100 YEARS OF WARNER BROTHERS FILM REVIEW! “…In a hundred years, when you and I are both long gone, any time someone threads a frame of yours through a sprocket, you will be alive again.’ – Elinor St. John (Babylon). Superstar James Dean left the land of the living way too soon at the ripe age of twenty-four, but he achieved silver-screen immortality, starting with East of Eden.
The story is an updated take on the Bible tale of Cain and Abel (two opposite personalities brothers who cannot get along for the life of them), written in novel format by the great John Steinbeck and for the screen by Paul Osborn. Director Elia Kazan’s film is beautifully shot in CinemaScope, with the setting of northern California providing gorgeous, colorful scenery from the get-go.
Dean plays a rebellious, trouble-making young man named Cal, who competes with his strait-laced brother Aron (Richard Davalos) for the love and attention of their Bible-thumping father, Adam (Raymond Massey).
The film starts out with Cal finding out that his mother Kate (Jo Van Fleet, who made her screen debut here and amazingly won an Oscar for it) is alive in a nearby town after having grown up believing that she was dead. As an audience, we do not find out the information about his mom until later on. All we know is that Cal is stalking an older woman, which makes an off-putting introduction. The scene ends with a stunning shot of Dean riding solemnly on top of a train to go back home.
“…updated take on the Bible tale of Cain and Abel…”
We are then introduced to Aron’s girlfriend Abra (Julie Harris), who says that the girls in town call Cal “the prowler,” further confirmation that there’s something wrong with this guy. Some girls love troubled men, though, and it’s apparent in the way she talks about him that Abra has a thing for Cal, which plays out as another source of conflict for the two brothers down the road.
East of Eden takes place in 1917, and Adam gets the idea from reading a story about a frozen mastodon that he should start a refrigeration business with ice stored on train cars. The train with his livelihood gets delayed, causing the ice to melt, which throws Adam’s business and savings down the drain. Cal makes it his mission in life to make the money back for his father (which feels a bit off because he carelessly destroyed a bunch of his father’s ice earlier on in a fit of jealous rage), and he even enlists his mother’s help to do it by asking her for money to invest in beans.
Frankly, the story of this movie is not outstanding. Cal’s longing for parental approval and his sibling rivalry did not strike any chords for me because of the cheesy way in which it played out, but James Dean’s style of method acting and sheer charisma jumps off the screen (along with artful cinematography). He’s a star from the start, even in the beginning when I was trying to figure out if his character was a creepy stalker. He’s got that “it” factor, where your eyes are glued to his every move. When Abra eventually leaves Aron for Cal, as an audience, you say well, of course, it’s James Dean.
Jimmy Dean, as they called him, will stand the test of time due to his powerful on-screen presence because once a star is born on celluloid, they live on forever.
