Paper 1 Intro, Summary and Analysis example

--Introduction Example

Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American film. It was directed by Nicholas Ray. The cast includes James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. It is a good film because it looks intelligently at the emotional struggles of teenagers.

Summary Example

Jim Stark (James Dean) is a new High School student in Southern California. His family moves a lot because Jim gets in trouble often. He goes to a new High School, where he becomes friends with Plato (Sal Mineo), a shy boy whose parents have abandoned him. (His father does not live with him. His mother leaves for long periods of time. Only his mother’s black servant seems to care about him.) Jim gets in trouble with a gang during a school trip to the Planetarium. After a knife fight, Jim agrees to race the gang’s leader, Buzz, that night.

Buzz dies during the race. Jim takes Buzz’s girlfriend, Judy (Natalie Wood), home. Jim wants to turn himself in to the police, but his parents don’t want him to do that.

Jim goes to the police station, but the cop that he trusts is not there, so he goes back home. Judy is waiting for him. They go to an old house that Plato told Jim about. Plato meets them there, and for a time they pretend to be a family. Some of the gang comes to get them, and a frightened Plato takes a gun and starts to shoot at them.

The police come. Plato, still frightened, starts to shoot at the police as well. Jim tries to save Plato, but Plato is shot outside the Planetarium.

Analysis examples

The movie shows how teenagers feel helpless emotionally. One interesting example is the Planetarium’s show about the Earth. It is a very strange presentation about how the Earth will be destroyed and how the Universe will not care that the Earth is gone. We see that some of the students are scared by the show. Plato is especially scared: he even hides before the show is over. The Planetarium’s show is a metaphor for how teenagers feel. They think that they are alone and that no one understands them or cares about them.

Plato’s fear of the light show allows Plato and Jim to start talking about what they are afraid of. “What does he know about ‘Man alone’?” Plato says to Jim. This idea that no one understands Plato’s sense of loneliness again illustrates a common fear that young people have.

The movie also looks at teenagers’ need to have a sense of belonging. When Plato and Jim and Judy are all at the abandoned mansion, they pretend that they are a family, with Plato the son. But before they pretend to be a family, Plato pretends to be a real estate agent trying to rent the mansion to Jim and Judy. The three of them make jokes about how adults don’t like to listen to children. These scenes show that teenagers desire to have a sense of “family,” yet they feel that adults are not interested in making children part of their family.