Jim Stark (James Dean, in the last role he shot before his death) lays face down on a sidewalk dressed in a suit and tie, playing with a toy monkey when he’s picked up by the cops. Taken to the Juvenile Division, Jim meets two other teens in trouble. Judy – Natalie Wood, in her first adult role – had a fight with her father and ran away, while the neurotic Plato (Sal Mineo) apparently shot some puppies.

Jim’s parents (Jim Backus and Ann Doran) arrive. Dad is a good natured fop bullied by Jim’s mother, who has moved the family from one place to another – she says – to protect Jim. The anguished delinquent can no longer take their incessant bickering and cries out, “You’re tearing me apart! You say one thing, he says another, and everybody changes back again!”

Setting out for his first day of school, Jim spots Judy and offers to give her a ride. She gives him a sharp rebuke and jumps in with a carload of kids, including Buzz Gunderson (Corey Allen). At a field trip to Griffith Observatory, Buzz and the rest of his suburban gang taunt Jim by calling him a chicken. A non-lethal switchblade fight ensues, during which Jim gets the best of his tormentor. Buzz challenges him to a “chickie run” that night.

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Now wearing the iconic white T-shirt, jeans and bright red windbreaker, Jim arrives in a remote coastal area where all the kids have gathered in their hot rods. Jim and Buzz set to race two cars toward the edge of a cliff dangling over the Pacific. Whoever jumps out first is crowned the chicken. Jim leaps out in time, but Buzz gets trapped and flies over the cliff to a spectacular death.

Jim confesses his role in the accident to his parents and intends to turn himself in – to tell the truth – but his parents stop him. Jim goes to the Juvenile Division anyway, but can’t get anyone to pay attention to him there either. Three delinquents – including a young Dennis Hopper – spot Jim and convince themselves he’s ratted them out. Jim escapes into the night with Judy and Plato, while the goons search for them.

Directed by Nicholas Ray and written by Ray and Stewart Stern and Irving Schulman, the story was based on a series of pulp vignettes Ray had come up with under the title The Blind Run. Warner Brothers had been developing a film based on a case study printed in 1944 about a teenage psychopath called Rebel Without A Cause. The two projects folded into one.

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The movie feels big, and comes through with an eccentric leading performance by James Dean. His little tics and gestures – like howling along to a police siren – are just great. Juvenile Delinquency, and “What To Do When Your Teen Starts Acting Badly” were major stories in the media at the time, and the opening scenes in the Juvie Station promised a kind of over-the-top, pulp deviance that I loved.

But even a broken watch is on time twice a day. Once the action moves to high school, the movie lost its credibility for me. None of the cast members – even Wood, who was 16 – seem believable as teenagers. The dialogue is flat; characters speak, but not to each other, with Dean mastering the art of withdrawal. The movie peaks with the chickie run sequence and is an awkwardly structured slog toward the Powerful Climax after that.

The story said nothing to me, but stylistically, Rebel Without A Cause earns the right to be called a classic. The look of the movie – shot in Cinemascope and presented in “Warnercolor” – is larger than life, a spectacular, moving, full panel comic strip. While no rock ‘n roll is heard, the musical score by Leonard Rosenman is thunderous and intense, the perfect orchestral soundtrack for teenage rebellion.