The use of CinemaScope in Rebel Without a Cause
By Daniel Blumensev
Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955 Nicholas Ray) came out on October 27, 1955: a product of Hollywood’s battle against the advent of television. The picture was Ray’s most commercially successful oeuvre (Andrew 2004: 90). A casual viewer would address its success to the cult surrounding the late James Dean: a legend among the youth, however, a more considerate viewer would realize that the picture’s spectacular widescreen presentation played a distinctive role in the picture’s commercial glory. This spectacular widescreen is called CinemaScope, produced by Fox in 1953 (Langford 2010: 6): using anamorphic lenses: ones that capture a squeezed wide image and then un-squeeze it, in all its spectacular width, through a special lens, for exhibition (Goodridge and Grierson 2012: 188). CinemaScope, exploiting the size of the image, was invented to conquer television’s 4:33 square aspect ratio, bringing audiences back into the cinema (Quart and Auster 1984: 52). However, artists like Nicholas Ray found an artistic use in it. CinemaScope in Rebel Without a Cause is exploited primarily to express the themes of loneliness, connection, intellectual level and power of the film’s characters, through the use of extremely wide spaces and the position of characters in them, but also, being less important for Ray, spectacularly: showing the Los Angeles skyline in an ultra wide frame, in order to get the television watching youth into the cinema.
In order to understand the thematic purpose of Ray’s use of CinemaScope, which was ordered by Jack L. Warner after watching the black and white rushes and considering Rebel ‘a very important film’, one must first understand the main themes of Ray’s picture (Eisenschitz 1996: 245). Rebel is a sociological study of middle-class American youth through the characters of Jim (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo) (Andrew 2004: 91). In the second scene of the picture, all three characters are in detention at a precinct station, each having rebelled against their respective families. Jim has rebelled against his mother: who is more concerned about upholding a respectable appearance than to console him, and his father: too weak to provide Jim with the guidance he needs (Andrew 2004: 91). Plato rebels against his parents simply not being there, and Judy against her father’s reluctant acceptance of her maturity (Andrew 2004: 91). Ultimately, the lack of love and understanding in each of the three characters’ families, leads to their solitude: which they are all rebelling against. The visual expression of solitude is distinctly one of the purposes of the CinemaScope in the sequence of Jim exiting the planetarium and encountering Buzz’s gang, which will be under scrutiny.
In order to understand the thematic purpose of Ray’s use of CinemaScope, which was ordered by Jack L. Warner after watching the black and white rushes and considering Rebel ‘a very important film’, one must first understand the main themes of Ray’s picture (Eisenschitz 1996: 245). Rebel is a sociological study of middle-class American youth through the characters of Jim (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo) (Andrew 2004: 91). In the second scene of the picture, all three characters are in detention at a precinct station, each having rebelled against their respective families. Jim has rebelled against his mother: who is more concerned about upholding a respectable appearance than to console him, and his father: too weak to provide Jim with the guidance he needs (Andrew 2004: 91). Plato rebels against his parents simply not being there, and Judy against her father’s reluctant acceptance of her maturity (Andrew 2004: 91). Ultimately, the lack of love and understanding in each of the three characters’ families, leads to their solitude: which they are all rebelling against. The visual expression of solitude is distinctly one of the purposes of the CinemaScope in the sequence of Jim exiting the planetarium and encountering Buzz’s gang, which will be under scrutiny.
In shot A, the mindless crowd of teenagers has just left the frame, leaving the lecturer, Jim and Buzz in the shot. The use of CinemaScope to include these three particular characters in its wide frame has a significant thematic meaning to the film’s overall theme. The lecturer in the frame, has just shown the kids that the world, which will not be missed, will soon explode into a cloud of red gas, and that ‘Man himself seems an episode of little consequence’ (Rebel Without a Cause). This space show, most likely subconsciously for the mindless crowd, and definitely knowingly for Jim and Plato, reminds the kids exactly what it is they are rebelling against: the injustice, briefness and ultimate solitude of existence (Andrew 2004: 93). As a result of this solitude, Buzz eyes Jim in this shot, with the intention of a knife fight, in order to do ‘something’ in this ‘suburban tristesse of morose aimlessness’ (Kashner and Macnair 2003: 99). Thus, the particular inclusion of the lecturer with Jim and Buzz in the extra wide CinemaScope frame of shot A, clarifies the motivation for the need of a knife fight, as well as all of the succeeding actions of the troubled kids.
Right after shot A, we see, in the foreground, the kids briskly exiting ‘the dome of contemplation’: the planetarium, while Plato stays behind, hiding, in the background (shot B). The use of wide space to connect key characters in triangular groupings, as Ray calls them, is one of the main effects of CinemaScope in Ray’s picture (Larsen 2014: 156). Plato, being in the background, is small, which reflects his vulnerability to the mindless kids and to the meaningless world. In shot C1, Jim, alone, in a vast wide screen space, walks to the right and the camera follows. Jim’s solitude is literally shown as he is the only one in the wide frame, highlighting the loneliness he feels from the lack of understanding from his family and colleagues, and from his struggle with maturity. However the camera pans, revealing Plato in the shot (C2), uniting the two victims of solitude in one wide frame. Shot D reestablishes the connection between Jim and Buzz, both looking at each other again: Buzz anticipating the fight. Buzz, in the foreground, blocks the exit for his victims in the background, now being Jim and Plato. Buzz being in the foreground makes him larger in relation to Jim and Plato, making him be in control of the situation. Jim decides to move towards Plato, attempting to avoid conflict.
Seeing Jim leave (shot E), Plato makes a run for the exit but is confronted by Buzz (shot F). This sequence is complimented by a reverse shot, exposing Buzz in the front of his gang (shot G). Shot G shows how Buzz is surrounded by his mindless sheep, who fill the width of the frame, while shot H demonstrates Plato’s emptiness of space, denoting his loneliness. With Plato’s exit being blocked, he is ultimately forced to find refuge in the dome of contemplation (shot H): the appropriate milieu for a thinking character like Plato.
Shot I demonstrates, once again, Jim’s solitude, as he is in the middle of a wide frame of space. However, his solitude is broken, again, by Plato running into frame. Shot J, not only enhances the theme of Jim being literally locked away, ‘alone’, in the Griffith Observatory, lost in an enormous city: Los Angeles, as its skyline fills the CinemaScope shot, but also the width of the frame exploits the spectacle of the picture. Presenting the LA skyline from the Griffith Observatory in CinemaScope is something 1950s audiences could not see on their 4:33 televisions, thus the format attempts to also amaze and overwhelm the audiences as well.
In shot K, Plato’s isolated mansion is not much bigger than a dot on the CinemaScope screen. The use of wide frame here highlights the harrowing City of Angels (or the world) over the miniscule refuge that Plato offers to Jim (or their very own un-ripened maturity). Shots L1 and L2 incorporate all the pieces of the narrative in its wide screen: Jim, Plato and then two of Buzz’s gang, preparing for conflict.
The position of Plato at the far right of the frame of shot M, being small, is not ready to deal with the conflict, whereas Jim in the foreground, being larger, is. In relation to Jim’s size in shot M, the gang in shot N is much smaller and nowhere near filling the frame, thus this manipulation of CinemaScope shows that the gang is, in reality, much weaker than Jim. Furthering this argument: shot O witnesses Jim sitting up and getting even bigger in the frame, thus clearly much larger and stronger than the gang, being the work of a great auteur ‘who’s originality lies not in the subject matter he chooses but in the technique he employs’: in ‘the thought he puts into his mise en scene’ (Hoveyda 1985: 76). This subtle difference between shots N and O reveals why Rebel is considered Ray’s most psychologically revealing film (Kashner and Macnair 2003: 100).
Although the gang fills the width of the frame in shot P, none of them receive any focus (except for Judy who is mindlessly showing off), whereas Jim dominates his own shot Q, not sprawled across the full width of the frame as during the opening credits (Belton 1990: 200), but sitting large, almost centered, and most importantly: alone in the frame, thus getting all the audiences attention and true focus, telling us that he, unlike the gang, is truly important.
Although the girls are in medium close-up in shot R, their power is not expressed as they are simply doing their make up, without any true thinking. Shot S can be seen as a contradiction to this power argument, however that is not the case. Shot S, may be interpreted as the gang having power henceforth as they are larger than Jim and Plato, but ultimately, we only see the back of their heads, and one is putting on make-up, and it is Jim and Plato who, are in the dome of contemplation, and the distance between the two forces reflects, not Jim’s weakness due to size, but his intellectual difference and superiority, expressed here by the physical distance between him and the gang.
A few shots after, Jim’s size decreases from shot O due to the irritation of his tire being pierced, but he ultimately reacquires his position of superiority by convincing Buzz that violence is not the solution to solve a conflict.
Jean-Luc Godard quotes: ‘There was theater (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rosellini), dance (Eisenstein) and music (Renoir). Henceforth, there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray.’ (Kashner and Macnair 2003: 100). With his creative and intellectually stimulating use of CinemaScope’s wide screen by thoughtfully placing characters in specific areas and fields of the screen in order to express the themes of loneliness, connection, intellectual level and power of Jim, Plato and Buzz, as well as being able to sneak in awe to overwhelm the television-bound audiences, all in the ‘Exiting of planetarium’ sequence in Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray is indeed, cinema.
A few shots after, Jim’s size decreases from shot O due to the irritation of his tire being pierced, but he ultimately reacquires his position of superiority by convincing Buzz that violence is not the solution to solve a conflict.
Jean-Luc Godard quotes: ‘There was theater (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rosellini), dance (Eisenstein) and music (Renoir). Henceforth, there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray.’ (Kashner and Macnair 2003: 100). With his creative and intellectually stimulating use of CinemaScope’s wide screen by thoughtfully placing characters in specific areas and fields of the screen in order to express the themes of loneliness, connection, intellectual level and power of Jim, Plato and Buzz, as well as being able to sneak in awe to overwhelm the television-bound audiences, all in the ‘Exiting of planetarium’ sequence in Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray is indeed, cinema.
Bibliography
Andrew, G. (2004). The Films of Nicholas Ray. London: BFI.
Belton, J (1990) ‘Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope, and Stereophonic Sound’ in Balio, T (eds) Hollywood in the Age of Television. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd. 185-211
Eisenschitz, B. (1996). Nicholas Ray. London: Faber and Faber.
Goodridge, M. and Grierson, T. (2012). Cinematography. Amsterdam: Focal Press.
Hoveyda, F (1985) ‘Introduction’ in Hillier, J (eds) Cahiers du Cinéma, The 1950s. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 76
Kashner, S. and MacNair, J. (2003). The Bad & the Beautiful. New York: W.W. Norton.
Langford, B. (2010). Post-classical Hollywood. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.
Larsen, R (2014) ‘ Places and Spaces in Rebel Without a Cause’ in Rybin, S. and Scheibel, W. (eds) Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground. New York: State University of New York Press. 151-161
Quart, L. and Auster, A. (1984). American Film and Society since 1945. New York: Praeger.
Belton, J (1990) ‘Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope, and Stereophonic Sound’ in Balio, T (eds) Hollywood in the Age of Television. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd. 185-211
Eisenschitz, B. (1996). Nicholas Ray. London: Faber and Faber.
Goodridge, M. and Grierson, T. (2012). Cinematography. Amsterdam: Focal Press.
Hoveyda, F (1985) ‘Introduction’ in Hillier, J (eds) Cahiers du Cinéma, The 1950s. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 76
Kashner, S. and MacNair, J. (2003). The Bad & the Beautiful. New York: W.W. Norton.
Langford, B. (2010). Post-classical Hollywood. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.
Larsen, R (2014) ‘ Places and Spaces in Rebel Without a Cause’ in Rybin, S. and Scheibel, W. (eds) Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground. New York: State University of New York Press. 151-161
Quart, L. and Auster, A. (1984). American Film and Society since 1945. New York: Praeger.
Filmography
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Directed by Nicholas Ray [Film]. USA: Warner Bros.