Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Nicholas Ray were nominated for Academy Awards for their roles in Rebel Without a Cause, which grossed $7,197,000 (equivalent to $81.9 million in 2023) in domestic and overseas screenings, making it Warner Bros.' second-biggest box-office draw that year.[15] The movie opened to mixed reviews when it was released on October 27, 1955, less than a month after James Dean, whose performance was praised all around by film critics, died on September 30. William Zinsser wrote a scathing review of Rebel in his New York Herald Tribune column, concluding his summary of the film's plot with the words, "All this takes two hours, but it seems more like two days. The movie is written and acted so ineptly, directed so sluggishly, that all names but one will be omitted here. The exception is Dean, the gifted young actor who was killed last month. His rare talent and appealing personality even shine through this turgid melodrama."[15]
Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, described Rebel Without a Cause as "violent, brutal and disturbing", and as an excessively graphic depiction of teenagers and their "weird ways". He referred to a "horrifying duel with switchblades", a "brutal scene", and a "shocking presentation" of a race in stolen automobiles. Although he admitted that there are moments of accuracy and truth in the film, he found these "excruciating", and discerned a "pictorial slickness" in the production's use of the CinemaScope process and its filming in the widescreen format, a slickness he declared was at odds with the realism of Ray's directing. Crowther was not impressed by James Dean's acting, and cited the various mannerisms he believed Dean copied from Marlon Brando, asserting that "Never have we seen a performer so clearly follow another's style" and calling Dean's interpretation of the Jim Stark role a "clumsy display".[16]
Reviewer Jack Moffitt of The Hollywood Reporter, who correctly thought the film would be a money maker, wrote a less critical, more laudatory review. He found the acting of James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo to be "extraordinarily good", and the direction by Nicholas Ray to be "outstanding". He praised the realistic manner in which Ray depicted the police station scenes and the engaging manner, according to Moffitt, in which he captured the nihilism of the teenage subculture for his audience. Moffitt took issue with the underlying ideology of the film, especially its implication, as he saw it, that professional bureaucrats could better guide youth than the American family unit itself. He criticized the film for overgeneralizing, calling this aspect a "convenient cliche", and summed up his review by describing the film as "a superficial treatment of a vital problem that has been staged brilliantly".[17]
Robert J. Landry, managing editor of Variety magazine at the time, wrote a review published on October 26. He described Rebel as a "fairly exciting, suspenseful and provocative, if also occasionally far-fetched, melodrama of unhappy youth on another delinquency kick." Unlike some movie critics, Landry thought that James Dean, under the influence of Nicholas Ray's direction, had mostly freed his acting of the mannerisms characteristic of Marlon Brando's style, and that his performance in the movie was "very effective". He praised Dean's interpretation of a maladjusted teenager, noting his ability "to get inside the skin" of his character as "not often encountered".[18]
Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News found fault with Rebel's depiction, in her view, of its adults as cardboard figures and of its middle-class teenagers as hoodlums, arguing that it lacked credibility and that "[a]s an honest purposeful drama of juvenile hardness and violence the film just doesn't measure up." On the other hand, she praised James Dean's acting, writing, "[w]ith complete control of the character, he gives a fine, sensitive performance of an unhappy, lonely teenager, tormented by the knowledge of his emotional instability."[19]
Rebel was censored in Britain by the British Board of Film Censors and released with scenes cut and an X-rating.[20][21] Most of the knife fight was excised and not shown on British screens until 1967.[22] The film was banned in New Zealand in 1955 by Chief Censor Gordon Mirams, out of fears that it would incite "teenage delinquency", only to be released on appeal the following year with scenes cut and an R16 rating.[23][24] Rebel was also banned in Spain, where it had to be smuggled into the country for private screenings, and was not officially released there until 1964.[15]
Rebel Without a Cause holds a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 54 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The critical consensus reads, "Rebel Without a Cause is a searing melodrama featuring keen insight into '50s juvenile attitude and James Dean's cool, iconic performance."[25]
