Please note: This was screened in June 2015
Elia Kazan’s brilliant adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, set in a small farming valley in 1917 California, was James Dean’s first leading role as a troubled youth who along with his competitive brother vies for the affection of his devout father.
Cal and Aron Trask are brothers in their late teens living with their father, the stern and moralistic farmer Adam. Aron is well-behaved and respectful and has a pleasant and intelligent girlfriend Abra. Cal, by contrast, is a loner and wild boy; Often in trouble and deeply tormented. When Cal discovers that their mother is running a nearby brothel (and not dead as he’d been led to believe), he decides to tell his brother - a spiteful decision that threatens the destruction of their relationship. When Aron runs off to enlist in an army unit being shipped overseas to the battlefields of World War One, Cal's pacifist father breaks down completely, unable to bear the loss of his favourite son.
Notoriously the only film in which Dean appears that was released before his death, it remains the only one he got to see himself in its entirety. His mesmerising performance earned him an Academy Award nomination and established from the outset his rebel persona. It marked the birth of the poetic antihero. America's misunderstood-but-vulnerable herald of a new generation.