What is Rebel Without a Cause about?
Rebel Without a Cause is a coming of age story that tries to put the woes of being a teenager into the context of the universe as a whole. For the 1950s, the nihilistic, existential journey Jim Stark goes on was perfect for a generation trying to find its way in the aftermath of World War II. How do you take a suburban teenager’s melodrama seriously in the aftermath of the atomic bomb? As much as Rebel sympathizes with the youth, it brings Jim to a point where he loses his innocence and has an experience that causes him to understand his parents. He grows up and becomes a little less disillusioned. Rebel’s a seminal film that helped lay the groundwork for much of the auteur era that would arrive in the 60s and 70s.
Cast
- Jim Stark – James Dean
- Frank Stark – Jim Backus
- Carol Stark – Ann Doran
- Judy – Natalie Wood
- Judy’s dad – William Hopper
- Judy’s mom – Rochelle Hudson
- Plato – Sal Mineo
- Plato’s maid – Marietta Canty
- Buzz – Corey Allen
- Inspector Ray Fremick – Edward Platt
- Dr. Minton – Ian Wolfe
- Crunch – Frank Mazzola
- Goon – Dennis Hopper
- Written by – Stewart Stern | Irving Shulman
- Directed by – Nicholas Ray
Understanding Rebel Without a Cause
Jim and the clapping monkey
The opening scene of Rebel Without a Cause finds a drunk Jim Stark on the ground, in what seems to be the middle of town. In front of him, one of those toy monkeys holding cymbals and you wind it up so the arms move to make it look like the monkey’s performing. A child’s toy. Jim holds it. Lays it down. Covers it with newspaper, as if tucking it in. Later, at the police station, he refuses to give the toy up, is so adamant about it that the cops acquiesce.
The primary information conveyed there is that Jim is nurturing. He cares and wants to protect. It’s just a silly toy monkey. But he treats it with compassion and grace. You can dive a bit deeper, too, and look at the setting. It’s nighttime. They’re on the street. There’s trash around. You get the sense of the world being this dark, cold, lonely place. Jim’s demonstration of kindness is a direct contrast to that environment, offering warmth and humanity.
What do we see with the very next scene?
Jim’s at the police precinct and sees Plato, on a bench, shivering, so goes over and offers a jacket. It’s the exact thing he just did with the toy, covering it with the newspaper, but this time he’s trying to show kindness to an actual person. These two moments, back to back, define Jim as someone who wants to do good, be good, someone who cares.
Setting up the character this way establishes why he’s so quick to try and take care of Plato. Why he almost immediately feels a parental concern for someone who is more of a peer. It’s an important psychological foundation that the rest of the movie relies upon.
Jim, Judy, and Plato at the police precinct
The police precinct has some great stuff going on. First, who/what are police? Authority figures. Then the precinct is police headquarters, which you can also describe as their home. It becomes this recreated domestic situation. The three teens in the house of authority figures who end up acting like pseudo-parents.
Initially, we don’t know what brings Jim, Judy, and Plato in. But we quickly find out—all three have issues with their fathers. Jim feels his dad’s a coward and that makes him angry. Judy fears her dad doesn’t care about her anymore and that makes her seek attention. And Plato’s dad isn’t even in the picture so he gets violent.
So there’s an interesting intersectionality between society’s parents, the police, and actual parents. In this first scene, the police are the patient ones, the thoughtful ones, the helpful ones. While the real parents continue to frustrate and disappoint. Jim’s dad lets the mom walk over him. Judy’s dad doesn’t come to get her. And neither will Plato’s.
This sets up a contrast we’ll talk about when we get to the end of Rebel Without a Cause.
More groups, more rules
We leave the police precinct and pick up with Jim the morning before school. He tries to befriend Judy but runs into her group. And they’re a big, rowdy bunch, their own solar system with their own laws. They serve as a microcosm of school as a whole. When Jim gets to the building, he once again runs afoul of established rules and dynamics, like not stepping on the seal that’s on the ground in front of the main entrance. He almost walks into the wrong bathroom.
This section establishes another motif—fitting in. Jim doesn’t fit in with his own family. The police brought him in because he was breaking rules. Then Judy’s group doesn’t accept him right away because of their unspoken rules. And then at the school there are more things Jim has to learn/abide by.
The planetarium
I unconsciously made the solar system metaphor in the previous section. But it’s fitting because Jim’s trying to join this group that has an established sun and planets. He doesn’t just like Judy but likes the rebellious attitude he sees at the planetarium when Buzz jokes “I’m a crab”, after the reference to Cancer, and pinches the nose of a friend. So he tries to fit in by, after the mention of Taurau, mooing. No one laughs. Instead, the very people Jim wanted to impress end up mocking him. He fails to fit in, to join the system this group has established. This becomes his driving purpose—to fit in. Which gets back to earlier in the police station when Jim said how his parents thought he’d make friends if they moved somewhere new.
The lecturer’s speech
The planetarium lecturer says: An immensity of our universe. For many days before the end of our Earth, people will look into the night sky and notice the star, increasingly bright and increasingly near. As this star approaches us, the weather will change. The great polar fields of the North and South will rot and divide, and the seas will turn warm. The last of us search the heavens and stand amazed, for the stars will still be there, moving through their ancient rhythms. The familiar constellations that illuminate our night will seem as they have always seemed—eternal, unchanged, and little moved by the shortness of time between our planet’s birth and its demise… [We get the bit about the various constellations] …long after we have gone. And while the flash of our beginning has not yet traveled the light years into distance, has not yet been seen by planets deep within the other galaxies, we will disappear into the blackness of the space from which we came, destroyed as we began, in a burst of gas and fire! The heavens are still and cold once more. In all the immensity of our universe and the galaxies beyond, the Earth will not be missed. Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of man seem trivial and naive, indeed. And man, existing alone, seems himself an episode of little consequence.
This may seem like a bunch of disconnected randomness, but it’s important. Dialogue like this usually is. It’s often a clue to a work’s deeper theme or meaning, what the story unfolding represents.
We’ve talked about how earlier scenes got at fitting in. Fitting in with society, with your family, with your peers, etc. Now, the lecturer discusses how humans fit within the scope of the universe. And his ultimate point is that “the problems of man seem trivial, naive.” Basically saying that all the things you think are important are, in the grand scheme of things, actually pretty stupid. It’s a sobering moment, especially following Buzz and Jim making fun of the constellations. Whatever juvenile humor had been present in the students gets wiped out by the planetarium recreating the end of the world. They’re all shaken.
The final line, about man existing alone, relates a bit more specifically to Jim. He had just said to Plato that “I don’t want to make friends.” And had been, up to this point, “okay” with being a loner. Except the film tells us that a man alone is an episode of little consequence. Meaning that our importance in life is relative to our connection with others.
The knife fight and the chicken run and Buzz’s death
The planetarium scene introduces existentialism into Rebel, specifically around ideas of death and loneliness. Then it moves right into Jim and Buzz having a knife fight and going on a chicken run. Both are social events that are, ultimately, quite stupid, but the mortal risk they pose creates a sense of vitality that actually bonds the two guys. As confrontational as Buzz had been, he takes to Jim. Jim did, afterall, have the guts to pick up the knife, to feel the blade and not run away. Then Jim shows up, without seemingly any concern, to drive a car towards a cliff. That earns enough respect that Buzz formally introduces himself and shakes Jim’s hand. Maybe they will be friends? Maybe Jim can be part of the group?
There’s still a youthful innocence that’s present in Buzz, Jim, Judy, etc. They understand the concept of death but they haven’t experienced what it actually means. Then Buzz’s jacket loop catches on the door, meaning he can’t bail, and he goes over the cliff to the rocks below. The group’s innocence goes with him. Suddenly they all experience the reality of the world. The finality of the grave. What did the lecturer say? “Destroyed as we began, in a burst of gas and fire.”
I’m a bit hesitant to say the movie intentionally connected the “burst of gas and fire” from a supernova eradicating our planet to Buzz’s car exploding. But…I mean…I’d also feel remiss if I didn’t point out the correlation between the two. Rebel Without a Cause included the planetarium speech for a reason and introduced the existential concepts for a reason. To immediately follow that up with Buzz’s death leading us into a very serious, consequential second half of the movie…that seems quite purposeful. So, yeah, let’s connect the two.
After the crash, everything changes. The characters have completely different priorities than they had before.
10 years isn’t such a long time?
Prior to going to the “chickie run” you have the big conversation between Jim and his dad. Jim wants advice. The dad doesn’t know how to give it and suggests they make a pros and cons list. Which is just…kind of hilarious. It shows the difference between the practicality of a “dad” vs. the impulsivity of a child.
- Frank: Listen, you’re at a wonderful age. In 10 years, you’ll look back on this and wish that—
- Jim: 10 years! I want it now. I want an answer now. I need one.
- F: Listen, Jimbo, I’m just trying to show you how foolish you are. Why, when you’re older, you’ll look back at this, and you’ll—well, you’ll laugh at yourself for thinking that this is so important. It’s not as if you were alone. This has happened to every boy. It happened to me when I was your age, maybe a year older. Jim!
On the one hand, what the dad says is such classic, practical advice. It’s exactly the kind of thing that a 17-18 year old would roll their eyes at. Which is part of the reason why this movie appealed, and still appeals, so much to teenage angst. That sense of being a rebel and misunderstood. “Dad doesn’t get it. I have to do this. This is important. This is everything.”
On the other hand, as much as the film leans into Jim as a rebel and cool guy, it does seem to take the dad’s perspective. What the dad says echoes what we heard in the planetarium. “Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of man seem trivial and naive, indeed. And man, existing alone, seems himself an episode of little consequence.” Frank argues for Jim to take a step back and have perspective, to realize that in the grand scheme of things (through the infinite reaches of space), that these problems are actually trivial and naive. Frank even throws out the “It’s not as if you were alone” that perfectly parallels “And man, existing alone, seems himself an episode of little consequence.”
So the goal of the scene is to set up the contrast between Jim and his father. Innocence vs experience. In the context of what we learned from the planetarium scene. Which speaks then to Jim’s mindset and ultimately the lessons he needs to learn. But, right now, he’s still caught up in his limited perspective and sense of “no one understands me, certainly not my parents.”
Then Jim goes on the run, Buzz crashes, and nothing will ever be the same. Which brings us to the big blow up between Jim and his parents. But first:
“If only you could have been my dad”
Before Jim has the climactic fight with his parents, he, Judy, and Plato have their first pseudo-family scene. Jim gives Judy her compact she had left at the police station when she was upset that it wasn’t her dad coming to get her. There’s a lot going on there. Judy had said, back then, that she was upset because her dad had freaked out over her makeup. She had kept checking her makeup. And we know she wants her father’s attention and the conflict that brings up between her being a young woman but still “daddy’s little girl” (gross phrase but feels applicable here).
When Jim gives her the compact back, it’s a gesture that causes her to shift her focus from her dad to Jim, as the main “man” in her life. It seems Buzz hadn’t quite earned that. Jim, though, has proven himself a caretaker.
When Jim hands the compact, he says “You want to see a monkey?” Which is a silly kind of dad joke but the important thing is that it ties back to the monkey he found at the beginning, that he was so fond of. It shows that his attachment has shifted from this inanimate object to an actual person. He’s trying to connect rather than stew in his isolation.
Lastly, the same shift Judy feels also happens with Plato. And he brings all the film’s subtext to the surface when he says “If only you could have been my dad.” Both Plato and Judy no longer see Jim as this innocent kid. They look up to him as a man.
It’s one thing for other characters to view Jim as a man. But does he see himself that way? That’s the question heading into the next scene.
Jim’s argument with his parents
This cool thing happens. Jim comes home. He stress-drinks milk. Then he lays upside down on the couch. Everything’s quiet. Until we hear his mom’s voice. “He’s home! Oh, you’re home.” And the camera goes first-person, as if from Jim’s perspective on the couch. So the room is upside down. We see his mom, Carol, walk “up” the stairs, into the living room. The camera slowly rotates around until everything is right-side-up again.
The first thing Jim says is “Can I talk to you guys? I have to talk to somebody.” He’s clearly gone through something and has a lot to express. Which is made evident by the screaming and arguing that follows. But that initial upside-down camera position demonstrates that Jim is in a state of transition. His view on the world, on this house, on his parents, is changing.
And we talked about how Judy and Plato both saw Jim as more of a man, after the chicken run. With Jim standing up to his parents, finally, it seems that he, too, also feels this way. He finally has the voice to make these feelings known.
The key thing in the scene isn’t the dialogue. It’s the positioning. When it starts, Jim sits on the steps and his parents stand around him, over him. But when he asserts himself, he stands up. And for a long stretch, Jim’s constantly positioned as taller than his parents. They’re at the bottom of the frame, he’s at the top. They look up to him, he looks down on them. Until his mom, at the height of the argument, runs up the stairs ahead of him. Now she’s taller and she tries to tell him what to do.
When Jim’s father sits, he sits. And they’re eye to eye. Even though they haven’t quite arrived at the same point in the argument. Then the mom announces that they’re moving. And tries to head up the stairs. But Jim stops her. He pulls her robe and keeps her from ascending. “You’re not tearing me loose again.”
Jim finally asserts himself. Between his mom’s superiority and his father’s inferiority. And we see that in the blocking. The dad sits on the right side of the frame. The mom’s elevated on the left side. And Jim’s in the middle, between them, battling them, trying to lower the mom, just a bit, and raise the dad. “Dad, let me hear you answer her. Dad? Dad, stand up for me.” When Frank doesn’t say anything, Jim gets physical. He heaves his father up and drags him into the living room, knocks him over, chokes him. The mom has to come down off the stairs and pull Jim off. Then he kicks through the portrait of his grandmother and leaves. His assertion of his own manhood is complete. His father wouldn’t stand up for him, so he becomes his own guardian.
Rebel Without a Cause’s ending explained
The final 40-minutes is a pay-off of everything that we’ve talked about leading up to this point. Jim, Judy, and Plato go to the mansion and create a pseudo-family, where Plato’s the child and Jim and Judy are dad and mom. They create their own world, their own microcosm. And it is, for a brief time, idealistic.
But Plato doesn’t mature the way Judy and Jim do. While they evolve into more responsible people, Plato only grows more despondent and violent as he feels abandoned by even his pseudo-family and overreacts. His previous “innocent” expressions of frustration (shooting puppies, which the movie really downplays) turns into this “experienced” final form where he’s a danger to the people around him.
Jim and Judy end up in similar positions to their own parents. Judy wants to have a more adult relationship with Jim but Plato wants to be around, wants nurtured, attended to. So she and Jim go off to be alone, establishing a distance between them and Plato that recalls the boundaries Judy’s own father was trying to put up. Likewise, the other boys trying to track down Jim represent this element of danger in the world. The knife fight, the chicken run, the supernova—any of these bad things that can happen. They’re the things that parents want to protect their kids from, worry about their kids encountering. Jim’s not there for Plato when he encounters this dangerous force. And it causes the boy to lash out, the same way Jim had earlier.
Plato escapes back to the planetarium and Jim and Rebel comes full-circle in a variety of ways. The planetarium was how the film introduced the major themes that define this portion of the film, specifically the ideas of loss of innocence, perspective gained from experience, and the strain of loneliness. And that’s what we get. Buzz’s demise was an initial loss of innocence but that was when Jim and Judy were still inexperienced as “parents”. It was the loss of a peer and made them think about their own mortality. Plato’s death parallel’s Buzz’s but happens when Jim and Judy have gained the perspective of being “parents”. It’s the loss of someone they felt responsible to and for. It’s on them to save Plato and they fail.
And then you have the police presence. Rebel starts at the police station and brings the full force into the picture at the end. Where before they were just cops playing babysitter, here they’re the police, weapons out, a force to be reckoned with. Dangerous. That’s the whole innocence/experience dynamic repeating again.
Jim’s parents show up to bring him home, just like at the beginning, but there’s a huge change in urgency. Before, they didn’t take what was going on seriously. In fact, they made Jim’s dilemma feel like an interruption to their lives. As if what he was dealing with didn’t matter. And here it’s become life and death. And they show up full of concern and support.
After Platos’ death, Jim clings to his father. He says “Help me” and Frank responds, “You can depend on me. Trust me. Whatever comes, we’ll face it together. I swear it. Come on, Jim. Stand up. I’ll stand up with you. I’ll try and be as strong as you want me to be.” Don’t think of it as Jim’s father changing, so much as Jim has matured to the point where he understands his father better. Plato became Jim, Jim became Frank. And Jim now knows exactly what his parents feared would happen to him. The effort you put in that doesn’t seem to get you anywhere, the good intentions you have but inability to convey them, the factors that are outside of your control. The last thing Jim says to Plato’s body is “What’d you do that for?” And you can imagine that’s exactly what Jim’s parents have thought and felt about him.
There’s also the whole arc of the coat. Jim finally got Plato to wear the coat. And says such a fatherly thing at the end, after zipping it up on the corpse. “He was always cold.” Then he and Judy hold each other. And what immediately happens? Frank puts his coat around Jim’s shoulders. And Jim doesn’t fight it. He lets his father take care of him. Because he understands now, what it means to want to provide and feel that confusion and rejection and indecision.
Jim calls his mom over and introduces Judy to them. And you get this mirrored shot where we see the young couple, side by side, then the older couple, side by side. Judy and Jim’s mom even have similar haircuts. The younger couple walk off together. Carol, the mom, starts to say something but Frank cuts her off. And they smile at each other. Frank puts his arm around her, same way Jim had his around Judy, and they walk off.
One thing to note is that Jim, at the beginning, had told the inspector how he wished his dad would stand up to his mom. And we see throughout Rebel how many times the dad appears subservient and obedient to the mom’s wishes. Even wearing, at one point, an apron. You can read Frank cutting off Carol as this indication that he’s found a backbone he never had. But you can also see it as indicating that Frank’s always had this backbone, it’s just not something Jim saw because he wasn’t really privy to the full extent of his parents’ relationship. So his idea of them was based on his childish perspective. Where the reality was a lot more complex.
There’s tragedy, too, with the housekeeper who no one really comforts. She was, for all intents and purposes, Plato’s mom. She was there for him at the beginning. At the end. She was at the house everyday. He was never alone in the way he thought he was. It’s actually heartbreaking when she mourns over Plato and no one comforts her at all. No one offers her their condolences. Or a hug. I don’t think Jim or Judy even make eye contact with her. The film puts almost all the formal weight on Jim’s reaction to Plato’s death, when, really, he barely knew him.
So there’s this strange tension at the very end. Almost a kind of stolen valor? The maid is the one who should be the most upset. And we have that heartbreaking shot of her, standing alone, in the dark, watching the ambulance drive away with Plato’s body. Right before that? Jim’s parents smile because their kid is okay and they feel they’ll be okay.
When you step back, the mixed energies of the maid, Jim and Judy, and Jim’s parents essentially translate to the complex nature of the human condition. The final shot is of a single, random person arriving at the Griffith Observatory. Which we’ve established embodies those nihilistic, existential ideas about human drama being, ultimately, quite meaningless. And that having other people in your life is, really, what makes you relevant. So ending on the observatory reinforces all of that. Jim has gained perspective on what’s important in life and is now in a place to let others take care of him and to take care of others. In other words: the rebel has found a cause.
Why is the movie called Rebel Without a Cause? Is it based on a book?
So in 1944, Robert Lindner, a psychiatrist, released a book called Rebel Without A Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath. This isn’t some meta, modernist novel. It’s a legitimate research-driven text. Lindler had 46 sessions with a criminal psychopath, Harold, and this book is a transcript of those sessions.
If you’re wondering how that connects with the movie—it doesn’t. What happened is someone knew of the book and decided the title would make a great name for a movie. So they bought the rights. Warner Bros. had actually made the purchase in 1946. So it was just something they were holding onto. And then James Dean came along and they made the script a vehicle for him.
There’s a cool factor to the title that paired well with Dean’s looks and red jacket. Narratively-speaking, Jim Stark is an outsider, someone who struggles to fit in, so “rebel” feels appropriate. But the major thing, I’d argue, is the “without a cause” part. It speaks to Jim’s character journey. He starts, initially as someone who is concerned with really minor, petty things that he believes are important. Not being a chicken might feel like a cause to him, but is it really? In becoming a father-figure to Plato, Jim has a sense of responsibility for the first time in his life. A sense of purpose. To take care of someone other than himself. To protect them. Even though he fails, he’s transformed by the experience. From a kid into a man. And with that maturity comes direction and intention. Motive, mission, objective. So the title refers to who Jim is when we first meet him and the nihilistic attitude he’ll eventually leave behind.
Why are Goon, Moose, and Crunch after Jim?
There are two ways to think about this. Literally and representationally. Literally, the guys think Jim talked to the police so they plan on finding him then…hurting him? Killing him? Or just threatening him so he refuses to talk more? It’s not clear. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Because representationally their pursuit of Jim is just a metaphor for the dangers that lurk in the world. The stuff that parents worry about and hope to protect their kids from. When they attack Plato, it’s not necessarily important what they do, rather it’s the threat, stress, and danger they represent that matters, and how Jim fails to protect Plato from such a confrontation and how that affects Plato. Their threat evolves into the danger presented by the police. So even though we don’t know what happens to them, that’s not important because they served their purpose.
Judy’s whole thing with her dad is weird, right?
Yeah. When you hear about “the male gaze” in cinema., this is a good example. Each of the three main characters are supposed to have complicated relationships with their fathers. For Jim, his dad is weak. For Plato, his dad isn’t there at all. For Judy, it’s supposed to be something like “her dad is uncomfortable with his daughter growing up so has stopped showing her affection”. But they turn it into this Electra Complex where Judy’s actively trying to kiss her dad on the lips and appear made up for his approval. It’s…uncomfortable. And pretty outrageous. All you really have to do is have the dad give attention to the little brother, act silly and charming, but then have him treat Judy like an employee. “Do this, do that.” She tries to call him a nickname and he says she’s too old for that. That sort of thing.
Having her try to kiss him on the lips and physically engage with him just comes off creepy as hell. And that’s the most generous way of describing it. Still being generous, you chalk it up to ignorance of the times and three adult men, the writers and director, genuinely thinking this accurately captured the concerts of a teenage girl. ”Judy’s innocent to her own maturity and the dad doesn’t communicate well.” That sort of thing. Then they went about it in the way that would age in the worst way possible.
But the core idea is reasonable: parents do set new boundaries, as kids, both boys and girls, grow up. And sometimes that can be hard for the child to understand. For example, it might be common for a parent to carry their 5-year-old around. Less common to carry a 10-year-old. Unheard of to carry a 15-year-old. There are many ways Rebel Without a Cause could have demonstrated this that would have aged just fine. Unfortunately, they didn’t go with any of those. Instead of getting to focus on the larger, relevant point, the conversation gets derailed by how they made the point.
Plato shot puppies?
Yeah. They really undersell that one. It establishes his mental instability and tells us we should think of him as a ticking time bomb. But it is kind of comical how the information comes up and how no one acts like it’s a big deal.
Why do something like that? All three characters do the same thing. They all want attention from their fathers so act out in the hopes that they’ll get what they want. Jim wants his dad to stand up for him. Judy wants her father to give her attention. And Plato just wants his father to be in his life, in some way, shape, or form. So they’re each self-destructing in their own ways. Plato’s just further along than the other two because he’s the one with the worst parental relationship.
How did Buzz’s jacket loop get caught? Why didn’t he brake?
As ahead of the times as Rebel Without a Cause was, it’s still hampered by the fact that 1950s storytelling, even at its sharpest, was often a bit cartoonish. I’m not saying every movie from that decade (or even before) had such issues. Just that they were pretty common. It’s almost like they didn’t think audiences cared about “why” or “how” for some of the little things, like “a jacket loop catching on a handle”. The important thing is that it happened. So audiences were supposed to accept it and move on.
And I do get that. Because movies are, at the end of the day, representative of life. Buzz was going over that cliff because it’s what the story needed to push Jim and Judy forward in their character arcs. His death represents their loss of innocence and the beginning of their transition into adulthood. If that’s what’s important, should we really care about the machinations of catching a jacket loop on the door handle?
Probably not. But I would counter that if it doesn’t really matter either way…why not just make it more believable and less…cheesy? Like couldn’t Buzz have just hit the brakes? Or steered away from the cliff and tried to turn the car around? Or what if the door simply jammed? Or Judy leaned in to kiss him and hit the door lock and Buzz didn’t realize it and kept trying the handle but it wouldn’t open? That’s not great but isn’t it better than the randomness of a jacket loop catching on a handle? Or say that the brakes are cut to make sure they have to go through with it?
Maybe I’m the one overthinking it?
