Background of the film

In order to understand in a better way the movie we would like to give some information about the historical context in which was made.

The movie “Rebel without a cause” was made in United States in 1955 during times of conflicts with the soviet union among other countries, this period of conflict is known as “The Cold War “

Unites states had been involved in the Civil war II and during a long time was involve in conflicts with countries such as China and Cuba among others.

On the other hand during the decade of the 50’s the great director Charles Chaplin had to left the country after the debut of “The Dictator”, this meant that the cinema industry had been taking part of the economical and political conflicts of that time , it was a way to express and criticize the social issues of that time,too.

Within this context the director Nicholas Ray, who had been hired by the Warner Bros industry, shot the movie “Rebel without a cause” in which we can see how the principal actor James Dean is a rebel young man who is always involve in problems and who’s a brave man who tries to defend his honor in front of a bunch of young men. James Dean was an icon of the youth of that time and a huge number of people felt identified with the stereotype of this actor.

1) Image taken from: Sun3.lib.uci.edu

2) Cold War Alliances Image taken from: Encarta.msn.com