As his parents bicker in a police station, teenager Jim Stark, played by James Dean, screws his face into a knot of frustrated rage and screams, "You're tearing me apart!" At that moment, Rebel Without a Cause changed the rules for the portrayal of teenagers on screen; Jim is neither a goofy-but-good-natured Andy Hardy type nor a Bowery Boys-style juvenile delinquent, but something resembling a real adolescent, awkwardly stumbling through young adulthood. We meet him lying in a gutter, drunkenly playing with a toy monkey before he's picked up by the police. We learn that his parents have moved more than once because Jim has gotten into trouble; between his Milquetoast father and bossy, unaffectionate mother, he has no one to turn to at home and no healthy role model. While waiting at the police station, he meets two other kids from the neighborhood: a troubled young man named Plato (Sal Mineo), who shot a litter of puppies in a fit of rage, and a pretty girl named Judy (Natalie Wood), who runs with a rough crowd to get the sense of belonging that she doesn't have at home. The three teenagers become an odd sort of family, until an unpleasant revelation sends Plato on a rampage.
While time has not been kind to all aspects of Rebel Without a Cause -- the gang hardly seems threatening by today's standards and hundreds of juvenile delinquent movies have tuned many of the film's set pieces into clichés -- Dean's performance is the center of the picture, and it still rings true. His Jim Stark is a volatile mixture of pain, rage, confusion, and attempted teenage cool; anyone who wonders how he became an icon on the basis of three movies has probably never seen this one. Sal Mineo manages to be both pathetic and creepy as the doomed Plato, and Jim Backus, the voice of Mr. Magoo and future resident of Gilligan's Island, contributes an unforgettable dramatic performance as Jim's ineffectual, apron-wearing dad.
