Chapter 3 "When you're a child, twenty-four hours are like a whole life": Rebel Without a Cause, 1955

"When you're a child, twenty-four hours are like a whole life": Rebel Without a Cause, 1955 1. Title: Rebel Without a Cause, which means "rebel without a reason".In Hong Kong, it is translated as "Days of Being Wild", with a perspective from the perspective of youth, and it is too big (Wong Kar-wai's 1990 work deliberately borrowed this name); in Taiwan, it is translated as "The Adopted Son Doesn't Teach Whose Mistakes", with a perspective from society, and it is a bit too local .In fact, there is no need to find another way. It is more appropriate to use "Rebel Without a Cause", which naturally conveys a sense of crisis and coolness.The name was originally the title of psychologist Robert Lind's diary-style psychoanalytic book, which includes a passage on juvenile delinquency.But Nicholas Rey did not use this book as a model, but "to make a story about a normal kid next door who is about to get out of control" in order to change "all juvenile delinquency comes from poor families, all crime is caused by poverty" misunderstanding. "Rebel Without a Cause" basically tells the story of the innocent, naive, powerless, "beat generation" who lost their father's protection.

Nicholas Rey's story comes from him personally going out on the streets and chatting up teenage gangs.He could not explain the reason for making this film, but he said that "my idea came from newspapers and magazines, and the result of talking with children, police, and parents."Ray wrote three juvenile delinquency stories, one of which was called "The Blind Run" (The Blind Run), about a group of children in the tunnel next to Mulholland Drive, driving cars at high speed against each other, and whoever turned first was a coward.After collecting stories from many sources (screenwriter Stewart Stein also visited the police juvenile team), this simple but powerful and convincing classic was born.In fact, half a year before the release of "Rebel Without a Cause", a film with a similar theme "Blackboard Jungle" (Blackboard Jungle) has already caused a sensation.The film about "school violence" had a huge impact on rock and roll, "shaking American popular culture by linking teenage violence, anarchy, and rock and roll."And "Rebel Without a Cause" and the novel "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951) of the same era became more important "countercultural events", triggering a wave of social reflection.

Technically, the first stereo widescreen movie "The Robe" (The Robe, directed by Henry Coster) had just been born in 1953.But Nicholas Rey, once a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, the founder of organic architecture, seems to have a compositional genius for widescreen. "Rebel Without a Cause" was filmed in black and white for the first three days, before being shot in color.An official statement is: Fox has taken back the camera with cinemascope technology it just acquired, and Warner decided to shoot this movie with color cinemascope technology, which has been used in epic movies before.According to another legend, because James Dean's appearance in the black-and-white film is relatively "dumb", he must wear a brown jacket and glasses, but when he was shot in color, his image immediately stood out.

All of a sudden, James Dean's style: white round-neck T-shirt, red cropped jacket, and blue jeans became the "ideal uniform" for young people all over the world.In fact, everything presented on the screen benefits from Nicholas Rey's brilliant judgment and use of color.In Truffaut's last interview, when he mentioned setting and costumes, he said that only two people dared to use "primary colors" (positive red, positive blue, positive yellow) at will, and that was Rey and Godard, because they "were right Color has a natural intuition", while other directors, such as Truffaut himself, only dare to use "intermediate colors".

2. In a set of DVDs released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of James Dean's death, there is a documentary titled "Blindfolded Innocence".Screenwriter Stewart Stein said that the emotions of "Rebel Without a Cause" come from two aspects. One is that Nicholas Rey has extremely painful feelings about his duties as a father; There is extreme anger.But the point of view of this film is finally placed on the young people.In the film, when the grandmother, parents, and children of Jim's family confront each other in the morning, the three generations confront each other, using an unnaturally high viewpoint, showing a kind of disharmony.After this scene, James Dean wore the "ideal uniform" and rushed to the "cliff jumping" competition, and the plot also developed to a climax from here.

The film opens with James Dean's drunken improvisation on the street.He was then taken to the police station, where Jim meets Judy and Plato.There is a scene that allows us to see Rey's prowess in widescreen composition, that is, these three protagonists who have never met before are arranged in a frame.Jim is slightly out in the upper right corner of the screen, and Plato and Judy are in close view at the lower left, with the glass partition of the police station in the background.Then Jim goes to Plato, takes off his coat, and tries to put it on him, but is refused.The coat is a "playing eye" in this film, expressing friendship and trust.In the middle of the film, Judy covers the sleeping Plato with a coat, showing a kind of love; after that, Plato accepts Jim's red jacket in the planetarium, symbolizing his trust in Jim's concern again; It represents the reunification of the family.

The relationship between Jim's father and son and Judy's father and daughter is the key to promoting the plot, especially the scene where Jim's father wears an apron, which comes from the screenwriter Stein's own personal experience.The father is no longer an authority in the film, but a clown bullied by his mother, incompetent and cowardly. Although Jim repeatedly asked, he couldn't give any answer.All he can say is "Ten years from now you'll look back at..." which is typical, tiresome parental phrasing.In the police station, Jim yelled "I'm going crazy" in the face of his parents' endless quarrels.This is also the prelude to "rebellion without a cause", the so-called "I don't know why, only resentment." And Judy's rebellion (she was caught in the police station, implying that she might have become a prostitute) was because her father could not understand her, I can no longer love her like I did when I was a child.And Plato is the "catalyst" of the whole film. Its tragic atmosphere is created by his death, and he happens to be the child abandoned by his parents.Plato came to the police station because he shot the neighbor's dog, which is a hint of skill in the play.

Rejected by their families in different ways, these three children's only way out is to form a family of their own. 3. The story of Rebel Without a Cause takes place in one day."When you're a kid. Twenty-four hours is like a whole life," says Ray. It's Jim's first day at a new school.His situation is that of an "outsider" who is not accepted, and he longs for this acceptance, which is why he fights with the gang boss Buzz.That fight on the planetarium terrace was a ritual, a dance (actually every movement of the actors was choreographed).After Jim won Buzz's favor, they still had a "blind traffic jam" towards death, and Buzz died unexpectedly.Before the game, Jim asked him why, and he said, "We have to do something." This sentence properly describes the bewilderment and loss of these teenagers.

The "out-of-school teaching" in the planetarium is the most meaningful scene in this film.Stein joined the screenwriter because the two screenwriters originally sent by Warner Company did not see the "cosmic sense" in this scene. They only regarded the planetarium as a venue, but Rey fired him.In Stein's script, the science and education film shown in the planetarium has a strong symbolic meaning, indicating the final tragedy.In front of the boundless universe, human beings are indeed insignificant. "Human beings, the lonely existence, are just a small episode." The loneliness of human beings under the starry sky corresponds to the loneliness of teenagers in front of society. ,isolated.The Griffith Observatory (Griffthobservatory) was originally built in the style of a Greek temple, and the steps of the temple were where Greek tragedies were rehearsed.So Plato was accidentally killed by the police on the steps of the planetarium, and he was called "died on the sacrificial platform of the Temple of the Universe".Stein consciously fixed the story before dawn, which is a classic mode of Greek tragedy, 24 hours, the same scene, maintaining the integrity of time and space.

Jim, Judy, and Plato's only happiness comes from the latter's abandoned mansion, where they form a family of their own.Jim is the father, Judy is the mother, and Plato is the child.Stein talked about this scene in the documentary, saying excitedly that "Peter Pan was reborn, they escaped, and came to the ideal place "Neverland" (Neverland). Mystery, concealment is full of possibilities. We have Peter Pen, Wendy, and the Lost Boys — it's like an opera," and director Rey says "life is like an opera when you're that age." This brief moment is the film's only slow, slack passage.But soon, the vengeance between the teenagers made Plato mistakenly think that he was abandoned by Jim and Judy again, excited, he shot with a gun, and was killed by mistake in the end.Although the film arranges a typical "Hollywood ending": Jim's father regains control of the family situation, and he puts a coat on his son.But the voice of James Dean crying "Help me" has traveled far and wide.

4. In the 1930s, Group Theater (Group Theater) transplanted Stanislavsky's naturalistic performance method (Method Acting) to the United States, and Ilya Kazan was the most famous director.After World War II, Kazan and his classmates from the collective theater formed the "Actors Studio", James Dean was also a member, and Nicholas Rey served as Kazan's assistant director.James Dean's "rebel without a cause" as the "worn-out, passive" teenage Jim, and fellow Actors Studio member Marlon Brando's performance on On the Waterfront Together they influenced the way acting was done in American cinema. There’s a scene in the film where James Dean is lying on the couch and he sees his mother coming down the stairs, and Ray uses a wonderful 180-degree tilt-and-rotate shot.The shot is said to be Dean's idea.In the only three films he starred in, he took thick notes, and he said that he planned to be a director soon.But shortly before the release of "Rebel Without a Cause", he was driving a Porsche sports car and had a car accident on the highway at the age of 24; Multiple knife deaths, 37 years old; In 1981, Natalie Wood, who played Judy, fell into the sea from her yacht and drowned at the age of 43. "Rebel Without a Cause" ended with an accidental death. , 1957 Visconti (LuchinoVisconti) adapted Dostoyevsky, a full master, but it happened to be a sketch.Visconti once said, "I want to open up romantic realism films and open a new path." (Le Notti Bianche) is a controversial love movie on this path.In Dostoevsky's novel, there are four nights and one morning; in Visconti's film, there are only three nights.Their narratives are all so unsettled, but the love in them is like a stormy sea.A man with nothing to do meets a "100% girl", she - sometimes cries, sometimes laughs, sometimes naive, sometimes deep, sometimes shy, sometimes stubborn, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes desperate.The film compresses and intensifies the drama.For three nights, love rushed to my face, turned and turned a thousand times, and passed away in a flash.Dostoevsky closes the novel by writing: "My God! A whole minute of happiness! Is that little even for a man's whole life?" But for Visconti To me, this is not much, and the movie is more about the anxiety about love-do you love me like you said (thought)? There is no doubt that Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Cher played the short-lived lovers, especially the latter. Her figure and eyes occupy the night scene of the entire screen, making the audience feel That "sudden and irresistible love" creates a sense of identity.The location of the novel is St. Petersburg, which is located near sixty degrees north latitude. Every summer, we can see the unique white night phenomenon under polar day conditions.The location of the movie is the water city in Italy. The light comes from the neon lights and street lights at night, flashing against the water.Visconti added a sudden snow scene, the streets, waterways, houses, and bridges were covered with snow, the city turned white, and the night turned white night. This "White Night" is dedicated to all those who still have firm thoughts about love and romantic thoughts about love.