Today the trials of teenagers make some of the most successful movies around. But back in 1955 when director Nicholas Ray cast James Dean as the teen hero Jim in Rebel Without A Cause (Pearl, 2pm), the concept of a teenager - let alone teen anger - was so new, and yet so significant, that the film immediately caught the public imagination.
Jim is sick of everything, his parents, the town where he lives, school. And he is sick of being sick of everything. He does not know what he wants, he just knows he does not really want what he has. He wants to be a man, but the role models around him, his hen-pecked father for example, do not inspire him too much.
The film made an enormous impression, and so did Dean, partly because so many fans thought Jim Stark was a thinly disguised version of Dean himself.
He was snapped up to play in George Stevens' movie Giant immediately afterward, and then went on to what became the defining moment of his career when he killed himself in his Porsche.
Dean never grew old, and so he never lost his appeal as the hero every teenage lad could identify with, and every teenage girl could dream about, and to many other ages besides.
He was of course great in the film, but his co-stars, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, actually got more critical recognition. Both received best supporting actor nominations.
Neither of them were able to grow old gracefully: Mineo never quite shook off the teenager rebellion roles, and by the 1970s he was a minor figure in Hollywood. He hit the headlines one more time in 1976, when he was stabbed to death by an unknown killer just outside his apartment in Los Angeles.
