Supposedly Elia Kazan and John Steinbeck were friends. Watching this film, I find that hard to believe (unless maybe Steinbeck was one of those authors that never watched the film adaptations of his work). This film is almost impossible to enjoy if you haven't read the book. But it you have read the book, it's maddening to watch the film because so much of what made the book great has been taken out of the film.
The novel relates the story of Adam Trask and his two sons. The moral center of the work is Lee, the Chinese valet that attends to the family after they make the move to California, and Samuel, the Trasks' neighbor who prods Adam into action whenever it is necessary. Both of these characters have been jettisoned in the film adaptation. But more egregiously, Kazan and his screenwriters have basically filmed one-fifteenth of the plot of the book. Although this is certainly the most interesting fifteenth of the book, if you don't know what exactly lead to the events depicted herein they more or less have no meaning in and of themselves.
But that being said, James Dean is truly impressive as Cal. I've never seen him on screen before and everything I'd heard was an underestimation of the kind of life that he breathes into the film. Without him, this would be unwatchable. With him, it's marginally interesting when he's on screen and impossibly dull when he isn't. (The filmmakers seemed to realize this and made Cal the center of the story despite the fact that he is not the center of the novel.) But as powerful as his presence may be, he's a bit out of place here. He is not the Caleb of the book and isn't fooling anybody into thinking he's seventeen. And, more harmful to the intent of the piece, he isn't fooling anybody into thinking he's a bad boy either. He's like the Brad Pitt of his day, commanding all eyes to look at him whenever he's on screen but completely unconvincing as anything other than exactly what he is.
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