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Nicholas Ray made movies for little more than a decade, but his films are among the most incisive, bizarre, and intelligent of the 1950s. A believer that great directors leave distinctive signatures on their work, Ray's eye for setting, color, and kinetic action merged with a socially conscious interest in personal psychology to reveal a darkness at odds with "normalcy" in such films as In a Lonely Place (1950), Johnny Guitar (1954), and his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Rebel Without a Cause is most remembered for being the film that best presented the talent of young cult star James Dean, shortly before his premature death in 1955. It also served as a springboard for the acting careers of its two other stars; Natalie Wood (in her first non-child role) and unknown actor Sal Mineo. (Unfortunately, all three leading stars suffered death under unusual and tragic circumstances later on) It is a film that sympathetically views rebellious, American, restless, misunderstood, middle-class youth. The screenplay (by Stewart Stern, from an adaptation by Irving Shulman of an original storyline Ray) was based on an actual case study of a delinquent, teenage psychopath. The story provides a rich and stylised (and now partly