WORLD TOUR Day 5 - Los Angeles, CA
BEFORE: James Dean carries over from "East of Eden" as I hit my 2nd major city - Los Angeles, "The City of Angels", aka "The City of Broad Shoulders". I feel good about getting to some classic films that have been on the back burner for quite some time.
THE PLOT: A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.
AFTER: What strikes me the most about this film is how influential it was. Every stereotype about troubled teens, or 1950's tough kids, is depicted here, perhaps for the first time, except maybe for the idyllic trip to the malt shop. Who has time, what with all the drinking and smoking and making out and drag-racing? Oh, yeah, save some time for wearing leather jackets and looking all sullen. You hipster kids think you invented that sort of thing? Think again, Daddy-O.
I have to admit that I produced an entire animated film a while back that was set in the late 50's/early 60's, and I never saw the connections to this film (makes sense, since I hadn't seen this yet). I suppose it would be pretty hard to do any story set in this time period and not have it be a rip-off - sorry, an homage - to this genre. So I have to remind myself that this film broke ground first. The look of the cars, the slick hair - the film I worked on even had a wimpy kid riding a scooter, and the director said the story was autobiographical. Now I have to wonder if he got his high-school years mixed up with Sal Mineo's.
This also leads me to wonder how much teen rebellion and angst took place during the 1950's, and how much of it was mostly seen in Hollywood films. Did the films of the 1950's reflect the mood of the nation, or did kids act tough and learn to fight with switchblades because they'd seen it in a movie? I guess it's one of those chicken/egg kind of things. Follow-up question - did someone have a genuine interest in telling the story of high-school students in Los Angeles, or was the film set there just because it was so close to Hollywood? Discuss.
Anyway, James Dean gets plenty of chances here to act out, and then crumble into an emotional ball, which seems to be his stock in trade. Now that I've seen the three major James Dean pics, I can draw some conclusions, the first being that nothing ever seems to go right for his characters, does it? I mean, even when he gets some financial success in "Giant" or "East of Eden", he either drinks it away, or has his father cut him down to size because of the way he earned it. Jeez, the guy couldn't catch a break - maybe that was part of the plan, to get the audience to sympathize with him.
Here his parents move him to L.A. so he can get a fresh start (though we never actually find out what went wrong in those other towns, hmmm....) and before you know it, he's involved in a street-fight and a poorly conceived game of "chicken". Two days in the new city and he's in the hole, and the thing about being in a hole is, the more you try to dig yourself out of it, the more dirt falls on top of you. Yeah, we all know high-school's tough, but it's not supposed to be THIS tough.
That's OK, because after a perfunctory walk to home-room, we never see Dean's character in school again. Why would we? Attending class would only get in the way of the plot. Though we do see him on a field trip to the planetarium (pay attention, this will be important later if there's a pop quiz). The rest of the film could play out over a two-day weekend, so at least that explains why we never see high-school students attending high school after that.
Finally he decides it's time to take a stand, face the music, and stop running from town to town. Funny thing about that, no matter where you go, there you are. But for a rebellious teen to stop running from everything and stand for something, it's a welcome change. Why, he's rebelling against rebellion! How doubly rebellious! Glad to see it all worked out. Umm...for some of the characters.
Shooting locations included a high school in Los Angeles, another in Santa Monica, and the famous Griffith Park Observatory (also seen in "Yes Man", "Funny People" and "The Terminator", and other films) Yeah, I missed this one during "back-to-school week", but considering that yesterday was the first day of the school year (at least, here in NYC), I could not have timed this one better if I had tried.
NITPICK POINT: Would a planetarium show really make so much out of the possibility of a meteor hitting and destroying the Earth? It seems a little melodramatic, not to mention counter-productive, especially if they wanted kids to be interested in outer space. Besides, weren't people in the 1950's more worried about Soviet nuclear bombs hitting the U.S.?
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 262 miles / 423 km (Salinas to Los Angeles)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 523 miles / 844 km
Also starring Natalie Wood (last seen in "Meteor"), Sal Mineo (last seen in"Giant"), Jim Backus (later famous as Mr. Howell on "Gilligan's Island" and the voice of Mr. Magoo), Edward Platt (later famous as the Chief on "Get Smart"), and Dennis Hopper (last seen in "Hoosiers").
RATING: 6 out of 10 broken curfews
Well, the only concrete reason Carl Sagan has given for space travel is to defend us against meteors, which are the most prevalent of dangers out there. If you watch any of the astronomy shows, they seem to focus on the number of ways in which Earth could be destroyed.
ReplyDeleteIn the 50s, no one was particularly concerned with soviet missiles, because the good guys always win and we had duck and cover to protect us.
Anyhow, I am a bit surprised you hadn't seen this film til now, but now you have seen all three of James Dean's films, though I thought the other two were much less impressive than this one.