L'Histoire de James Dean

I watched the movie because Robert Altman directed it, but I'd assumed it was going to be a straight forward documentary of Dean's life. Then about half way through it something didn't feel right. The people being interviewed spoke like they were on automatic pilot and the childhood photographs chosen for the movie had the quality of a spoof. I watched it a second time and realized it was Altman's documentary of the American Celebrity Cult, not James Dean. Our devotion to movie actors was reaching a new zenith in the 1950's and the life and death of Dean was a timely example of it. It's a movie about us in the same way Nashville is, or A Wedding, or Short Cuts.

Dying young is always a smart career move, and never more so than by James Dean after his astonishingly short career of just six months the lot. We can too easily imagine this petulant, self-absorbed problem-kid living on into the Sixties and boring the pants off us with protest and psycho-babble. But his glory days - so brief, so intense - came and went at just the right moment, when audiences were needing a rest from too much conventional virility in their screen heroes. The idea of an angry teenager hiding a sensitive, vulnerable side seemed to intrigue many. There is no doubt that it touched the maternal in female viewers. And after Dean's dramatic death, many young males liked to see themselves as enigmatic figures with tragedy hovering. (Scriptwriter Stewart Stern even picks up a hint of emotional blackmail: "It could happen to me too, Mom.")

Stern also points out that Dean's origins in the small-town Indiana of cornfields and prairie did not exactly chime with that tortured personality that seemed so metropolitan, like the Actor's Studio from which he promptly dropped out. The clunking interviews with locals who remember the boy next door (generally fondly) were plainly rehearsed, and the extensive use of still pictures instead of the expected movie-clips does nothing to raise the production values, whatever Stern may have meant by "dynamic exploration of the still photograph".

One of these stills shows a school report, where his temporary enthusiasm for art is acknowledged, alongside another reference to Safety Driving Training - ironical indeed, as is his brief involvement in a documentary movie about car safety. On that sensitive topic, I was surprised not to hear the widely-credited story of Alec Guinness warning him of a premonition that Dean would shortly die in an accident if he continued to drive that new Porsche. It happened in a week.

"The James Dean Story" is introduced as "A different kind of motion picture," explaining, "The presence of the leading character in this film has been made possible by the use of existing motion picture material, tape recordings of his voice and by means of a new technique - dynamic exploration of the still photograph." The only "tape recordings of his voice" noteworthy is one short recording Mr. Dean make while visiting his family in Indiana; he wanted to record any family recollections of his great-grandfather Cal Dean, intrigued because he played a similarly named "Cal" in "East of Eden". Dean asks if Cal Dean was interested in art, and learns the relative was an auctioneer. James Dean was interested in art and had warm relationship with his family, obviously. That's the only 100% accurate revelation in this documentary. James Dean was interested in art and had warm relationship with his family.

An amazing "screen test"/"outtake" from "East of Eden" appears near the film's end. It's a black and white scene between Dean (as Cal Trask) and co-star Richard Davalos (as Aron Trask). Dean is at his mesmerizing best. If this scene appeared only here, and no "East of Eden" film was completed, this documentary would be an essential, high rated film. But the scene, a perfect "10" in isolation, should be considered an "East of Eden" extra. Dean's "Traffic Safety Film" is also worth seeing.

There are the expected interviews with family and friends. My favorites were the guy (Lew Bracker) going through a box of stuff Dean left with him, and Dean's family. There wasn't enough from Aunt Ortense and the letter from Dean to his little cousin was very nice. More reading of Dean's letters would have been welcome. Dean's unidentified writer friend seemed to have a better thesis for the film; filmmakers might have considered developing it as a main focus.

Robert Altman's direction of Martin Gabel's reading of Stewart Stern's script is dreadful. What were they thinking? Perhaps, filmmakers can be forgiven due to the closeness of Dean's passing. Don't expect "The James Dean Story" at all. This movie is more about Dean's effect on people (both the fans and filmmakers) than the man. It is very clearly an early piece of the James Dean myth-making "legend". Tommy Sands sings "Let Me Be Loved". The narrative refers to Dean as "He" with a god-like air. The shots of Dean's family seeming to "know" the moment he dies are truly wretched.

** The James Dean Story (8/13/57) Robert Altman ~ James Dean, Martin Gabel, Richard Davalos

That first part tracking Dean's growing-up years in small town Indiana is almost poetically rendered. Dean appears an average kid participating in normal school activities, with little hint of the near-tortured soul of later life. The docu itself amounts to a succession of photographs centering on Dean, and are woven together by a very listenable narrator (Gabel), along with a few scattered interviews of family and friends. Generally those contents follow Dean's life in rough chronological order from Indiana to New York to Hollywood and finally to a lonely California road. All in all, the main point appears an effort at penetrating the nature of Dean's tortured soul, its where's and why's. How successfuly the effort does is up to the viewer to decide.

Several points about the account are worth noting. First, there's very little about the actor's career in movie's or TV. So don't expect to see out-takes from either. The narrative's concern is much more with Dean the person than with Dean the celebrity. So don't expect to see much of star-studded Hollywood. Secondly, there's little on the young man's romantic life, except for an anguished clip from an emotional Arlene Sax. Just what the extent of their involvement is left unrevealed, while there's no clippage from actress Pier Angeli with whom he's usually identified. Lastly, there's next to nothing on how Dean supported himself during those struggling apprentice years, a seemingly important element in his life story that also remains largely untouched.

Perhaps these neglected points have something to do with the year the docu was produced, namely 1957. At that point, Hollywood was still trying to cleanse its public image from the taint of nefarious doings claimed by the McCarthy, HUAC hearings of the early 50's. At the same time, about the only thing worse than being gay was being a communist. Thus rumors of Dean's being at least bi-sexual if not simply gay would have sullied his growing iconic image during that highly conservative period. Now, I'm not claiming this as factual reason for the general omissions, but it is a possibility given the nature of the era.

However you take that, there's plenty in the footage to interest Dean fans both old (like me) and new. Then too, a thanks to whoever rescued the docu from what's an apprently self-imposed exile, and also to Amazon for making the footage public. So, if you can, catch up with a cultural icon that somehow managed to escape that lonely California road.

This 1957 documentary was thrown together to capitalize on the Dean legend and hopefully cash in on it. Out of luck - even Dean's ardent fans avoided this turkey. Using still photography and a morose narrator, Martin Gabel, this contains little useful information not already known about Dean. Interviews with family and neighbors back home shed little light - they are so terminally dull and brimming with flat affect, one is astonished that Dean's fluidity of expression and sensitivity grew out of this environment. Of some value is an outtake from EAST OF EDEN (presented here in dimly lit black and white) between Dean and Davalos. It's a gruelling 82 minutes.