EAST OF EDEN (1955)

James Dean’s debut in this Elia Kazan/Paul Osborn adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Cain & Abel saga lands a notch below the iconic status of Dean follow-ups REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and GIANT.  And that’s a plus which allows us, just this once, to see the actor plain.  So while the academic & auteurist gang never fully embraced Kazan (too literary, too theater oriented, too politically toxic), he was the only director Dean wished to please.  And it shows in a performance less self-regarding than REBEL’s & less self-indulgent than GIANT’s.  Perhaps working with Julie Harris (an actress first, unlike movie stars Natalie Wood & Liz Taylor) also kept him 'on game.'  Watch the quietly tender, unforced emotional nakedness of these two in the Ferris Wheel sequence under Ted McCord’s exceptional lensing.  Osborn would go on to top this script in Kazan’s most under-appreciated pic (WILD RIVER*), but his tight edit on the sprawling Steinbeck work comes off as touching & effective.  (And note Leonard Rosenman’s wildly chromatic underscoring from his anus mirabilis (EDEN, THE COBWEB and REBEL, all 1955).

DOUBLE-BILL:  *As mentioned, WILD RIVER/’60.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/wild-river-1960.html