171
8
DANIEL BILTEREYST
Youth, Moral Panics, and
the End of Cinema
On the Reception of
Rebel Without a Cause in Europe
La jeunesse est un temps pendant lequel les conventions sont et
doivent tre mal comprises.
--Paul Valéry, Monsieur Teste
=
Introduction
I
N HIS GROUNDBREAKING STUDY The Stars (1960),1
French philosopher
Edgar Morin argues that James Dean has been a key figure in the
reconfiguration of cinema, the star system, and youth culture. Following
Morin, Dean incorporated the ultimate modern adolescent film star.
But his death also opened an era (between 1957 and 1962) where youth
172 Rebel Without a Cause
culture moved away from cinema. Dean's angst-laden movies had shown a
model for tormented young heroes, which was picked up and developed
further on by rock 'n' roll music and French "chanson"' or dance. Dean's
movies were historically important for crystallizing a new form of youth
culture, including forms of counterculture and a further dissociation from
adults' entertainment. Cinema continued to be a juvenile attraction, but,
according to Morin, the film industry was less successful in inspiring adolescents'
search for pungent role models. According to young film critic
François Truffaut,2
who wrote a commemorative article one year after Dean's
tragic death, Rebel Without a Cause had been one of the last truly influential
films where contemporary (French) youth found itself.
Enjoying an outstanding success at the box office throughout Europe,
Rebel Without a Cause has also been a controversial movie. Though
the historical reception of Nicholas Ray's successful picture was sensitively
influenced by Dean's death (September 30, 1955), it was far from
recognized as a milestone in film and youth culture history. On the contrary,
as we will indicate, when the movie was distributed in Europe (at
the end of 1955 and in 1956), it was rather seen as an exploitation movie
explicitly dealing with contemporary problems of adolescent crime.3
Framed as another juvenile delinquency movie from the United States,
Rebel Without a Cause helped to whip up public debate on these issues.
This chapter deals with this public controversy around Rebel Without
a Cause, concentrating on how the movie was received in various
Western European countries including France, Germany, and the United
Kingdom. Inspired by a materialist approach in relation to historical reception
analysis,4
we try to understand the different social meaning(s) of
Rebel Without a Cause, including the struggle around those meanings. The
distribution of the movie being a well-publicized event, Rebel quickly
became the target of intense debate, (external) pressures, and censorship.
We argue that in various countries the movie as it was shown to the
audience lost much of its original critical edge due to the operations by
the industry, the press, national censorship boards, and religious interest
groups. In order to understand the controversy and pressures upon the
movie, we first need to locate Rebel Without a Cause in the context of
the wider public debate and even the moral panic about youth crime and
the representation of it through juvenile delinquency movies.
Moral Panics, Youth Culture,
and Juvenile Delinquency Movies
When European audiences, critics, and censors first saw Rebel Without a
Cause, there had been a longer public anxiety about violence committed
173Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
by adolescents. At the end of the 1940s and in the 1950s, the national
press in various European countries had put juvenile street gang violence,
the teddy boys and rockers phenomenon, high on the agenda. One could
even claim that the popular media had fuelled a wider panic around
adolescents, crime, and their lack of respect for different forms of authority.
Mainly through a process of stigmatization and exaggeration, the
popular media identified this type of youth violence as a threat to key
moral and social values (e.g., violence, risk, security, parental and other
forms of authority, solidarity among generations). The new deviant "folk
devils" became the object of a spiraling debate, which was later on identified
from a critical sociological perspective as a moral panic.
Referring to moral panics theories and the role of the media,5
the
latter are often identified as important catalysts in whipping up the controversy
among intellectuals, journalists, public opinion, as well as interest,
religious, and other groups in society (e.g., parents' organizations).
Following moral panic theories, this debate and the media representation
of the folk devils ultimately influence the wider perception of the issue by
these and other key social institutions (e.g., politicians, courts), often
identified as moral guardians. In some cases, a moral panic even may lead
to concrete actions by state institutions, such as in the United States
where in 1955 a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee reacted upon wider public
anxiety and decided to investigate juvenile delinquency and the role played
by certain popular entertainment media.6
From this moral panic perspective it is not difficult to look at film
criticism and censorship boards as "moral guardians," or as social institutions
reacting upon a wider debate on moral and social values. When the
issue of juvenile delinquency was picked up by the film industry, European
censorship and classification boards were more sensitive than ever to
an ongoing debate and to the representation of crime committed by young
people. Not only in Hollywood,7
but also in Europe and elsewhere youth
violence was heavily explored (for some: exploited) through such films as
Sciuscia (de Sica, Italy, 1946), Los Olvidados (Buuel, Mexico, 1950), "I
Vitelloni" (Fellini, Italy, 1953), and Avant le Déluge (Cayatte, France, 1953).
However, when the American juvenile delinquency movies came to be
perceived from 1954 onward as an identifiable wave of straight violent
movies, film censors and critics reacted strongly.
The controversy around Rebel Without a Cause in 1955 and 1956
cannot be understood without the problematic career and historical reception
of some earlier American movies, including The Wild One (Benedek,
U.S., 1953) and Blackboard Jungle (Brooks, U.S., 1955) in particular. In
the United Kingdom, Benedek's motorcycle picture with Marlon Brando
was rejected several times by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC).
174 Rebel Without a Cause
Referring to the "present widespread concern about the increase in juvenile
crime," the Board claimed in January 1954 that they were not prepared to
pass The Wild One, "even with an `X' certificate" given the "unbridled
hooliganism."8
The Wild One was rejected "because it was feared that the
film might encourage the growth of motorcycle gangs in the country."9
Columbia's London office unsuccessfully offered a new, heavily cut version
of the movie, but again The Wild One was banned twice in 1955 and once
more in 1959. In the meantime, the juvenile delinquency movie cycle from
the United States had increased with dozens of other titles,10
while in the
United Kingdom violent incidents committed by adolescents gangs had
received more publicity than ever.11
Only in November 1967 did the BBFC
finally agreed to award an X certificate to the movie.
The picture, which set the tone for the reception of Rebel Without a
Cause, was the tough school juvenile delinquency movie Blackboard Jungle.
In the United States, Brooks's motion picture had already created wide
controversy, while the picture was even mentioned by the Senate Committee's
report Motion Pictures and Juvenile Delinquency in March 1956 as a movie
"that will have effects on youth other than the beneficial ones described by
its producers."12
When the movie was first presented to the British censors
in March 1955, the BBFC rejected the film immediately, claiming that this
"spectacle of youth out of control" would "have the most damaging and
harmful effect on such young people, particularly those between the ages
of 16 and 18."13
On MGM's request new viewing sessions were organized
and cuttings made, but the BBFC continued to be extremely sensitive to
the fact that "scenes of unbridled, revolting hooliganism would, if shown
in this country, provoke the strongest criticism from parents and all citizens
concerned with the welfare of our young people."14
Even after some cuttings
and heated conversations with MGM executives,15
the British censors
refused to pass the film even with an X rating, which "should have exposed
ourselves to serious public criticism."16
Only after additional cuttings proposed
by the Board, the movie received an X certificate in August 1955.17
However, Blackboard Jungle continued to be controversial even before the
movie was released in Britain in September 1955. At the Venice film festival
in late August, the American ambassador claimed that Blackboard Jungle
offended U.S. society and she requested the withdrawal of the movie. This
incident was widely reported in the European press, while MGM even used
it in various European countries as a publicity tool.18
It was clear that this
all only increased the motion picture's controversial (market) value. When
Blackboard Jungle was shown in the British theaters, the press highlighted
stories again about the euphoric and cynical reception of the picture by
local teddy boys.19
175Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
In other European countries both The Wild One and Blackboard
Jungle received certificates, which underlined similar public anxieties about
the possible impact of violent adolescents movies. In most countries children
were not allowed to see the movies. In France and Belgium for
instance, Blackboard Jungle, released in December 1955 as Graine de Violence
(Seed of Violence), was not allowed for minors under the age of sixteen.
Even in 1963, when the movie was examined again by the French
Commission de Classification, the movie's initial category didn't change.20
Also in other countries such as the northern and Scandinavian countries,
national censorship boards prevented people under sixteen or eighteen
years old to see the movie. Still however, the Blackboard Jungle case
exemplified an important shift in the historical reception of American
imported juvenile delinquency movies of the fifties--announcing in some
sense Rebel Without a Cause. What is interesting with this movie is the
shift into a more positive critical attention. Among some leading French
film critics for instance, Brooks was considered at the time to be a leading
figure within the new generation of American filmmakers. This attitude
at least opened a greater willingness to read Blackboard Jungle as an important
manifesto or even as a courageous "sociological" study of contemporary
problems with youth and violence.21
By this time, there had been a wider academic sociological interest
in the juvenile gang and delinquency phenomenon too, mainly as part of
the study of youth subcultures. During the 1950s, the teddy boys and
rockers phenomenon had inspired academic research, which looked at the
compensatory function of and the value system within juvenile gangs. In
the United Kingdom some researchers began to link juvenile delinquency
and class, as well as gang and parent culture. In his authoritative book on
U.K. postwar youth culture, Subculture, Dick Hebdige summarized some
of this early research on juvenile gangs:
. . . working-class adolescents who under-achieved at school joined
gangs in their leisure time in order to develop alternative sources of
self-esteem. In the gang, core values of the straight world--sobriety,
ambition, conformity, etc.--were replaced by their opposites: hedonism,
defiance of authority and the quest of "kicks." . . . It was left
to Phil Cohen to explore in detail the ways in which class-specific
experience was encoded in leisure styles. . . . Cohen was interested
in the links between youth and parent cultures. . . . He defined subculture
as a "compromise solution between two contradictory needs:
the need to create and express autonomy and difference from
parents . . . and the need to maintain the parental identifications."22
176 Rebel Without a Cause
In retrospect, these sociological descriptions of the juvenile delinquency
and youth culture phenomenon in the 1950s and 1960s seem to
be strongly reflected in U.S. movies on these issues. While gang violence
in The Wild One and Blackboard Jungle could easily be explained by arguments
based on the working-class background of the juveniles, Rebel Without
a Cause much more exemplified Cohen's shift in understanding the
phenomenon. Ray's movie went further than the class aspect and focused
much more upon the subtle idea of the contradictory needs in terms of
identity politics. Ray offered a more universally identifiable adolescent
role model, which searched for autonomy and difference, but also maintained
a hybrid relation with parent culture. This in part explains why
Rebel Without a Cause was not only attacked on the basis of hooliganism
and violence, but also for its raw depiction of the traditional values of
parent culture.
Denominating, Flattening Out,
and Censoring Rebel Without a Cause
In a critical evaluation of Rebel Without a Cause, George M. Wilson looked
at Ray's movie as a "fundamentally reassuring contemporary morality play."23
According to Wilson, Rebel operated as a classical American social problem
film, ultimately rejecting the social message it seems to proclaim openly:
The social problem in Rebel Without a Cause is, of course, juvenile
delinquency. . . . The teenagers in this 1955 film are presented as
rebelling against their parents and their way of life, but, as the title
suggests, not out of any identifiable cause or counterideology. . . .
The film thus invokes the perception, widespread at the time, that
the issue of teenage rebelliousness had an especially enigmatic
character. . . . the story, at the time, hastens to dissipate any possible
sense of paradox. . . . Moreover, it is designed not to be too provocative
in relation to the failures of the parents.24
Wilson recognized that Ray did call up notions of rebellion and a clash
with parents, but Rebel finally analyzed the problem according to "conceptions
common in the period." What appeared to be a "serious reaction
to the ongoing social order is revealed to be nothing more than remediable
psychological maladjustments within the family."25
Looking at the historical reception of Rebel Without a Cause in the
mid-1950s in some Western European countries, it seems that censors,
film critics, and other groups in society did not consider the movie to be
a "schematic," "simplified," or reassuring morality play.26
On the contrary,
177Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
Rebel was, more than any other juvenile delinquency movie, able to whip
up a lively debate about the social problems the movie invoked, while
official film censors and religious groups active in film classification heavily
indicated their anxiety about the possible impact of the movie. In some
cases the latter succeeded in cutting hard into the film text in order to
flatten out the movie's critical analysis of youth violence, adolescents'
search for autonomy, and their estrangement with their parents' culture.
Even the translation of Ray's original provocative title for the movie,
to which Wilson was referring, often lacked any sense of paradox. Looking
at the European titles for Rebel Without a Cause, we may perceive a
double move. First, in most countries the Warner's local office underlined
the violence in the movie and tried to resolve the paradox of the mixed
responsibility by laying it firmly on the youth's shoulders. Second, this
move clearly went into moralizing the movie's content. In the Netherlands
and the Flemish part of Belgium, the movie was called Botsende
Jeugd (Clashing Youth), while in Italy the movie was released as Giovent
bruciata (Spent Youth).27
In northern countries similar titles appeared, such
as in Denmark where the movie was called Vildt Blod (Wild Blood). The
French title, La Fureur de vivre (Fever/Will to Live), was heavily attacked
by many film critics for just lacking the titillating, thoughtful paradox in
Ray's original title.28
A clear example of moralizing youth violence has
been the German-language title (. . . denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun,
or . . . forgive them, for they know not what they do, [Luke 23:34]), which
contains a clear biblical reference. A German film critic at the time noted
that this title contained a clear weakening of the movie's critical content,
while at the same time it already incorporated an "excuse" and a "forgiveness"
of the youth's responsibility.29
Religious Interests
A crucial step in softening the movie's message was informing parents
about the dangers of watching the picture (through classification, information,
and influence on film critics), prohibiting young people to watch
the movie, as well as straight cutting (censorship). Before turning to official
censorship, it is worth indicating that, in various European countries, the
local Catholic church leaders and organizations were still very active in
the film sector of the 1950s. Inspired by the American Legion of Decency,
these film organizations aimed at influencing the Catholic press in
their film coverage as well as putting more pressure on commercial cinemas
to prohibit the programming of "unhealthy" movies. Supported by
local bishops, the Catholic film organizations also installed classification
boards. In general, these boards were critical toward U.S. juvenile crime
178 Rebel Without a Cause
movies, including Rebel Without a Cause. In most countries, the local
Catholic boards found the movie unsuitable for adolescents and marked
the movie with the category "only for adults, with strong reservations."30
For the Catholic boards, the major problem was not only the issue of
delinquent youth, but also the movie's stress on "the failure of family life,
as well as the responsibility of the parents and of the educational system"--fields
where the Catholic church tried to maintain its power in the
1950s.31
Most boards had not only problems with the "extreme violent
scenes," but they severely attacked the movie on the basis of how the
problem of the failing parents and school system was developed, that is,
"in an incomplete and rather artificial form." In the movie's file description
by the German Catholic film movement, the critic claimed that Rebel
could be interesting material for local discussions, but finally the "German
title reminds us that . . . the movie lacks a Christian answer" to the
problems it portrays.32
Official Censorship
Although in most European countries there were no close ties between
these classification boards and official censorship, the latter was often congruent
in its final decisions. Similar to what happened with other juvenile
delinquency movies, Rebel Without a Cause received in most European countries
the harsh verdict of no children allowed under sixteen or eighteen
years (e.g., in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Swe-
den).33
In Germany, the censorship board (the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle
der Filmwirtschaft, or the film industry's voluntary self-control) stated that
both the movie and the trailer could not be shown to children under
sixteen. In 1972 and again in 1989 a similar decision was made, while only
in 1996 was the age category lowered to twelve years.34
The official censors' power however went further than just imposing
age categories. It also included the possibility to cut movies or, more
elegantly formulated, to suggest cuttings. The Swedish censors decided
only to award a "16 years" certificate by cutting five meters, while in
Finland forty-five meters had to be removed.35
The French national control
commission (Commission de Classification--CNC) decided to grant a
license for adolescents and adults (over sixteen years) only if Warners
removed some minor scenes.36
In the commission's argumentation, no
references were made to the parents' culture or responsibility, but it only
mentioned the "particularly violent scenes (knife fight, murders committed
by adolescents, etc.)."37
Some film critics supported this decision,38
while others who were in favour of the movie such as Jean de Baroncelli
in Le Monde, claimed that censors were wrong and that "parents and
179Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
people who love great movies should not miss this work."39
This point of
debate within the French film press came back in 1962, when the control
commission reaffirmed its original decision.40
One decade later (October
1973) the movie was finally open for all audiences. In a letter to the local
distributor, the commission's president claimed that "the motifs which
could have legitimated in 1956 a restrictive measure for minors, were
certainly justified at that time given the suggestive and new character of
the subjects treated in the movie," but that now the commission had
"decided unanimously that these motifs were no longer justified."41
Referring to the censorship and release history of The Wild One and
Blackboard Jungle in the United Kingdom, it is no surprise that Warners
faced the BBFC with apprehension. Watching Rebel Without a Cause for
the first time on October 14, 1955, the British censors estimated in an
internal note that this "is another story involving delinquency in an American
high school, this time with the accent on the sins of neglectful and
quarrelling parents."42
In the same note, the examiners claimed that they
"did not like the film on censorship grounds and thought it would be no
loss from the artistic point of view." Hereby they explicitly referred to
Blackboard Jungle, "a better, but also a more violent film." In a letter
to Warners, the BBFC secretary Arthur Watkins defended its policy of
rejection in the following terms:
I do not have to tell you the serious view which the Board takes
about any film dealing with juvenile delinquency, especially in these
times when there is such widespread public anxiety about the problem.
Before the Board can certificate that the moral values are
sufficiently firmly presented to outweigh any harmful influence which
the film might otherwise have on young and impressionable members
of the cinema audience.43
Watkins claimed that the film should be resubmitted and could only
receive a certificate when some "primary and essential cuts have been
made." And then a long list of suggestions was formulated, mostly referring
to vulgar speech, acts of violence, and the representation of the
parents. In the first reel all shots of Jim (James Dean) punching and
kicking the desk should be removed. In the third reel the BBFC suggested
that it would be good to remove the knife fight altogether "if a way
can be found . . . from the technical point of view." The cliff top sequence
was referred to as: "the less we have of this whole unpleasant idea of
young people meeting together to witness a contest which could end in
the death of one of the participants, the better." Also the shots of Jim
"trying to throttle his father" were asked to be removed.
180 Rebel Without a Cause
Warners agreed to proceed to voluntary cuttings, including the
punching and kicking scenes, the slashing of tires, as well as big parts of
the knife fight. In a letter to the BBFC, a Warners representative tried to
appease the censors by explaining and defending his cuttings.44
With regard
to the fight with knives, he claimed that "I have rendered this absolutely
innocuous, having taken out every inch of the fight and at no time
do you see knives, except a brief shot at the end when Buzz holds the
handles towards Jim." The car contest scene, too, was heavily cut, reducing
"Judy's actions showing unrestrained excitement down to an absolute minimum,"
as well as the "scene and scream of Buzz going over the cliff and
the shot of the car actually crashing on the rocks below." Finally, the scene
where Jim was trying to throttle his father was also removed.
However, the BBFC did not follow Warners' request for an A
certificate. The new, heavily damaged version of Rebel Without a Cause did
not yet satisfy the examiners, who continued to have problems with the
depiction of the parents' shortcomings, and scenes of drunkenness and
hooliganism. On November 3, 1955, the movie finally received an X
rating.45
Warners' managing director Arthur S. Abeles could not hide his
disillusion and anger, and in a new letter to Watkins he wrote that "this
is the first time that such a thing has happened with a Warners' film,"
asking him to reconsider the classification in order not to force the company
"to cater to the morbid element of the population by branding it
with an X."46
Defending an A certificate, Abeles argued that Warners not
only agreed to fulfill all cuttings requests, but also that the company had
put in something praiseworthy ("a line of dialogue in which the hero
refuses to fight with knifes").
However, again, the BBFC examiners, including Watkins and his
successor John Trevelyan, were not impressed by Abeles's "nave argu-
ments."47
In an internal document they claimed that they "still have a
rather uncomfortable feeling that an `X' may be heavy weather for this
film as cut."48
Again they proposed a rather long catalogue of cuts that
should be made in order to "tip it over the border line into `A.' " Some
of those new suggestions were related to complete scenes (e.g., a reduction
of Jim's drunkenness scene), single lines (e.g., Jim's speech beginning
with "That's a Zoo"), and concrete actions (e.g., Judy's face being slapped
by her father; the deletion of the shot of the mass of cars driving away
from the cliff top; the kiss between Jim and Judy). The internal document
did not hide the examiners' personal appreciation of the movie as "rubbish"
and "stuff for the teddy inclined adolescent."
In the meantime, Nicholas Ray was also involved in the British
censorship affair. Following different sources, it is clear that Ray came
over to London in order to try to work out a solution and to make the
181Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
film acceptable.49
Watkins continued to have problems with "the behaviour
of the parents in the film" and with "the irresponsible behaviour of the
teenagers themselves."50
In an interview with Variety, Watkins referred to
the problems that Britain had with teddy boys, "delinquents who wear
zoot-suits, carry razors and knives, etc."51
For Warners's managing director in Britain the game was clearly
over now. Abeles surrendered by claiming that "the cuts you suggest . . .
would reduce the film to nonsense":
If we don't show the weakness of the parents we have no motivation
for the unhappiness and loneliness of the adolescents. Although we
are accepting an "X" for the picture, I should like to repeat that I
honestly feel the way the film now stands it deserves an "A."52
By December 1, 1955, Rebel Without a Cause finally got its X certificate,
followed by three additional cuttings in the trailer (e.g., removal of
Judy's father slapping his daughter's face). This crude, at times hilarious,
censorship history stresses not only the censors' power in influencing
the textual meaning and reducing the movie's critical edge. Even in such
a manner that we understand a British film critic's comment indicating
that "the knife fight has been dramatically curtailed . . . and becomes
momentarily incomprehensible."53
But the history also indicates that the censors in some sense react
upon a wider society's anxiety, even if their evaluations seem to be highly
subjective. When censors (over)react to a perceived moral panic within
society, they can be seen as acting as "moral guardians." Just calling them
paternalistic is not very productive. The Rebel case indicates that censorship
problems around troubling images are not only due to pretentious
or old-fashioned censors. We might also look at the British case (as well
as those in other European countries) as examples of how censorship files
may be considered thoughtful indicators of shifts in core societal and
moral values being (or being perceived by dominant elites as) threatened.
From this moral panic perspective, it is interesting how former examiners
in later writings agree upon their extreme reaction at the time. Talking
about the British censorship approach to Rebel Without a Cause, Enid
Wistrich claimed:
Possibly films which deal with disturbing social and political themes
are only acceptable once the danger is felt to be past. The recent
decision of the censor to reclassify for adolescent audiences without
cuts Rebel Without a Cause . . . is a case in point. The film was cut
and banned to teenagers because it was thought to sanction and
182 Rebel Without a Cause
thus encourage the anti-social and rebellious behaviour of the young
hero. . . . Certainly the censor was happy to reclassify the James
Dean saga in 1976, but if a modern version with a different message
was as challenging in the 1970s as the Dean film was in the 1950s
were to appear, would the decision be any different?54
When the movie finally got an "Adults" category without cuts in April
1976, the examiners wrote in a similar sense that earlier on the film
caused the BBFC "some anxiety because of its apparent challenge to
parental authority and its possible effect on the increase of juvenile delinquency."
But reviewing it all these years later, the censors now "felt
that it tells a moral tale."55
Critical Disagreements
When Rebel Without a Cause was finally released in Britain at the beginning
of 1956, the censors were surprised by the praise from many of the
critics.56
Also in other countries, the specialized film press and other
critics were not unanimous in attacking Ray's movie. In the United Kingdom
for instance, some critical remarks did run through many reviews
such as those on the sensationalist and violent character of the movie,57
the negative image of the United States,58
as well as the ambiguous portrayal
of the parents and the delinquent youth. The Times, for instance,
talked about a "routine of blaming the parents for the sins of the children"
and a "suspect doctrine" that the last person to be held responsible
for delinquent behavior was the delinquent himself. But the reviewer
immediately admitted that Rebel was a "brilliant piece of work" and "an
excitingly intelligent exploration of the adolescent mind."59
In Sight and
Sound, Penelope Huston developed a fine analysis of recent U.S. juvenile
delinquency movies, calling Rebel a social document, touching society "in
its most elementary aspect, the individual's own adjustment to the world
he has to live in." For Huston, the movie's "basic sense of insecurity" and
the "malaise" call into question the American dream.60
In France, La Fureur de vivre caused a more vivid, polemical debate
among critics. This had, on the one hand, to do with the success of the
Catholic film organization and its classification board in influencing a
more negative opinion within the conservative and religiously affiliated
press. On the other hand, a group of young film critics had been admiring
and defending Ray as one of the leading figures in American cinema.
Calling Ray one of the major new auteurs, Cahiers du Cinéma critics such
as Truffaut and Eric Rohmer played a key role in sanctifying Rebel Without
a Cause. Their intellectual mentor André Bazin, who devoted several
183Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
reviews to the movie, wrote that he could not always "follow his young
friends in all their admirations, even if we take into considerations the
polemical margin of their actions." But Bazin immediately confirmed that
"in relation to Nicholas Ray they were clearly right."61
This canonizing
Cahiers attitude was strongly countered by more leftist critics, exemplified
by the one of the rival film journal Positif.
So, at least three sorts of reviews can be identified in the French
debate. One of the first articles to appear exemplified the Catholic conservative
voice. In the newspaper France Catholique the reviewer denounced
Ray's picture in often provocative terms, calling upon parents (readers) to
advise their children not to go watch this a-religious thesis film.62
The
movie was attacked on the basis of its false moral tone, its weak script
(mainly the second part), while it lacked any psychological depth in its
portrayal of both parents and adolescents.63
This type of criticism was quickly countered by an article in Arts by
François Truffaut, who opened another register in the debate.64
Rereading
Truffaut's review nearly half a century later, it is astonishing how the
future New Wave filmmaker did not go into the usual criticism (i.e., the
portrayal of violence, youth, parents' culture) or defend Ray in terms of
his daring analysis of the social issues treated in the movie. Instead, one
is struck by how Truffaut denied the political engagement in Ray's movie,
as well as the conservative and moralistic tone of his article. Truffaut's
praise was based on Ray's power as a cinematographic "poet," calling
Benedek a "sociologist" and Brooks a (revolutionary) "reformer." The
central reason for glorifying Ray as one of the major auteurs in Hollywood
lay in his cinematographic power: he does not use a "scriptwriter's
script," but a "scenario de metteur en scne"; Ray's realistic style glimmers
through staging, editing, use of color and Cinemascope, and acting.
Other Cahiers critics treated Rebel Without a Cause in similar terms,
where the articles by Bazin go even further in denying the sociological
and political force of Rebel and in underlining Ray's cinematographic,
poetic, and spiritual power.65
Calling Rebel soon one of the postwar classical
movies, Bazin looked at it as a "moral drama" too and he did not
stop to locate Ray and his movie within the history of art, literature, and
cinema. Completely in line with the auteur theory, he tried to compare
Ray's mood with that of Cocteau and Rimbaud, his style reminiscent of
Rossellini and Renoir: "Similar to Jean Renoir for instance, the reality in
the movie lies above a superficial level, it resides in what I would call the
spirit of the scene ("l'âme de la scne"), or better perhaps, in its moral
poetry, or at least in its lyricism."66
A third important Cahiers critic, the
future filmmaker Eric Rohmer, also looked at Ray's movie as pure moral
poetry. It would be too much of a digression to analyze Rohmer's article
184 Rebel Without a Cause
in Cahiers du Cinéma, but he basically went on to compare the movie with
the dramatic power and moral tone of ancient Greek drama. Not only the
structure of the movie, but also its mood was remarkably similar to the
one in Greek tragedies. For Rohmer violence is no longer to be explained
as a societal phenomenon, but as a physical result of hubris and honor.
This type of analysis was strongly countered by more leftist voices.
The clearest example was a review in Positif.67
Inspired by the harsh
(ideologically inspired) rivalry, most of the Cahiers critics' praise was
reversed. For the Positif reviewer Ray's oeuvre bantered in tasteless moralistic
"pathos." Openly preferring Brooks's approach, Positif tackled Ray's
social problem analysis: "(For) Ray the key to the Problem of Juvenile
Delinquency . . . : his heroes are adolescents-who-fight-to-become-men;
their crisis is nothing more than the passage from childhood to adult-
hood."68
In the review, Ray's style was also severely attacked, calling him
an unoriginal filmmaker, whose poetry resides often in cheap effects.
This extremely critical approach to the movie, however, is--as the reviewer
himself indicated--highly inspired by the specific position of the
Positif journal within the French film criticism at that time, while it is
not completely representative for how the left press looked at Rebel
Without a Cause. Similar to what happened in other countries, where
quite similar conservative, religiously inspired and leftist voices were
present in film criticism, in France communist and leftist newspapers
saw and--sometimes lauded--Ray's critical portrayal of American capitalist
society.69
Conclusion: Loosening Authority,
Americanism, and Modernization
In 1956 Rebel Without a Cause had been among the most popular films at
the box office, while many critics choose it as one of the best movies of
the year.70
This had much to do with the Dean cult, which in Europe
might have been less spectacular than in the United States, but whose
long-term influence on youth culture cannot be underestimated.71
It remains
difficult to speculate about the influence of one single cultural
product or a star, certainly upon the audience. But it is astounding how
the movie has been successfully released in the 1960s, and again in the
1970s, while Dean's mood and attributes (jeans, "blousons rouges,"
t-shirt, boots) were largely taken up--as well as commercially exploited.
An alternative approach in locating the movie's influence is to put
it into a wider flow of cultural products. If we look at the European
cultural debate of the 1950s (and later), it is astonishing how important
the trope of America has been. Dean's attributes--as portrayed in its
185Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
purest form in Rebel Without a Cause--were often identified as another
clear example of the further Americanization of Europe.
In the twentieth century, America played a key role in European
cultural criticism and in its theoretical mapping of art, popular culture,
and modernity. Exemplifying the wider American cultural industry, Hollywood
embodied ever since the 1920s the "America-as-threat" paradigm.
In many European countries, intellectuals, politicians, and cultural critics
from different ideological origins were unanimous in their negative consensus
around the influence of American mass culture. This debate was
intensified after the Second World War and into the 1950s, when the
reconstruction of Europe was accompanied by an increasing flow of U.S.
movies and other cultural products and symbols.
However, in the postwar cultural debate on Americanization, some
dissenting voices were raised. The latter strongly denounced the pejorative
and ideologically inflected character of the traditional elitist views
upon American popular culture, while for many young working-class people
(and critics), American culture represented a "force of liberation against
the grey certainties of (British) cultural life."72
Writing about the postwar
cultural development of Italy, David Forgacs argued that "from the mid-
1950s rock'n'roll music . . . and films like Rebel Without a Cause . . . helped
give shape to a new model of youth autonomy and rebellion."73
Among
young people cultural symbols of Americanism were increasingly associated
with modernity and a loosening of traditional authority, hence underlining
its potential for models of resistance.
From this perspective, it remains interesting that throughout Western
Europe, this type of controversial material from the U.S. was able to
whip up a vivid debate. Not only on American social and moral issues, but
also on local forms of--in this case--delinquency, juvenile rebellion, and so
on. Although official censors, religious classifiers and conservative parts of
the press tried to resolve the ambiguity or to flatten out the critical engagement
in Ray's movie, one is struck by the persistence of countervoices in
the public debate--defending Rebel Without a Cause in its mood and analysis
of youth's existential rebellion and identity crisis.
It also remains astonishing how mainly European filmmakers later
claimed to be influenced by this type of American movie, Rebel Without
a Cause in particular. Especially in France, where anti-American feelings
have been so high on the cultural and political agenda--sadly, up till
today--it is hard to underestimate the importance of Ray's movie. Dean's
performance in Rebel Without a Cause can still be admired through French
popular culture such as Johnny Halliday, still France's most popular rock
'n' roll star (Chateau). But its most truthful influence has been on French
cinema itself, where the young film critics were mentally becoming
186 Rebel Without a Cause
filmmakers. New Wave cineastes such as Truffaut, Godard, and Rivette
saw in Rebel Without a Cause a model for their own quest for a fresh and
unspoiled contemporary cinema in which adolescents' complex "vision du
monde" could play a major part.
Abbreviations
BBFC British Board of Film Censors
CCC Commission Catholique de Cinéma (Belgium)
CNC Centre National de la Cinématographie (France)
FSK Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft (Germany)
KFA Katholieke Filmactic (Catholic Film Action, Belgium)
OCIC Organisation Catholique Internationale du Cinéma
Notes
The author would like to thank David Barrett, Laura Bezerra, Susanne Boe,
Ib Bondebjerg, Joël Cammas, Pierre Chaintreuil, Michael Isaksen, Rüdiger
Koschnitzki, Philippe Meers, and Hilde Van Liempt for their help in searching
original material for this chapter. A first version of this chapter was presented
during my stay at the Department of Film and Media Studies of the Copenhagen
University in November 2002. Thanks also to my friends and members of the
Working Group for Film and Television Studies, Ghent University.
1. Les Stars was first published in 1957, but Morin extended his manuscript
for later reprints such as one in 1962 and another in 1972. We draw upon the
latter version, published by Seuil.
2. François Truffaut. "James Dean," Arts (September 29, 1956). Quoted in
Morin (141).
3. See Doherty.
4. See Staiger.
5. See Cohen; and Springhall.
6. Doherty (117).
7. Doherty.
8. BBFC file on The Wild One, quoted in Robertson (105).
9. Phelps (120).
10. Doherty (119).
11. See Robertson (107­8) and Matthews (128­29).
12. Doherty (117, 118).
13. Robertson (114).
14. Letter Watkins (BBFC) to Ayres (MGM executive), March 24, 1955,
BBFC file on Blackboard Jungle.
15. Robertson (115).
16. Letter Harris (BBFC) to Eckman (MGM junior executive), July 18,
1955.
17. Trevelyan (1957).
187Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema
18. At least in Belgium and France, MGM used the slogan: "Le film qui a
provoqué un incident diplomatique" ("The movie that caused a diplomatic incident").
See Doniol-Valcroze.
19. Matthews (131­32).
20. CNC--Commission de Classification file on Graine de Violence.
21. See, for example, Mauriac.
22. Hebdige (76­77).
23. Wilson (111; reprinted in this volume as chapter 5).
24. Wilson (110­11; reprinted in this volume as chapter 5).
25. Wilson (111; reprinted in this volume as chapter 5).
26. Wilson (111­12; reprinted in this volume as chapter 5).
27. Also David Fogacs (311) indicates that in Italy Rebel Without a Cause
received a "more moralistic title."
28. Jean de Baroncelli, for example, even opened his review with: "La
Fureur de vivre (is a) stupid title that completely ignores the deeper sense of the
movie and that does not correspond to the American title . . ." (my translation).
See de Baroncelli (81).
29. See Ruppert. See also the comments by I. W.
30. For data on Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain,
and Switzerland, see OCIC file on Rebel Without a Cause/Fureur de vivre.
31. See KFA/CCC file number 5843 on Botsend Jeugd/Fureur de vivre.
32. See: K. B. (127).
33. For the Nordic and Scandinavian countries, see Statens Filmcensur,
Copenhagen, file 61469 on Vildt Blod/Rebel Without a Cause.
34. See FSK file number 11405 (a, b, c, and d) and file number 11755
on . . . denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun.
35. See Statens Filmcensur file 61469 on Vildt Blod/Rebel Without a Cause.
36. Internal note, January 25, 1956, CNC--Commission de Classification
file on Graine de Violence.
37. Ibid., letter Flaud (CNC) to Warners, February 24, 1956, as well as an
official CNC document, March 14, 1956.
38. See Magan.
39. De Baroncelli.
40. Letter CNC to Warners, October 9, 1962, CNC--Commission de
Classification file on Graine de Violence.
41. Ibid., internal document, October 4, 1973.
42. Internal document, October 14, 1955, BBFC file on Rebel Without a
Cause.
43. Ibid., letter Watkins (BBFC Secretary) to Abeles (Warner London),
October 17, 1955.
44. Ibid., letter Wackett (Warner) to Watkins (BBFC), October 25, 1955.
45. Ibid., letter Watkins (BBFC) to Abeles (Warners), November 4, 1955.
46. Ibid., letter Abeles (Warners) to Watkins (BBFC), November 8, 1955.
47. Robertson (3).
48. BBFC file on Rebel Without a Cause, internal document AW/JT, November
21, 1955.
188 Rebel Without a Cause
49. See: "Cuts." See also, letter Ray to Watkins (BBFC), December 10,
1955, BBFC file on Rebel Without a Cause and Watkins's letter in response in
which he thanks Ray for the "co-operative attitude which you showed when you
were over here," Ibid., letter Watkins to Ray, December 15, 1955.
50. Ibid., letter Watkins (BBFC) to Abeles (Warners), November 24, 1955.
51. "Cuts."
52. Letter Abeles (Warners) to Watkins (BBFC), November 30, 1955, BBFC
file on Rebel Without a Cause.
53. G. L. (17).
54. Wistrich (117­18).
55. Internal document NKB/RAS, April 12, 1976, BBFC file on Rebel Without
a Cause.
56. Ibid., letter Watkins (BBFC) to Mirams (film censor, New Zealand),
February 1956.
57. See, for instance, Majdalany.
58. See Lejeune.
59. "The Juvenile Delinquent."
60. Huston.
61. See Bazin.
62. "La Fureur de vivre." France Catholique (March 30, 1956).
63. For instance, Magan. Also, "Le Malheur d'avoir de la lecture. " Carrefour
(April 11, 1956).
64. Truffaut.
65. Bazin (April 15, 1956; 44) and Bazin (May 17, 1956).
66. Bazin (April 6, 1956).
67. R. T. (38­41).
68. R. T. (39).
70. For the United Kingdom, see Thumin.
71. Devillers (74­75); Howlett (193­97).
72. Storey (12).
73. Forgacs (311­12).
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------. "La Fureur de vivre." Radio-Cinéma-Television (326) (April 15, 1956).
------. "La Fureur de vivre." Education Nationale (May 17, 1956).
Chabaud, Charles. "La Fureur de vivre." Cinéma 56 (May 1956).
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: MacGibbon and Kee,
1972.
"Cuts Ease Way in Britain for Rebel." Variety (November 23, 1955).
de Baroncelli Jean. "Fureur de vivre." Le Monde (May 7, 1956).
Devillers, Marceau. James Dean. Paris: Pygmalion, 1985.
Doherty, Thomas. Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in
the 1950s. London: Hyman, 1988.
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Doniol-Valcroze, Jacques. "Richard Brooks aux écoutes." France Observateur (December
1, 1955).
Forgacs, David. "Twentieth-century Culture." In The Oxford Illustrated History of
Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 291­319.
G. L. "Rebel Without a Cause." Monthly Film Bulletin (January 1956).
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1998. Originally
published in 1979.
Howlett, John. James Dean: A Biography. London: Plexus, 1975.
Huston, Penelope. "Rebels without Causes." Sight and Sound 25(4).
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K. B. ". . . denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun." Filmdienst (April 12, 1956).
Lejeune, C. A. "Homes Unblessed." The Observer (January 22, 1956).
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(April 4, 1956).
Majdalany, Fred. "But Does This Do One Any?" Daily Mail (January 1, 1956).
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Story of Film Censorship in Britain. London: Chatto, 1994.
Mauriac, Claude. "Edifiante Audace." Figaro Littéraire (December 3, 1955).
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Phelps, Guy. Film Censorship. Letchwork: Garden City Press, 1975.
Rohmer, Eric. "Ajax ou Le cid?" Cahiers du cinéma 59 (May 1956): 32­36.
Robertson, James C. The Hidden Camera: British Film Censorship in Action. 1913­
1976. London: Routledge, 1989.
R. T. "La Fureur de vivre. Les causes et les effets." Positif 17 (June/July 1956).
Ruppert, Martin. "Mörder aus gutem Hause." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(March 21, 1956).
Springhall, John. Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta
Rap, 1830­1996. London: Macmillan, 1998.
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Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. London: Prentice Hall, 1997.
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Thumin, Janet. "The `Popular,' Cash, and Culture in the Postwar British Cinema
Industry." Screen 32(3) (1991): 245­71.
Trevelyan, John. What the Censors Saw. London: Michael Joseph, 1973.
Truffaut, François. "La Fureur de vivre." Arts (April 4, 1956).
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Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
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Wistrich, Enid. "I don't mind the sex, it's the violence." Film Censorship Explored.
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