What a bad boy!

Rebel Without a Cause

Director: Nicholas Ray

Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Bacus, Dennis Hopper

Cert: PG

So just how good an actor was the iconic and ill-fated Dean?

He was killed in a car crash before this, only his third, film was released, thus becoming one of the screen's great legends.

Yes, he was good... in a mumbling, shuffling sort of way. What he might have become - this film was made in l955 - remains speculation.

It is, though, one of the seminal films, the one which virtually invented the troubled teenager. Dean plays the adolescent son of a wealthy family who kicks over the traces with his fellow troubled teens and gets into trouble with the cops.

It's a downbeat melodrama, very much on the depressing side. But it's one of the most powerful and best remembered of the period's films.

But, again, just how good an actor was Dean?

Star Rating: 4/5