Ever since the audience saw the amazing cinematography of the coming-of-age movie Rebel Without A Cause, they have been wondering about the filming locations. Well, let us have a look. First, a little background on the movie. The movie was filmed in black and white for a portion of the time. However, the company stopped production and reshot it in color. We see that Dennis Hopper, Edward Platt, and Jim Backus, who played Dean’s henpecked father, were among the great supporting cast members. All three leading actors died tragically young. Also, we know that before the movie was even released, James tragically died.
We see that mostly the movie involves fights and cigarettes, showing the idea of American masculinity. However, the movie has had a significant impact on film history, in addition to creating a new ‘archetype’ for American masculinity. Not only in America, we see references to the movie in other industries too. For example, we see that Shahid Kapoor in his questionable and controversial movie says he is not a rebel without a cause. It was a reference to the James Dean movie. Now, coming back to the filming locations, let us find out where Rebel Without A Cause is filmed.
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What Is Rebel Without A Cause About?
Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause is best recognized for crafting James Dean’s legacy as a film icon. We see that James Dean, Ray, writer Irving Shulman, and a group of dedicated young actors collaborated to create not just a blockbuster Hollywood production: immortalized in majestic, but also a cultural touchstone for an entire American postwar generation. Its impact on the American movie-fan public was almost inextricably linked to Dean’s tragic death in a vehicle accident just weeks before the film’s premiere.
We see that the film’s poster depicts a tousled-haired James Dean wearing blue jeans. Also, he wears a white t-shirt, and a red jacket while smoking a cigarette and squinting. It is one of the most iconic cultural images of American masculinity of the twentieth century. The three major set-pieces in Rebel Without A Cause: a knife fight, a death-defying race, and a tense shoot-out, are all kinetic, explosive sequences of tragic male conflict that the film’s dads and father figures are helpless to stop. However, the intense hint of the never obvious homoerotic yearning that runs through sequences of Jim and Buzz play-fighting and competing is also notable in Rebel Without a Cause.
Rebel Without A Cause was exceptionally violent for its day, with Buzz’s fire death and Plato’s police murder, not to mention Jim’s horrific strangling of his father and a bloody knife fight, however, it nonetheless drew a substantial female audience because to Dean’s star image.
Rebel Without A Cause Filming Locations: Where Is It Filmed?
The production takes us to Los Angeles, California. The majority of the film was filmed there. We also see that some of the filming locations in California included Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Santa Monica High School, Griffith Observatory, and Griffith Park. If you take the tour of the Warner Bros. VIP Studio, you will be shown the police station where James’ character was taken. Also, the house that The Starks purchased in Ladera Heights is a few miles northeast of Los Angeles International Airport.
Along with that, the alley behind the Stark house can be found on the east side of South Citrus Avenue, just north of West 62nd Street. Judy grabs a short pre-school cigarette outside her house at the back alley entrance, and Jim greets her. This is where we see the location.
Judy’s address is 6122 South Citrus Avenue. However, it is barely visible onscreen. Jim emerges from the back gate of the third house on the right side of the alleyway. Even though his address in the movie is identified as ‘1753 Angelo,’ it is actually the back of 4505 West 62nd Street. The front of the house in the movie is almost certainly a studio set. Which, by the way, looks very real.
Is The School Shown In The Movie Real?
Dawson High is James Dean’s new high school in the movie. However, the real school is Santa Monica High School. It is located in Santa Monica, California. Although the exteriors of Dawson High School were shot at Santa Monica High School, some of the interiors were filmed at John Marshall High School in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake district.
The characters of James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood go up to an abandoned mansion near the end of the film. The Getty Mansion is the same house that was portrayed in the film Sunset Boulevard. Sadly, to our dismay, the mansion was destroyed and torn shortly after the filming of the movie ended.
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