The antithesis of the virile heroes of his day, James Dean shook up the norms of male representation in just three films. Before James Dean, the film world had given hardly any space to adolescence. You were either a child or a man. Jimmy brought this liminal space, brittle and red hot, to life by embodying an adolescence that was highly strung, tormented, full of selfdoubt. He gave a whole generation licence to rebel, to express their sensitivity, to develop in opposition to their father figures. A rebellion of masculinity with its origin in the intimate story of a boy born far from the spotlight… A child of rural America, permanently scarred by the death of his mother and abandonment by his father, James Dean transfigured his personal story onto the screen. Whether as a misunderstood son in East of Eden, the face of youth in crisis in Rebel Without a Cause, or an aging cattle breeder caught up in the frenzy for oil in Giant, he infused each of his roles with his own personal trauma. Driven by a choral narrative that blends James Dean’s voice with the voices of those who got close to him, the film gets right under the skin of the myth. A sensory tale, intimate, carnal and poetic, that gives James Dean a new resonance. In the age of #MeToo and the redefinition of gender norms, never has man come across as so modern.

Bruno Deloye