The following is a re-print of a short essay I wrote for a Nicholas Ray class at NYU - Tisch.
The first time that I saw Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, I was largely unimpressed. Of course, this was around eight years ago before I seriously got involved in cinema studies. At the time, I was incapable of appreciating Ray’s phenomenal direction, Ernest Haller’s stunning cinematography, and James Dean’s haunting performance. But now that I am older and wiser I am able to recognize Rebel Without a Cause for the classic film that it is. And yet, when I re-watched it, the thing that impressed me the most wasn’t the acting or direction. Instead, it was the manner in which Ray blocked his actors and framed his shots. It’s easy to miss if you don’t know what to look for. It’s said that classical Hollywood film-makers tried to use “invisible editing” so that the audiences wouldn’t notice scene changes. To most, it would appear that Ray used “invisible mise en scène.” But closer study reveals otherwise. Consider the very first scene inside the police station where the audience first meets Jim Stark (Dean), Plato (Sal Mineo), and Judy (Natalie Wood). Before we are even introduced to Plato and Judy, we see them in the foreground and background of several shots. After we meet them, Ray spends the rest of the police station scene constructing shots where two or more of them are visible. But even then the characters are largely isolated from each other by walls of glass. These scenes are in a way repeated at the end of the film when Jim, Plato, and Judy pretend that they are a family living in an abandoned mansion. Although this time, Ray uses his shots to isolate individual members of the trio from each other. Frequently Ray will frame Jim and Judy in the same shot then cut to Plato by himself. However, Ray adds another element by repeatedly blocking Plato so he is underneath or below Jim and Judy. Even in their close circle, he remains an outsider.
9/10
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