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Connections, in both directions
La La Land (2016)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
influenced by Rebel Without a Cause (1955), In a Lonely Place (1950)
Visuals
At the Griffith Observatory, where Sebastian and Mia go after having just seen it in “Rebel Without a Cause,” they enter the planetarium and are swept up into the stars, and it’s a transcendently goofy, gorgeously blissed-out moment.
The pair goes to see “ Rebel Without a Cause ” (ending in one of the most magical scenes in years) and films like “ Casablanca ” and “Bringing Up Baby” are name-dropped.
The couple will later rendezvous at a screening of Rebel Without a Cause, but their date is cut short when the celluloid combusts (sell-by date passed indeed).
And Chazelle is fearless about shaping moments that some might find corny: In one of the most astonishing dance sequences, Mia and Sebastian, inspired by a viewing of Rebel Without a Cause, sneak into the Griffith Observatory after hours and literally drift off the ground and into a field of stars.
It also uses self-aware humor, a vivid candy-colored palette, and a series of iconic LA settings, from the Angels Flight funicular to Griffith Observatory, where Rebel Without A Cause set its most famous sequence.
It’s a charming setup that veers from a house party to the Warner Bros. lot and eventually to an old movie house playing “Rebel Without a Cause,” wherein the projector hits a snag just as they lock lips.
Rebels of the Neon God (1994)
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang
influenced by Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Themes Visuals
These are elements that transcend time and geography as evidenced by the magnificently titled “Rebels of the Neon God.” Made in Taiwan in 1992 but just now being released in the U.S. its themes harken back to 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause” while also feeling completely contemporary.
Tsai was still young enough that he felt compelled to slap a poster of James Dean circa “Rebel Without a Cause” in major parts of his frames, to show where his allegiances lie.
Moreover, the reference to Rebel Without a Cause is clear: Tsai's rebels have no cause for a much different reason than the titular figure of the Nicholas Ray classic.
The movie includes a direct homage to 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause,” but in spirit it’s closer to the debuts of Jean-Luc Godard and Wong Kar-wai, who also blended crime drama with love story and city symphony.
As the title suggests, Rebels of the Neon God could have been merely an updated version of Nicholas Ray's Rebel without a Cause, set in another time and place.
Brimming with homages to just about every memorable western imaginable, particularly John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), Once Upon a Time in the West is a brilliant metafilm that plays as both a stirring melodrama and a film geek’s cornucopia of in-jokes and movie references.
It's easy to trainspot the picture's references (and it was probably even easier back in the late sixties, when a film like Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar was little more than a decade old), but imperative that you not begrudge the movie its homages.
It was produced by a man named Samuel Bronston, who for a short span of time in the '60s was hellbent on making himself a star in the world of florid history epics: the cynical among us might notice that Cecil B. DeMille had just died, leaving a vacuum in the world of gigantic spectacles, one that a a cunning producer might be able to jump into, especially if he had the balls to title his first movie in that vein almost, but not quite, the exact same as DeMille's much-loved 1927 The King of Kings , to which it is otherwise not related.
In this respect the film reminded me of Nicolas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause ?
It's Rebel Without a Cause for the fins-de-sicles, sharing many of the same strengths, and most of the weaknesses, of Nicholas Ray's ultimately populist classic.
It speaks to the disaffected and disillusioned like no other film I have seen, my generation's Rebel Without A Cause .
Ecranizare a romanului omonim semnat de scriitorul american Chuck Palahniuk si publicat in anul 1996, Fight Club a fost comparat in istoria cinematografie cu Rebel Without a Cause (1955) si The Graduate (1967).
If that’s true, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 crazy quilt — which is screening this week in a new 35mm print at the Brattle — is an arena where ignorant armies clash by night, Matthew Arnold being one of the few outposts of Western civilization not visited in a movie that cites Velázquez, Renoir, Van Gogh, Picasso, Modigliani, Aucassin et Nicolette, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Balzac, Hugo, Poe, Robert Browning, Baudelaire, Jules Verne, Rimbaud, Joyce, Céline, Scott Fitzgerald, García Lorca, Les Pieds Nickelés (a French comic book), Beethoven, Madama Butterfly, Mack Sennett, Laurel & Hardy, Pépé le Moko, Johnny Guitar, and every one of Godard’s previous films — not to mention Standard Oil (“Put a tiger in the tank!”), Playboy, Coca-Cola, the invisible panty girdle, Algeria, Vietnam, JFK’s assassination, and the Statue of Liberty relocated to the Île de la Cité in Paris.
He liberally references his favorite films and filmmakers (from Hitchcock to Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar) and he has Samuel Fuller deliver the film's most famous line: "Film is like a battleground.
The Fast and the Furious (2001)
Directed by Rob Cohen
influenced by Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Plot Themes
An updating (or rip-off) of sorts of "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955), this movie finds troubled teen Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) shipped off to live with his estranged father in Tokyo when his mother grows tired of dealing with his constant drag-racing antics.
"The Fast and the Furious" is "Rebel Without a Cause" without a cause.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Directed by Mel Gibson
influenced by King of Kings (1961)
Themes Plot
This movie is no more anti-Jewish than Jesus Of Nazareth, or King Of Kings, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Moreover, the movie doesn't even try to encapsulate the Christian message in the way that the second "King of Kings" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told" did so lovingly.
Which is to say that, in its presentation of everything from Jesusâ?? interrogation by the Sanhedrin (and later by Pilate) through to the crucifixion itself, the film (adapted by Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald from the four Gospels and, controversially, from the published visions of a pair of 19th-century nuns) does not differ significantly in content or ideology from the modern cinemaâ??s other mainstream renderings of these events (Nicholas Rayâ??s King of Kings, Zeffirelliâ??s Jesus of Nazareth, et al.).
Godard includes moments of political discourse, as well as references to his favourite films – Gösta Berling (1924), Johnny Guitar (1954), The Searchers (1956) – and quips about the relation of art to to reality, but his main goal was to make his arrogant cruel bourgeois couple literally go through hell.
And the Liberation Front that kidnaps our heroes uses movie titles as code names in their radio transmissions: The Searchers, Battleship Potemkin, and Johnny Guitar, all Godard favorites from his movie critic days.
To buttress the meaning of his movie, Godard quotes from Dante, Holderlin, Brecht, and Louis Lumière, among others, and makes passing references to many movies, including Rio Bravo, Bigger than Life, Hatari!, Psycho, Vanina Vanini, The Big Knife, and his own Vivre sa vi.
Numerous posters for influential films are glimpsed in the background, while at one point Paul mentions Nicholas Ray’s classic film Bigger Than Life .
(We find out what's playing at the theaters in Rome: Rio Bravo and Bigger Than Life.
The picture is beautifully paced, with an exhilarating, comically violent opening, a halcyon middle section where, in what could be viewed as a sideways homage to "Rebel Without a Cause," our rootless wanderers share a brief respite in an empty, lavish mansion, and a finale filled with light and color and movement (as well as piles of vanquished zombies).
Fleischer has made a movie that comes off as easygoing, but actually shows a remarkable amount of discipline: The picture is beautifully paced, with an exhilarating, comically violent opening, a halcyon middle section where, in what could be viewed as a sideways homage to "Rebel Without a Cause," our rootless wanderers share a brief respite in an empty, lavish mansion (I won't tell you whom it belongs to), and a finale filled with light and color and movement (as well as piles of vanquished zombies).
I felt like I was watching a boys' bloodthirsty adventure story -- a blend of pirate saga, 19th-century revenge tale (three parts Dumas to one part Hugo), sword-and-sandal romp, and Viking epic poem, all laced with references to works ranging from Orson Welles's claustrophobic Macbeth (the beginning of the prologue) to Pieter Brueghel's spacious Slaughter of the Innocents (at the end of the prologue) and incorporating romantic touchstones from Potemkin (a stone lion), The Lusty Men (hidden possessions), Chimes at Midnight (thrusts and counterthrusts), and The Shanghai Gesture (prostitutes in hanging cages).
What started as a cautionary thriller about drug abuse (a topic already investigated to the hilt in a vastly superior movie, Bigger Than Life, with James Mason) now turns into a battle between two psychiatrists for the soul of their patient—one who keeps her medicated, the other who turns out to be her lesbian lover.
HH½ Director/editor/cinematographer Steven Soderbergh's alleged final theatrical film is as smart and stylish as one would expect, but like his other recent artsy genre essays — "Haywire," "Contagion" — its duller than its sources (in this case, "Bigger Than Life," "Basic Instinct" and "Psycho").
The opposites attract spark between Tessa Young (Josephine Langford, sister of Katherine) and Hardin Scott (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, nephew of Ralph and Joseph) also calls to mind generational touchstones like Rory and Jess on Gilmore Girls , Betty and Jughead on Riverdale , or even Jim Stark and Judy way back in Rebel Without A Cause.
When "Divergent" director Neil Burger sought inspiration for the movie's teenage heroine, there was one character that immediately leaped to mind -- James Dean's Jim Stark, the rebellious protagonist who defies his parents and peers in 1955's "Rebel Without a Cause."
A History of Violence (2005)
Directed by David Cronenberg
influenced by Bigger Than Life (1956)
Themes
A History of Violence, which was written by Josh Olson, takes its cue from a tradition of films — Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet among them — that use the iconography of the American Dream to lead us toward an American nightmare.
He moves through the film like he considers this is "Rebel Without A Cause," and since both he and de Ravin have to contend with their fathers (Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper, repectively) as major parts of their pain in the film, the "Rebel" comparison is particularly apt.
But when he meets a relentlessly quirky working-class girl (Emilie De Ravin) with her own daddy issues, his "Rebel Without a Cause" mantle begins to slip.
Screenwriter Will Fetters and director Allen Coulter obviously had memories of Nicolas Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause” (1965) in mind here, envisioning Pattinson as this generation’s James Dean.
Just like Dean’s character Jimmy Stark in “Rebel Without a Cause,” Tyler suffers from perpetual melancholy and disaffection, lacking a place he can relax and call home.
In “Remember Me,” Robert Pattinson, the producer and leading man, displays genuine acting chops as a “Rent”-related cousin of the “Rebel Without a Cause.”
Like James Dean smoking and brooding through Rebel Without a Cause, Robert Pattinson puffs and sulks - often, impressively, at the same time - in the intense romantic drama Remember Me.
There isn’t the tension that one could cut with a knife, nor the kind of diva-ish melodrama courtesy of Joan Crawford in “Johnny Guitar.”
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced by King of Kings (1961)
Visuals
Strangely, Scorsese was inspired by -- and dearly loves -- those humongous pageants made in the 50's and 60's like The Robe, King of Kings, and The Bible.
Bones and All (2022)
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
influenced by They Live by Night (1949)
Themes Characters
Guadagnino’s darkly dreamy film, which opens in select theaters Friday, has some of the spirit of iconic love-on-the-run films like Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” and Nicholas Ray’s “They Live By Night” — movies that as open-road odysseys double as portraits of America.
Maren and Lee aren’t Edward and Bella; they’re Bowie and Keechie from They Live By Night, Bart and Annie from Gun Crazy, Kit and Holly from Badlands, Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers.