REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 16

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

(Warner Bros.-CinemaScope) LACKBOARD JUNGLE, which was withdrawn from the Venice International Film Festival because of the distorted impression which it might give of the American way of life, could no doubt be classed as explosive material if one concedes (as I think one must) the potency of the film in forming attitudes and fixing opinions. But I would not consider it such high explosive as Rebel Without a Cause. The delinquents of Blackboard Jungle could be regarded as the victims of conditions common to the slums of all great cities. The rebels of the new revelation come from comfortable homes, ride to school in their own cars or motor-scooters, enjoy a standard of living which would be regarded as exceptionally good in this country-and are apparently quite uncontrollable. The book from which the film title was apparently borrowed is the study of a criminal psychopath, the film (if one could take it as portraying reality) is the picture of a perverted society where authority has abdicated in the school and in the home, and where the only "deterrence" to delinquency-and not apparently an effective one-is the massive retaliation of an armed police force. From the point of view of American foreign -relations--which are, of course, no concern of mine-this is a bad film. -As a treatment of juvenile delinquency, a subject on which we are all perhaps a little sensitive, it seemed to me potentially dangerous, quite apart from its gross over-simplification of the problem. I don’t want altogether to condemn the studio for making it--Warner Bros. have a fairly good record as makers of. "socially-conscious" pictures-but here their sense of social responsibility seems to have backfired, ; One can’t, of course, examine the problem of delinquency with one’s eyes shut, but it is another thing to present drunkenness among high school pupils, spring-knife duels, or death-rides in stolen cars as the prime sources of excitement and tension in a CinemaScope movie. Rebel Without a Cause is not a social document (unless by accident), or a psychological case-history, it’s a plain thriller. Or rather, a WarnerColored one, And if it is seen generally by the kind of audience with whom I saw it-pre-

ponderantly teenaged-it could do damage. This view, I’m aware, is not shared by the Films Appeal Board, which allowed the release, subject to a "16-or-over" certificate, but I feel bound to enter a dissenting opinion. The theme of the film, repeated almost ad nauseam, is that parents are to blame-and, of course, the only parents we encounter are tailored to measure. I can’t argue very effectively with the psycho boys on their own ground, but I distrust any such slick generalisations. We've been told that there are not bad children, only unhappy children. Now, in effect, we learn that there are no delinquent children, only delinquent parents. Sooner or later someone will discover that there are no delinquent parents, only a delinquent society. That is, in effect if not in intent, what Rebel Without a Cause really suggests, Perhaps it is not so far wrong either, but don’t let us imagine that that society is exclusively American, Viewed as an entertainment, the film is of fair quality. The parents involved are almost caricatures, and therefore can barely carry conviction to the average New Zealander, but the late James Dean (of whom I would not say more than that he had promise) did manage to wring an unwilling sympathy from me, The direction (Nicholas Ray), and the editing, too, produced one or two sequences of tension which were as gripping as anything I’ve seen since Bad Day at Black Rock. Since it’s fair as entertainment, it gets a fair grading. But don’t ask me to approve of it.