Rebel Without A Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray)
It's about the quality of the star, those people who the camera just loves, and James Dean is really amazing. He's moody, but there's a lot going on beneath the surface. He doesn't go with the crowd which is always very attractive. When you're dealing with adolescence you've always got the kids with that strength of character. I think that's very important. I watched Rebel Without A Cause in the eighties with a group of kids and they thought it was really funny and old fashioned. When you look at it it now it is obviously a bit melodramatic, but that's partly because it's influenced so many films since. It's also a very strange film, a fated film, because the three main juvenile leads, Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and James Dean, died prematurely. Sal Mineo was murdered in the late seventies, Natalie Wood drowned in an accident, and of course JD was too fast too young.