in town, the high school setting, the search for a peer group, the rivalry over a love interest, the queer outsider.

“You get that big explosion [in teen films], and it doesn’t really go away,” he adds. “Teen movies persist over subsequent decades. And so, it’s a form that we can now refer to.”