Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Rebel Without a Cause

When Nathaniel Rogers at The Film Experience said he was doing a "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" feature on Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause I made sure I made a preemptive blog note to be involved. I so rarely get the chance to do so, but not only do I actually own Rebel on DVD, it's also one of my favourite films. And when I say "favourite films" I mean favourite films, I mean top five of all time. The first day I ever saw it I didn't just watch it once, or even twice, but three times.

I was hooked on the film - and the film's star, James Dean, naturally - and any chance I can get to rave about it I will take. Of course, I got super busy and then these past two days I've had the flu and haven't felt like writing much and subsequently forgot all about this. Nevertheless, even though I'm a little late, there was no way I gonna miss out on this baby. I knew immediately what shot was my favourite, but that doesn't mean we can't look at a few others, right? A movie as gorgeous as this deserves to be obsessed over.


This shot is a fabulous one because it says so much about the relationship between these two characters, played by Dean and Natalie Wood. His volatile reactionary behaviour becomes blunted by the beautiful Judy that he can't even face her, while she is almost confused by why he would act this way. Everyone wants to look at her.



I adore these two shots, shared between Dean's Jim Stark and Sal Mineo's Plato. The flirtation between these two is so tragically erotic that it adds a whole 'nother dimension to the film. But I love these shots specifically because it's almost as if you can feel Plato's heart beating within them as Jim, the boy he lusts after, stands so close. The second shot of Jim playfully touching Plato's nose as he hides behind bars is very symbolic of how Plato surely feels about his sexuality. Like he's trapped behind the bars of society, but maybe - just maybe - Jim could be the one to remove those bars. Their relationship is so touching, and pains me somewhat to even talk about it.


This shot, meanwhile, exposes the sad, lonely lives of these two teenagers. It's a shot that director Ray and cinematographer Ernest Haller hold on screen for a long time, but this very moment where all three principal characters have this look of longing on their face feels the most devastating. The three of them brought together by their sadness.


Meanwhile, this shot of James Dean bathed in the shimmering light of the planetarium during the big finale? Well, I just like it because of the way it played with light and illuminates, but doesn't glorify, Dean's beauty.






However, my choice for favourite shot is this one. It comes roughly half way through the film as Jim tells his parents that he wants to go to the police regarding the "chicken death" on the clifftop. As this "all-American family" talk and argue - most argue - the camera suddenly tilts for seemingly no apparent reason. First time I saw it was confused by it, but liked it as an unexpected moment to remind audiences of 1955 that - to borrow a famous movie poster catchphrase - it's only a movie.

But after seeing the film many times since, I've come to identify it as a moment that symbolises a shift in the dynamics of this family, and especially between Jim and his father (Jim Backus). The way the camera moves ever so slightly like the scales of two prize-fighters, one of which has the upper hand. It's from this moment on that sets up the rest of Jim's story. How can he go back to the way it was before after what has happened now that his world has been shifted off of its axis?

It's a masterful shot in a masterful movie.

Read more "best shots" at The Film Experience.

Review: I Am Number Four

I Am Number Four
Dir. DJ Caruso
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 109mins

People say that we are currently in a golden age for television and that is probably true, but for a teenager the golden age was 2000. It was great being a teenager back then – well, sure, it’s never truly “great” to be a teenager in any given year, but to have such rich and insightful television like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Roswell and – mock if you will – Dawson’s Creek reaching the height of their craft in that year was something that the 15-year-old version of me relished.

I mention this because DJ Caruso’s new science fiction action movie I Am Number Four feels like a mash-up of all three, but without the valuable series-long format that would allow it to expand upon its themes in any deep way and it falls short of the mark that all three of those series reached in their prime. What it does succeed at, however, is some fun action and some impressive technical aspects that lift it up above the been there done that nature of its story.

I Am Number Four is, essentially, Roswell meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a definite detour through Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause. With added glowing teal cinematography. Alex Pettyfer (or is that “Prettyfer” because, my gawd, is this boy awfully attractive in a bland sort of way that recalls the likes of Jason Behr in Roswell – are his nipples ever not erect?) stars as “John”, a refugee alien living on Earth with his minder, played by Timothy Olyphant in the Anthony Stewart Head role. He falls in love with the pretty-but-vacant girl Sarah (Dianna Agron from Glee, Katie Holmes would have been cast ten years ago) and becomes friends with a small, unpopular kid at school named Sam, played by an Australian kid named Callan McAuliffe. Needless to say, interplanetary monsters are after him and to explain much more would make the word count of this review would go through the stratosphere.


If this were a television series – and from my understanding of the book and its proposed sequels, I think it probably would have – then Sam’s domestic violence subplot would be expanded and not feel like a dramatically neutered afterthought (Roswell’s similar plot line proved to be one of that series’ bigger triumphs) and the central plot wouldn’t feel so rushed. And speaking of television, isn’t it curious that for a show that celebrates “outcasts”, it’s the plain jane blond Dianna Agron that has gotten the first lead role out Glee?

Perhaps if all these pretty people weren’t so, well, pretty, I Am Number Four would feel more exciting – or, perhaps, if “number four” was the geeky Sam rather than the gym bunny John – but fans of this sort of material should come away with a minor appreciation for it. It’s just unlikely to inherit any of the slavish devotion that a television incarnation may have developed. C+