Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.
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What critics compared Rebel Without a Cause to
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.
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.
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).
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.
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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).
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."
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.
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"The Drag Race" (1 min.) is a somewhat requisite homage to Rebel Without a Cause, and "Tired At Breakfast" (2 mins.)
"Kids," shot as cinema verite to further blur the line between reality and fiction, has been compared to "Rebel Without a Cause" and other classics of the juvenile delinquent genre.