Goldfinger (1964) Directed by Guy Hamilton

Nick :
Astrid is on tour for the next few weeks, so It's just me here.

I have not had a TV now for over 3 years. It felt and still feels quite liberating. Of course some of the time in front of the TV has been replaced by time on the computer. And then there is watching films.  Having been ill over most of the summer I watched a lot of films not reviewed on this blog. I watched  some of my favorite and assorted trashy gems : the Die Hard series, Independence Day,  Shane, Jurassic Park, Bridge on The River Kwai, Citizen Kane, Escape To Victory, Johnny Guitar and lots more. At some point I got a craving for the Stallone movie Cliffhanger, but that has passed. But Bond. Where was James Bond, 007.

When I was around 12 years old, they had the British premiere on TV of Dr. No, the first James Bond picture. This was a big thing for everyone, in those days there were no multiple TV channels to choose from (only 3), so a famous movie premiere  was a big deal. I remember Ursula Andress walking onto the beach out of the sea (a startling image for a 12 year old) and of course the nonchalant presence of Sean Connery as Bond. Connery has been the only actor to combine the wit, sophistication and cold-hearted presence required to capture the British steeliness of Ian Fleming's secret agent. Which brings us to Goldfinger.

The third in the series is the most iconic. The silver Aston Martin first appeared here, the golden corpse, John Barry's excellent Shirley Bassey sung theme song,  the wittiest Bond one liners, a heightened sexual (sexist?) innuendo, the lead heroine is called Pussy Galore! One of the best Bond hard man villains in Oddjob and some of Bond's neatest gadgets. Hamilton brings a flow to the Bond series that keeps the picture pacy. He also injects a bit of 60's style, which in this case has aged well. At the heart is Connery, possibly disdainful at playing Bond, sporting some of Bond's greatest on screen wardrobe, a cool presence. This film has been hugely influential as regards the action movie genre, but fun is at it's heart and it still entertains. After Connery, the series became less interesting where humor and outlandish set design took over from intensity. I'll always remember my Bond this way.

Rebel Without A Cause (1955) directed by Nicholas Ray

Nick:
A poster on a wall, a key ring, a clock, a place mat and dozens of biographies. James Dean in 2010 is big business, the business of lost teenage dreams and dead iconic film stars. The iconic quiff, the red bomber jacket, 501's, tick tock. Rebel Without A Cause is the movie that cemented Dean in the eyes of America's youth at the dawn of Rock n Roll. Ray's picture is a zeitgeist moment in cinema, capturing the nonchalance of teenage resistance to post war grayness, a scream that says: "there's gotta be more to life than this".  

But Rebel Without A Cause isn't very good, it's youthful angst filled with cliched youth talk that sounds embarrassing now. The success of this film and why it works is in the 'moment' and that moment passed quickly, all that's left is a dated monument to American teenage's earliest grumbling. So, it's a document more than a statement. Ray, a director I admire a lot piles on the red, this picture's look still dazzles, but where Ray often deals in a kind of psychedelic Noir, his Rebel is just too straight. Is this so the middle aged audience of the time could relate to the picture? The youth of this picture are so rich and middle class, they really are just rebelling against the boredom, poor things. The most interesting sub-text to the film is the heavy homosexual current between Dean's Jim Stark and the lost Plato (a seriously good looking Sal Mineo). It's amazing that Natalie Wood's Judy is an afterthought to the homoerotic bonding on display. 

Despite all its faults, Rebel Without A Cause is still worth a look. It's still Nicholas Ray behind the camera. The movie settles down half way through,  the characters slowly develop even if the plot is beyond simplistic. Dean's films can never live up to the legend, expectations will be crushed. He just didn't have enough time to show us if he was good or not. Still there's glimpses, here he's part Brando (when wild) and part Clift (when being sensitive). Dean is a teeny-bopper version of the method, not too deep, but cute when he's angry. And the point is, he wears a red bomber jacket like no one before or since.

Astrid:

Earlier on the day that I watched Rebel Without A Cause, I stood with my mother at the poetry section of a bookstore and discussed the teenage appeal to over-the-top dramatics. My point being that around the age of 17 or so, we feel sadness and happiness, love and hate so vividly that it constitutes a special state of mind/body. At that age teenagers are drawn to and touched by explosive drama, big operatic expressions of emotions – not because they display such behavior themselves but because they feel it.
That's the feeling I am left with thinking back on my own experience.

The same evening I curl up on our ocean gray couch and Rebel Without A Cause reminds me that before the birth of youth culture (with its immediate products such as rock'n'roll), there was the internal need to rebel against something (manifested in parents and in the surrounding order of the society). The dramatic overpowering teenage feeling preceded what is now known as the most glorified time of life – everybody wants to be young!

Rebel Without A Cause is a little bit simplistic and naive. All these young people are taking themselves so seriously but why are they suffering so? There are no nuances or lighter shades to emotions and actions here: when one boyfriend dies in a 'chickenrun' it takes Judy (Natalie Wood) only some minutes to warm up to the winner, Jim, who survived (James Dean). Yes, it is true, some of us do not come out alive from the dramatics of our teenage years. And some of us continue to rebel without a clear cause.

I note with strange delight that Rebel Without A Cause offers the parents or the lack of parenting as the main reason for these youths to be lost and in pain. 1955 gave the world rock music, but it was also the time when introspection through psychoanalysis was exploding into the Western mainstream.