The James Dean Story (1957)

Penned by Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern and directed by Robert Altman at the very beginning of his career, this biographical film on Jimmy Dean was the first Dean documentary ever released and a missed opportunity to make a especially valuable statement about his life, his craft and his legend.

The documentary's preface is clear about one of the main features that make both some of the good moments and some of the rather tedious ones: the use of photographs in order to more truthfully tell the story. It just doesn't work on a cinematic level. Reiterative is the word that can describe some of the results. Not to say that there is nothing of interest. The photographic material suits perfectly the needs of a testimony about Dean's wanderings on the New York scene, for instance. Dennis Stock's and Roy Schatt's iconic and genuinely artistic respective approaches to such a colorful persona represent that psychological momentum forever encrypted in a black and white world that is what this film tries to achieve. For Dean was a lost boy who reveled in narcissism and alienated people from his personal life as well as he seduced them into his theatrical mystique.

Another issue that is essential to the mixed results is the use of the interviews, or rather the interviews themselves. Altman and co-director George W. George should have gone further on the tail of the interviews. There is good stuff nonetheless. Adeline Nall, a famous mentor of his early years, and Dean's uncle Marcus Winslow, as well as his grandparents and girlfriend Arlene Martel stand out. Oddly enough, the best piece was a recording tape that Dean himself made of a table talk with his folks about his great-grandfather Cal Dean, a real life-character unknown to him (and to us, as well) until this time, when he had already become an overnight sensation portraying Cal Trask in East of Eden. On a side note, Morrissey fans must remember the gravestone of Cal Dean from the video-clip for his song "Suedehead", which is a homage to the actor who fused with his characters and became a third entity, an entirely cinematic one.

Now, one of the key things about this documentary, the first ever made regarding its subject, has to be the narration by Stern. It's a warm meditation, and it also is too simplistic for a documentary intended to show the real James Dean; it just lacks the subtlety required. The fact that Brando was invited to read it and declined to do so may have sealed the fate of The James Dean Story.