Rebel Without a Cause is quintessential juvenile delinquent film and what would become James Dean’s defining role. Dean plays Jim Stark, a troubled teen who's just moved to L.A. with his family and is having difficulty fitting in. His parents are often arguing, and Jim’s been caught drinking recently. An altercation with a school bully escalates into a knife fight in a classic scene at Griffith Observatory (starring a remarkably young, remarkably lucid Dennis Hopper). Jim befriends fellow misfit teens Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo), and rivalries with the other youths escalate out of control. The angst and turmoil play out between slow, poignant scenes of teenage melancholia and melodrama, pieced together perfectly by director Nicholas Ray.

Rebel Without a Cause was released a month after Dean died tragically young in a car crash, cementing his legacy as the forever-young face of white American teen angst, but beyond the legend is a deep empathy for the agonies of youth. Ray is tapping into a current of heady emotional turmoil, channeling it through the social sickness of the 1950s into kinetic sensual energy and flares of violence that burst through the moral, socially conscious narrative. Though the rawness of Dean's performance can be confronting and may seem at times overwrought to contemporary audiences, his embodied pain and palpable fury are truly iconic— this is your chance to put down the irony and let the emotions wash over you.