#rwac

Like this shot in Rebel Without a Cause. All the kids, who up till this point, have not been paying close attention to the presentation on the universe, are supposed to react with surprise and confusion and even fear when it ends with that big “man alone bang.” Sal Mineo’s Plato has the biggest reaction, getting up and hiding behind his seat in his close-up. You can see extras and background characters scrunching down or staring. Natalie Wood’s Judy sits up and looks disturbed, all eyebrows.

But James Dean’s Jim doesn’t look scared or nervous. He just looks like he’s thinking, and the flashing commotion shifted his mood a little bit. Because in real life, even if a school presentation did startle you, you wouldn’t be likely to let it show. You wouldn’t make a big deal of it on your face if you could help it. Especially not if you were a new kid surrounded by people you wished would like you. 

We already know from his other performances that James Dean could show what Jim is feeling about the “man alone” and “end of the world” show on his face. He’s perfectly capable of opening up the character’s psyche and making that close-up an emotional one. 

But instead, he just tempers it with realism. A teenager who’s always trying to prove he can be brave and tough, in a new environment, like Jim, would not show it if flashing lights and doomsday speeches made him nervous…if they made him nervous in the first place. If the audience needs to see that all the cocky, careless teenagers in that room suddenly care about the idea of their place in the universe, well, the audience can glean that from the lights, the music, the change in moods from the less-personal-image-concerned-teenage characters in the background. That’s what I mean when it seems like James Dean lets the scene do the work.

Sometimes he lets the mood and the set and the action help the audience interpret his character. And sometimes he cuts the character open and lets you see inside the character’s heart and mind in one messy, dramatic outburst. He picks his moments for emoting and dramatizing emotions carefully. Every shot shouldn’t be big, dramatic expressions, otherwise everything would feel over-the-top, unrealistic, and one-note.