If you know anything about
Tommy Wiseau you know that his "You are tearing me apart, Lisa" line in
The Room was directly inspired by the 1955
Nicholas Ray film
Rebel Without a Cause starring
James Dean. In which Dean actually pulls this line off.
The acting in this movie, while is a bit stiff and 50s hollywood-like, is phenomenal, especially the main character played by James Dean. He is so effortlessly cool and yet he portrays a large palette of emotions through this mask of coolness. You cannot not like this guy. And the characters reflect this feeling you have. They start to realize that they cannot not like this guy. Even Judy (
Natalie Wood ) starts to like him after he kind of sort of killer her boyfriend. And she knows it. This is some deeply cool guy, to be that likeable. And yet with all the hilariousness of the character on paper, James Dean pulls this off.
There are other actors that pull similar things off.
Sal Mineo plays this very traumatized teenager boy who finds his first friend in Dean's character. His character is intense. Good stuff.
The director, Nicholas Ray, is really good, especially for those times. You get dutch angles, and inverted POV shots. And an incredible sense of epic imagery. For a movie from this time it looks amazing. Yeah, some of the shots are a little blurry, but the color, light and compositions truly speak of epic cinema worthy of a big screen.
Story-wise ( and directing wise ) the movie builds a substantial amount of tension. You have long sequences of people almost about to burst into a deadly fight. And you watch it with gripping anticipation. For a movie made before the MPAA rating system ( which means every movie had to be PG basically ) this movie is surprisingly tense and violent.
I was not expecting to like it so much when I started watching it.
Happy Hacking!!!
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