East of Eden ***** (1955, James Dean, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Richard Davalos, Jo Van Fleet, Burl Ives, Lois Smith) – Classic Movie Review 1079

James Dean became an overnight movie icon as the embodiment of the mid-50s rebellious American teenager in just three films made in a little over a year before his death in a car crash in 1956 at only 24.

After four bit parts in movies, he was spotted by director Elia Kazan in the New York production of Andre Gide’s The Immoralist and cast as the crazy mixed-up kid Caleb Trask in this stirring and satisfying 1955 film, loosely adapted from John Steinbeck’s classic epic novel.

It concerns the lives of two brothers Cal and Aron Trask (Dean, Richard Davalos) fighting for the love of their stern, stiff-necked father Adam (Raymond Massey). The script might as well have called the brothers Cain and Abel, of course. Dean plays the bad brother who just can’t gain the father’s affection.

Cal not only competes with his brother over the father, but also for the affections of their shared sweetheart Abra and for the attentions of their absentee mother Kate.

Dean makes a startlingly powerful impact in his Oscar-nominated role. But then all the acting is eye-catching and superior – especially from Massey, Julie Harris as Dean’s girl Abra and Jo Van Fleet who won the 1956 Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the boys’ icy-hearted mother, Kate. Burl Ives plays Sam the Sheriff and Lois Smith makes her film debut as Anne. Happily she’s still busy working in 2014, aged 84.

And, with Ted McCord’s ravishing colour Cinemascope cinematography, a sterling, literate screenplay by Paul Osborn and a notable score by Leonard Rosenman (who also did Rebel Without a Cause’s music), it’s among Kazan’s finest films, both visually and emotionally. Kazan surveys the pastoral valleys of California while bringing out the allegorical significances of the source novel.

East of Eden was a huge hit, turning Dean into a megastar overnight. The Warner Brothers studio acted quickly and put their new star in a tailor-made showcase for his new image. So Dean followed up East of Eden with a film with exactly the same theme, but transplanted to modern-day California – director Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause. Dean’s Oscar nomination for East of Eden at the 1956 Academy Awards was the first posthumous acting nomination in the Awards history. It won the Golden Globe as Best Motion Picture, Drama.

The day after his part in director George Stevens’s Giant was completed (on 30 September 1956), Dean ran into another car in his new Porsche and the live-fast-die-young legend began.

Remade as a miniseries in 1981 with Sam Bottoms, Timothy Bottoms, Hart Bochner, Bruce Boxleitner, Jane Seymour and Karen Allen. James Franco became a star playing Dean in the TV movie James Dean (2001).

Richard Davalos died on 8 March 2016, aged 85. While he played James Dean’s brother Aron in East of Eden, they roomed together in a Burbank apartment. His other credits include convict Blind Dick in Cool Hand Luke, I Died a Thousand Times, All the Young Men, The Cabinet of Caligari, Pit Stop, Kelly’s Heroes, Brother, Cry for Me, Hot Stuff, Death Hunt, Something Wicked This Way Comes and Ninja Cheerleaders.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1079

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