East of Eden (1955)

Starring: James Dean, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Richard Davalos, and Jo Van Fleet
Grade: A

I have never seen a lower-level character that got on my nerves quite like the nurse at the end of this film. You have to see it to believe it. It almost takes you out of the emotion of the moment to the point where you want to cuss her out yourself. Thankfully, James Dean’s Cal screams “GET OUT!” at her just when we desperately want to do so ourselves. They do find a way to tie her awful personality into the final conversation so it’s there for a reason, but still. Holy shit…

Also, when Sam tries to comment, “Cain rose up against his brother Abel and slew him. And Cain went away and dwelt in the land of Nod on the East of Eden”, it is supposed to be a line that gives the viewer goosebumps. Unfortunately, it’s such an awkward time for Sam to say it considering what’s going on in the moment that you find yourself hoping for someone to comment, “Dude, can you just go away?”.

Summary

“In northern California, the Santa Lucia Mountains, dark and brooding, stand like a wall between the peaceful agricultural town of Salinas and the rough and tumble fishing port of Monterey, fifteen miles away”. In the year 1917 in Monterey, we are just outside the city limits.

Kate Ames (Fleet) walks through town and goes to deposit money at the bank. The teenage Cal Trask (Dean) watches her closely. He’s following her, though he tries not to get too close for her to notice. Kate gets to her place and tells her young servant Anne (Lois Smith), who is cleaning Kate’s porch, to clean the other house across the way first. Anne spots Cal from afar but is interrupted by Kate who calls her into the house. Kate sees Cal from the window and asks Anne if she’s ever seen the boy before, with Anne recalling she thinks he was in the bar last night. Hearing this, Kate calls for her bodyguard Joe (Timothy Carey) and tells him that Cal has been following her since the bank. Outside, Cal throws a rock at their house after being hit on by a neighbor. Joe runs out to approach Cal. He grabs Cal after he gets smart with him, and he demands to know what Cal wants. He just wants to talk with Kate. Though he doesn’t tell Joe his name, he does say he’s from Salinas. After correctly guessing she owns another house down the street, Cal tells Joe to relay the message that he hates her. Cal leaves and jumps on a train to head back to Salinas. As he sits on top of the moving train and freezes like hell, he gets angry at himself for not going over and talking to Kate. Soon after Cal gets home, Cal’s brother Aron (Davalos) is walking into the yard with his girlfriend Abra (Harris) after school. Aron jokes how Cal is going to be in trouble with their father Adam (Massey) because he wasn’t home all night. Abra says the girls in school call Cal “The Prowler”. Though Aron laughs and wants to tell Cal, she makes him promise not to. Just then, Cal appears in-between the bushes they walk along, and Aron greets him. He asks Cal if he wants to come along with their father Adam to the city icehouse he’s going to buy. Adam is going to buy it to freeze the vegetables with. He’s been talking about it every night for the last week. Since Adam will be there though, Cal is going to skip it.

Cal wonders why Aron didn’t ask him where he was, but he admits he wouldn’t tell him even if Aron did ask. They talk about how Adam was worried about Cal, but Cal doesn’t buy it, and he doubles down on not coming, though he follows Aron and Abra to the icehouse anyway. Soon after, Adam is speaking with his friend Will Hamilton (Albert Dekker) about how his idea of freezing the vegetables came from an article he read about the meat still being good on a mastodon, despite it being dug up in Siberia after a thousand years or so in ice. Just then, Cal appears, and Adam is pissed because Cal has nothing to say for himself. Instead of saying it outright, he passive aggressively tells Will that when Will was his age, he would do the right thing by letting his father know before he stayed out all night or at least offer an apology when he did come home. He goes back to the conversation about the mastodon, and Will can see his excitement about this refrigeration idea. Adam is and admits he’s been in a rut on the ranch for 16 or 17 years, but he sees how refrigeration can help the future and he’s been reading all he can on the subject. As Aron and Abra join in on the conversation, Adam talks about how Aron specifically thinks he’s on to a good idea. Aron sucks up by talking about how Adam wrapped up a head of lettuce in some wax paper and kept it in their ice box for three weeks and it was still good. Now that Adam owns the icehouse, he allows an excited Aron to look around the place. Adam continues with Will and talks about how New York City is the biggest market for vegetables but stops to ask if Cal has anything to say. So, Cal brings up how he read in the Monterey newspaper that if they get into this war, there will be some fortunes made in beans, corn, and whatever else. He calmly states that Adam may not need all this ice. Will agrees with Cal and talks about how beans are up to 3 cents. If you want to make a profit, you plant beans.

Adam shuts him down because he’s not particularly interested in making a profit, which seems kind of strange.

Cal runs up one of the mechanisms and lights a cigarette, but Adam yells at him immediately to put it out because the place is full of sawdust, so he does. Will tries to calm Adam down by passing off Cal as thoughtless, but Adam thinks he’s inconsiderate. He doesn’t understand Cal and never has. On the other hand, Adam has understood Aron since he was a child. Aron and Abra go into one part of the icehouse and Abra talks about how Cal doesn’t like anyone. Aron defends Cal while talking about how great of a purchase this is for his father because it will give him something to live for. Even so, Abra continues to talk about Cal being “scary” and how he looks at others like he is an animal. Unbeknownst to the both of them, Cal is also in the icehouse hiding and listening in. Next, Abra wants to know when her and Aron will get married. He says he has to get through school first, but he wishes it were now just as much as she does. They embrace and hum together for some reason and they get to talking about how Aron and Cal’s mother died after they were born. Just then, Cal starts playing with a spear and stabbing the ice, so the two realize he’s in the room. Aron laughs it off because it’s Cal being Cal, but Abra gets creeped out and thinks Cal is watching them. She takes Aron to another corner of the room to get out of his line of vision. After Abra tells Aron she loves him, Cal throws a fit and starts breaking some of the blocks of ice and throws a bunch more out of the icehouse to the outside. At this point, Adam comes over and yells at Cal to stop and it causes a huge scene. That night, Adam sits with his two sons at the dinner table, and he reads Bible passages to them. He’s trying to understand why Cal did it, but Cal just says he wanted to see them slide down the chute. Frustrated, Adam wants Cal to read the next passage. Aron volunteers to read it instead, but Adam refuses this because he wants Cal to.

Trying to piss him off at this point, Cal speeds through the verses and keeps stating the numbers aloud, despite Adam telling him not to. Finally, Adam stands up at the table infuriated and says Cal has no repentance and how he’s bad through and through. Aron excuses himself from the table. Cal agrees with Adam and says he’s known he’s been bad for a long time, but Adam immediately says he didn’t mean this because he spoke in anger. Cal goes on by calling Aron the good one. They get the good and bad from their parents, and Cal is the one with the bad. Adam insists this isn’t true and he can make anything of himself, though he changes his mind because Cal never listens anyway. Changing the subject, Cal brings up his mother. He knows she didn’t die, saying “She’s not buried in the East like you said either. She’s alive”. Adam wonders why he thinks so, so Cal said he heard from a guy passing through. Getting emotional, Cal asks Adam why he told him and Aron she died, so Adam admits he was trying to save them from the pain. If she was alive, Cal wonders where she would be, but Adam doesn’t know. All he knows is that she went East once she left the ranch they lived on when Cal and Aron were born. Cal wonders if she was bad, but Adam admits he never really knew what she was like. In fact, she was never like other people. She lacked things like kindness and conscience. He never knew what she was after or why she left either. She was just full of hate for basically everything. Adam pleads with Cal to not tell Aron she is still alive, and Cal sarcastically agrees because God forbid they do anything to hurt Aron. Next, he asks how Adam got the scar on his shoulder, but Adam reminds him it’s from an old wound he got in the “Indian campaigns”. Changing the subject back to his mother, Cal asks if she was pretty, and Adam responds with, “She had the most lovely hands, like ivory”. Talking about how good of care she took of them, especially because her mother had arthritis, and she was worried it would come to her hands.

Adam pauses, so Cal insists he talk to him because he wants to know who he is and what he’s like. He asks again where she is, but Adam is truthful in saying he doesn’t know. Cal storms out, despite Adam’s pleading because if he leaves, they may never be able to talk again. Cal walks right by Aron and Abra, and Aron jokingly questions if Cal is coming back home tonight. Cal doesn’t see a difference because he knows Aron is the one their father wants. Shoemaker Gustav Albrecht (Harold Gordon) walks by and greets Cal on his way out but Cal ignores him. Even so, Albrecht walks inside the house to speak to Adam. Taking another train, Cal gets to the other side of town, sneaks into a bar, and orders a beer. Anne is a waitress there and tries to give Cal a heads up that he needs to leave because she was supposed to tell Joe if she saw him. Cal doesn’t care and says she can tell him if she wants to. Joe is walking around, so Anne goes back to work. She decides against snitching even though Cal welcomes her to do so. Following her, the two discuss how Kate treats her alright, how this bar is owned by Kate, and how Kate always wears gloves (after Cal asks if Anne has ever seen her hands). Cal asks Anne to take him to Kate’s office. He insists he won’t start any trouble. He just wants her to point out the office to him and he’ll do the rest. Anne is frightened because she can’t lose this job, but Cal’s sad eyes and small flirtatious pleads convince Anne to walk him into the direction of Kate’s office. To make sure she doesn’t get into trouble, Cal doesn’t approach the door until Anne leaves. He walks in and gets on his knees. Kate is sitting on her chair with her eyes closed gripping her gloveless hands, probably because of the arthritis. Finally, she opens her eyes and sees him. Cal calmly asks to speak with her, but she yells and screams for Joe to get him out of there. Joe runs, grabs Cal, and pulls him out of the office. All the while, Cal screams and pleads to just let him talk to her. At the police station, Cal talks with Sheriff Sam (Burl Ives) who is a pretty nice guy.

In fact, he gives Cal a cloth to hold to his face and some coffee. He correctly guesses that Cal found out about Kate by talking to Rabbit, a guy who never was any good according to him. Even so, Rabbit used to work on Adam’s ranch, but he’s since left town. When Sam asks if Adam knows about Cal roaming over to Monterey to hang out in bars, he admits Adam doesn’t. Sam is a good friend of Adam, and he was afraid Cal would find out about Kate when they moved to Salinas last year. When Cal asks if Adam will ever find out about Kate, Sam doesn’t think so because Adam would never want to come over there. He shows Cal a picture of Adam and Kate on their wedding day because for some reason he carries that on him. Cal is the first person he’s ever showed it to, confirming Cal’s suspicions. Sam wonders how he knew it was true just based off Rabbit’s words, and he admits, “‘Cause she ain’t no good, and I ain’t no good. I, I knew there was a reason why I wasn’t”. After Cal says he hates her and Adam, Sam takes him home. Once they pull up to the house, Cal asks how Adam met Kate, but Sam isn’t sure where she came from, as there were a lot of drifters in those days. Cal wonders why he married her, and Sam mentions how pretty she was. Exiting the car, Cal correctly guesses that Kate shot Adam, explaining the real reason behind Adam’s shoulder wound. Sam adds he has no idea why Kate did it because Adam didn’t do anything to her to warrant it. Once she left, Adam died in a way. Cal almost doesn’t believe it because he had to have done something for her to shoot the motherfucker, but Sam insists Adam has more kindness and conscience than any man he’s ever known. As Sam drives off, Cal walks up to the house and looks through the window. He sees his father messing with the lettuce in the ice, telling himself how this is going to work. Cal smiles, as it looks like he’s starting to understand where Adam is coming from.

Sometime later, Cal is in a good mood and is working hard on the farm with Adam’s staff. They start freezing the lettuce and sending them off in trains. A random group of workers come by and tell Adam someone stole their coal chute right off the wagon and Adam passes off this lawlessness as a result of World War I. Adam sees Cal working hard and calls him over before asking where Aron is. He’s in the fields, but Adam does give Cal credit for coming up with a way to expedite the process of moving the lettuce, which he really appreciates. Abra shows up with Aron’s lunch, so Cal goes to take it to him. Abra follows because she wants to talk with him. As Cal sits down in the fields and starts to eat his lunch, Abra offers to fix Cal lunch like she does for Aron, but he politely turns her down. Abra wonders if he’d be eating lunch with one of the worker girls if she wasn’t there, but Cal jokingly lies and says he’s never seen her before in his life. Abra gives Cal credit for his hard work, and they discuss how Adam could lose everything if this refrigeration idea fails, how she once threw away a diamond ring worth $3000 into a river given to her by her father, and how she forgave him for the incident, which gets a laugh out of Cal. She goes on about how she thought her father didn’t love her, how her mother died when she was 13, how her dad got married again soon after, and how she hated everyone and everything at the time because of it. When she saw the ring her dad gave her stepmother, she threw it in the river. At this point, she’s flirting heavily with Cal and brushing a flower down his face as they both laugh about how the ring was never found. She talks about how she understands kids more than grownups and how she felt better when she forgave her father in her mind. They get along fine now. Cal sits up, and Abra notices how the female worker looks like she hates her, so she gives Cal advice to tell her that she is his brother’s girl. However, Cal doesn’t think he needs to explain anything to anyone. Aron gets back from the fields and sees the idea that Cal came up with regarding using a chute to transport the lettuce.

As Adam proudly explains it, Aron says it looks like a coal chute. Adam is incensed, realizing Cal was the one who stole it from those guys who were traveling through earlier.

As Aron goes over to Abra, Adam calls Cal over and tells him to take the chute back because what he did could have cost those other men their jobs. Adam then tells Aron to have a chute made out of wood because it will save a lot of time. Sometime later, Cal overhears some workers talk about how this refrigeration might be a huge failure, but Cal stops them and says it’s going to work because it has to. Once he leaves, one worker comments that if doesn’t work, it won’t be Cal’s fault because he’s been working harder than anyone he’s ever seen. Sometime later, Adam is with Will, Cal, Aron, and Abra, and he’s about to buy a car. As they are being shown how to work it, Adam is interrupted and told how there was a big snow slide that closed the pass and stopped the train cars about 100 miles out. Water was seen running out of the cars, meaning the ice all started melting. Cal walks over to hear the news. The trains are brought back. Adam sadly comes to the conclusion that one day the refrigeration idea will work, but it will be for someone else. He acts like it doesn’t bother him which fools Aron, but Cal knows it cut deep. Cal goes to a training facility to speak to Will Hamilton. Everyone there are doing workouts for the military, and Cal barges in but is thrown out. So, he pulls the fire alarm. Once everyone shuffles out, he goes over to speak to Will while explaining he’s the one who pulled the alarm. As Will showers, Cal brings up their old conversation about beans. It’s up three and a half cents now. Since war is inevitable, it’s a good time to get into the market. Cal wants to get into beans so he can make enough money to give Adam back what he lost. Will sees his good intentions, especially after Cal says he can scrape up enough money to get started, but Cal’s attitude changes when Will estimates he would need $5,000 to get started. Will has a counteroffer of $100 if Cal just wants a little share, but Cal wants the whole thing. Cal refuses the idea of getting Aron in on this and is adamant he will get the $5,000. He says he will borrow it from someone.

In this case, Will knows a farmer with over 800 acres under cultivation. If they can guarantee him five cents a pound, and make him a seed loan, he’ll plant beans and so will a lot of other farmers. With this, they can contract all the bean acreage he wants. Excited, Cal can’t wait to start but asks how he knows the price will go that high. Will talks about how the newspaper this morning basically said that war is imminent. Additionally, Will has a contract in the British Purchasing Agency and a friend in the Quartermaster Corps. They can sell all the dry beans they can find at 10 cents a pound or more, and Cal is elated at the possibility. Later, Cal is able to meet with Kate and they walk and talk. They discuss Aron and how he looks like her, but he doesn’t act like her because he’s actually good, which gets a laugh out of Kate. He refuses to talk about Adam when she asks, and she admits she didn’t know who he was beforehand. After all this, she gets to asking what he wants. Getting straight to the point, Cal asks her for the $5,000. She takes him back to her office and she questions him on his life at home and in school. He doesn’t reveal too much, but he’s confident he doesn’t want to go back to the ranch after high school. Kate sees herself in him because she gets mad just thinking about a ranch. Finally, she asks what he wants with the money, and he explains how he got there with the price of beans, how war can help, how he’s working with Will, and how he’s trying to pay back Adam for what he lost in the lettuce fiasco. Kate actually heard about what happened with Adam, and she knows how prideful he is. With this, she knows Cal is doing this on his own. Smoking her cigarette, she points out the nerve he has and why he’d think she was the one to go to. Cal admits he had no one else to ask but brings up that it’s a good business venture. He promises to pay her back with interest. She knows how Cal told Sam that she should be run out of town and wonders if this money is sort of a blackmail thing so Cal doesn’t reveal her to Aron and Adam, but he never thought about it. Changing the subject after he jokingly agrees that it might be a good idea once she brings it up, he asks why she shot Adam and left.

Initially, she tells him it’s none of his business but admits it’s because Adam tried to stop her. He tried to keep her away from the world on that ranch and keep her all to himself, but Kate is adamant in saying no one can hold her. Cal tries to bring up how he loved her, but Kate says he wanted to own her and tell her what to do. When she talks about how Adam acts like he knows everything and would read the Bible at her, Cal starts to smile, and she notices. They both acknowledge their similar opinions about Adam and their reaction to his general personality. She talks about how she’s built her place from the ground up and how it’s funny that now Cal wants money. He insists Adam won’t know where it came from, but that’s not the point. It’s about his purity, and she has to now give Cal $5,000 from the money she made to maintain Adam’s “purity”. Even so, she gives Cal the money, admits he’s a likable kid which is why Will got involved with him, calls Will a good businessman, and tells Cal to relay the message to Will to come see her. Cal tries to say something, but the distressed Kate wants him to leave because she’s running a business.

With this, Cal is off and running, but the family drama isn’t over just yet.

My Thoughts:

With just three lead roles, James Dean was able to create a legacy in Hollywood that has lived for generations, influencing countless actors to follow in his footsteps and fall in love with the craft on a whole other level than before. East of Eden was Dean’s first starring role, and I’d argue it’s his best. Rebel Without a Cause was the best film out of the three and the underrated Giant deserves to be talked about more, but East of Eden is Dean’s best performance. Though the Cain and Abel story influence can be slow and strange in some spots, the young superstar carries the film on his back to cement its place in the era of 1950s Hollywood as a must-see movie that both represents the generational gap happening at that time and showcases a precursor to the potential of what acting could become in the future.

When looking at the overall influence of East of Eden, one can’t understate James Dean’s contributions to the film enough. It’s been said before, but no one has been able to play misunderstood better than him. Between this film and Rebel Without a Cause, he manages to speak to and represent an entire generation of teens and young adults who can’t connect to their surroundings and feel as if they are living on an island by themselves. In the 90s, this was a commonplace starting point for a protagonist, but in the 1950s, this was practically revolutionary and even frowned upon in some regard. At a time when traditional family values were everything in the media at that time (Example: the sitcoms of the 1950s, any counterculture thing deemed as evil, the backlash from adults to Rock music, etc.), something like East of Eden was released to give a voice to the kids trying to find their way and may be having trouble with falling in line blindly like how the character of Aron happily does. Aron represents the “good” in the family, the previous generation’s model son. He does everything he’s asked, is happy to do so, and is excited to support his hard-working father in any way he can. He doesn’t question anything and is that of a future model citizen because of how he avoids conflict or adverse feelings that could cause a rift or argument of any kind. At the same time, he’s also that of the older generation in that he has the unproblematic girlfriend in Abra too (at least at first), and the high school sweethearts are openly discussing marriage. During that timeframe, this sort of thing was a regular occurrence and looked at as the ideal situation. With Cal however, he represents the next generation before it was cool, which is why Dean’s role as Cal was so influential to actors and audiences alike and why he turned into a pop culture sensation after his death. Cal is the one who can’t help but feel isolated. He isn’t close with anyone of note, he has these emotional outbursts because no one in his family can relate to him or attempt to understand him, and he has an identity crisis because of it. Cal is aware and acknowledges that he’s not like Aron nor his father Adam.

He can’t relate to the cookie-cutter relationship they have, working on the ranch without protest, or reading the Bible every night to try and explain his actions to his father. There is something missing in the life of the Trask family, and Cal is causing an issue just by daring to talk about it. Aron doesn’t see the issue because Adam showers him with compliments and such, and he has the perfect life for someone his age. To his credit, Aron doesn’t try to cause a stir between him and Cal despite their known personality differences. In fact, Aron tries to include Cal on a lot of things and passes off his introverted personality as his own thing. He accepts Cal. Even when Aron is having a private conversation with Abra in the icehouse, he defends Cal to her when she criticizes his antics. It makes you feel for the relatively innocent Aron as the movie goes on. Things only change when Aron starts to become jealous of the improving Cal, and he starts to distrust him because it threatens his own position for the first time with Adam and even Abra. It didn’t matter to him until he was affected directly, and he couldn’t see the positive of his brother improving, showing how selfish he can be too. Additionally, before things start blowing up between them, Aron is a little at fault for not even trying to understand why Cal acts the way he does, which is why Cal is distanced as much as he is. Cal is just looked at as moody and being that of a strange character, and no one outside of Cal himself seems to acknowledge Adam riding his ass day in and day out. It’s just perceived as Cal being the problem child when he just wants to know what he’s not being told because it may explain his entire identity. Getting lied to your whole life about the reality of your situation tends to generate negative feelings for a kid. From the opening, Cal knows of Kate’s existence and is doing his own investigative work to confirm his suspicions, which only makes him angrier with his father for hiding the truth from him. Aron has no idea what’s going and doesn’t care because he has no reason to explore things further since his life is good the way it is. At the same time, he’s comically naive. Look no further than when Cal storms out of the house following the dinner table revelation scene with Adam.

He tells Aron “You’re the one he wants”, and Aron has the audacity to turn to Abra and ask, “What do you suppose he meant by that?”. Are you fucking kidding? Are you that obtuse? He wasn’t speaking in code! How can he act that oblivious to the obvious difference in treatment Cal gets from Adam compared to himself? Does he really live in that much of a bubble? At this point in the story, we are privy to less than an hour of their familial situation, and the viewer is in on the fact that Cal is treated like dogshit and responds appropriately by acting out. How does Aron, who has been living with his brother his entire life, not know what Cal means by this black-and-white statement? I guess I can chalk it up to one of those head-scratching “dramatic” moments that made sense back then that comes off as dated today, but it just made Aron look like an idiot. Speaking on these “dramatic” moments, the biggest eye-roll of the movie came from the scene following Cal trying to help Aron when Gustav gets attacked on his front lawn and the subsequent punch Cal gives Aron when Aron tries to fight him. Right after, Cal goes to the bar for a drink because of how mentally taxing the whole scene was and Abra pleads with him in the most overdramatic way possible, “You’re gonna get drunk!”. Abra, for the love of God, everyone was drinking during and after World War I. Please grow the fuck up.

With Adam, he is hiding his sons from the truth and tries to keep them both focused on the tasks at hand. He uses the ranch and his business interests to shield them from the outside world and keep them shackled to the life he wants them to live, a possible scenario for many teens at the time, or even now, who want to branch out from under their parents’ watchful eye. Aron is accepting of this because he receives praise and vice versa, but Cal refuses this notion at first. He knows there is more to their background because of how different he is. He notably tells Sam that he knows there was more to the story because he’s “no good” and how Kate was the same, which is the perfect explanation for his extreme contrast in personalities to his father and brother. Instead of working harder to try and understand Cal, Adam becomes the strict parent who berates him and picks apart anything he does to find the negatives. Though he backtracks his statements, he refers to Cal as “bad” through and through because of his tendency to question the status quo of which they live by. However, even if he does pass this off as him speaking in anger, we know there is truth to his statements, as we previously hear him refer to Cal as being inconsiderate to Will along with his noted annoyance with the way Cal carries himself after going missing for a night. What’s great about this moment at the dinner table when Cal and Adam get into the thick of things, Cal has a breakthrough with his father. Finally, they are able to discuss the reality of what Adam was shielding from him, and the truth surrounding Kate is just enough of an inkling for Cal to understand a bit more about why he is the way he is. It puts the wheels in motion for Cal to begin to change his perception of his entire life. With this new information coming to light, it’s as if Cal gets his confirmation that he is basically an orphan in his own family, just finding out about his birth mother and relating to her more once he finds out who she is. As emotional as this conversation with Adam makes Cal in the moment, it’s crucial in the development of their relationship.

Plus, it makes their bond stronger because they both agree to not tell Aron, as it would only hurt his outlook on his father and his life in general because he would react much worse to finding out how a massive portion of his life is essentially a lie. Though I doubt anyone would react that outlandishly to being given such news, Adam was right to withhold that information from Aron because him not taking the reveal well is a colossal understatement.

Still, along with Cal wanting to reconnect and just try to speak with Kate to get a better understanding of where he comes from, there is also this desperation to be loved that he tries to bury deep within himself. On the surface, Dean’s Cal gets by on being naturally cool because of his refusal to listen, not caring about what the others think of him and saying he doesn’t owe anyone any explanation, along with not wanting to be a part of traditional societal values or fall in like a solider like how kids his age should be acting. At the same time, had he received personal attention from his father or his father’s love without him having to criticize his every movement, things may have been a lot different for Cal at that point in time. At his core, he wants to be loved as does anyone. When he does everything humanly possible to be loved by his father following his conversation with Sam, after Sam explains a bit more about the tumultuous relationship Adam had with Kate, he starts to see things from Adam’s perspective. He knows Adam is a hardass and understands where Kate is coming from because they are so similar, but this early turning point of the film helps Cal try to control his side of the equation to at least give his father another chance to give him a chance to prove he can be a valuable member of their family and another loving son, albeit a different one in comparison to Aron. Everything changes late in the second act though. What starts out as a good performance from James Dean bordering on great turns into a career-defining performance when Cal tries to put the icing on the cake by gifting his father the money he lost after the beans experiment turned out to be a success. Finally, Cal gets to where he wants to be. He’s happy, he has a full grasp on who he is, who Adam is, who Kate is, and how he can change the present to become the man Adam wants him to be. Now, all he wants is to give his father a “Thank you” present in doing so, thinking he’d be proud of his intentions and the initiative he had to make it all happen.

Sadly, the heartbreak follows, with Adam refusing because Cal was essentially war profiteering and Adam wouldn’t feel right in accepting a gift like that when people are out there dying or losing limbs. Okay, Adam does have somewhat of a point, but him having to be so pretentiously pious to Cal’s earnest efforts to try and do something good for him is enough to break your heart. It’s like Adam works tirelessly to try and put himself on a moral high ground than everyone else including telling his neighbor Piscora that he can’t excuse his son from the draft board despite him needing his son’s help on the farm. At this point, you start to see why Kate left him. The whole reason Cal went into business was for Adam and to help him, but it still wasn’t good enough for him. Just when Cal was getting to understand his father’s personality and why he does things in the manner in which he does them, it’s as if it was all for nothing. How can a son not feel further dejected from his family? He tries to give him a second chance in the moment by suggesting the money could stay there in the envelope, but Adam’s moral superiority to taking the money draws a line in the sand between them. Cal spent all this time trying to help him, but it means nothing to him. The knife in the heart for the poor kid is when Adam doubles down and suggests he give him a gift like what Aron has given him, a proposal of marriage to Abra who wasn’t even in on it, unbeknownst to Adam. He then adds that Aron’s gift is “Something honest and human and good”, which by proxy calls Cal‘s gift none of this. Following his further suggestion to Cal of, “If you want to give me a present, give me a good life. That’s something I could value”. Cal can’t comprehend Adam’s targeted viciousness towards his thoughtful attempt to help out, and he starts to get emotional because he’s not sure how else to respond. Complimented by a perfectly timed Dutch angle to heighten the intensity of the moment and bewilderment of the protagonist, Cal’s mental stability has turned upside down as he weeps and tries to give Adam the money.

He cries and hugs him until he drops the cash, and Cal flips out and leaves while yelling aloud, “I hate you”. It’s a distressing moment both equally painful and telling to what Cal has to go through internally and how it’s gotten to be so much that he couldn’t stop it from boiling to the surface. At this point in time, he feels removed from the family now more than ever and doesn’t think anything he does will be considered good enough. Knowing all the hard work he’s put in and the cold response he received from it, it’s hard not to sympathize with Cal. Aron adds on by reacting in anger to seeing Abra trying to console Cal because she knows how hard he worked, and Aron flips on him too. He tells Cal to stay away from Abra, how he’s no good, and how they’ve basically put up with his antics up until this point, but he’s over it. In the heat of the moment, the anger returns, leading to Cal spilling the beans (You see what I did there?) to Aron over the truth surrounding their mother. The ferocity, the raw emotion, the inability to control his feelings in the moment, the confusion in which he suffers from, all of it leads to one of the most powerful performances of the decade by Dean. There is a vulnerability captured here that will genuinely effect anyone who watches it, and a lot may relate to their own real-life situation within it. By the time the vengeful Cal swings on the swing set while trash talking his father over revealing Kate’s existence to Aron, and the camera swings with him in an awesome scene, it’s a landmark moment in teen angst, personal trauma, and even revenge. In this moment, you become shocked not by Cal’s actions as he lashes out in anger, but more how much you relate to Cal’s volatile response to prove a point. It’s scary, but also an all-time moment, memorably shot by director Elia Kazan. Capturing the whirlwind of emotions felt in a topsy-turvy mental breakdown scene in the way in which it is filmed is a defining scene of the movie and is one of those sequences that will live forever in your consciousness.

The same could be said for the climax, as the wide-eyed Adam stares and Cal sits by his bedside, opening his heart to him. It’s quite the reminder of how short and precious life is. Just as we relate to the callousness of Cal and how he’s on the verge of a path of destruction in response to everyone around him, especially after he smiles once he shuts the door on Aron and Kate knowing that it’s something that can’t be undone, we see the guilt on his face in the aftermath. The last thing he said to Adam on top of him always wanting to be right, which is why he couldn’t handle his or Kate’s personalities, is “You kept on forgiving us, but you never really loved us” and how he never loved Cal because he’s too much like Kate and he “never forgave yourself for having loved her”. The nail in the proverbial coffin was how he wanted to buy Adam’s love, but he just doesn’t want it anymore or any kind of love it all adding, “It doesn’t pay off. No future in it”. That’s how far off the deep end he’s in. Even though he regrets what happens, it’s another situation where we know he means every word he says because of what he’s been through. It’s a sorrowful moment but one of the most authentic portrayals one may ever see of reacting in anger and feeling underappreciated by the ones you call your family. Regardless, the aftermath is a life-changing revelation in presenting the importance of forgiveness but also all facets of love and showing how important its effect is on different people. We all have moments where we don’t feel loved by those that say they do. A lot of us try to act like it doesn’t bother us and we trek on, trying to be tough for the outside world, but the results can be devastating to our mental health just like it is with Cal. It can turn one into a cruel person, and Cal has had his struggles with this his entire life for how Adam has dealt with him. He may not have meant it in that manner, but it came off that way. This climax is confined to one room, but it’s a final stand of sorts. Cal may go away and feel guilty the rest of his life over what has happened. The internal strife he feels that increases virtually every day will be his undoing unless Adam accepts his part in failing him just as well, with Abra pleading with Adam to release Cal from this path by saying those simple words to him.

It’s such a powerful sequence and just incredibly done on every aspect of the production from the writing to the acting to the way it’s shot. For every dated scene in the movie, scenes like these make up for it.

The flip-flopping between the audience’s feelings towards Cal and Aron are interesting to note too because it starts to reveal more about yourself with how you respond to the story’s actions. Naturally, we as the viewer relate to Cal’s actions and want him to win to reach the fulfilled life he craves. Though Aron turns a blind eye to the troubles Cal faces, mostly because he doesn’t realize they exist, he doesn’t do much of anything else to deserve what he later faces. It’s weird, but he technically doesn’t do anything wrong other than being a goody little two-shoes. Even so, the viewer can’t help but think, “Fuck this guy”. Just as Cal is able to find a way to repair his relationship with Adam when it’s on his last legs, it comes at the expense of Aron who deals with a tragic unraveling and goes headfirst through a window into an uncertain future. Yet, all the other characters seem to shrug because Cal at least figures things out. Are we just supposed to forget about Aron because James Dean is really cool?

Well, yeah. Actually, I forgot about it already. What were we talking about again? Oh right…

One thing I don’t understand is the significance of Kate’s hands. She’s known to be very protective of her hands because she wants to avoid arthritis (join the club), and wears gloves all the time. Even when Cal asks Adam how Kate was, his first response was, “She had the most lovely hands”. If that is the first thing you say about someone, how can I not think there’s something wrong with her? Imagine you’re talking with a friend, and he’s like, “Oh, I got the perfect girl for you”. You ask him how she is, and he responds with, “She had the most lovely hands”. Does that sell her to you? Of course not, but for some reason, this is an extremely important detail of the Kate character, but it never has any bearing on the plot. At most, you could justify that she looks at her hands differently because they went ahead and shot Adam during their marriage, and she’s possibly ashamed of what her hands did. However, she doesn’t look like she regrets it. The “bad” inside of her that Cal possesses is very real, so what was the point of this story element? Okay, hear me out for a second. At least in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, reasoning is given to why the main character wears gloves and never takes them off, and its thoroughly explained how he got there and why it’s such a big deal he overcame it. In East of Eden, they just throw out the fact that she has nice-looking hands, she wears gloves, is really protective about it, and it goes nowhere. What? Why? What is this leading to? What is the meaning of this? For the record though, I loved the interactions between Cal and Kate and how they realize they relate to each other, despite their issues with the way they emote to others and Adam. Their uneasy relationship that gets almost close to reconnection was a cool development, highlighted by Cal setting the bridge ablaze when he forcefully brought Aron along after he had enough of everyone’s mistreatment towards him. For a semi-tragedy, it was a magnificent sequence of events.

Abra is a confusing character as well but somewhat realistic. She is uncomfortable at the sight of Cal early on, but once she begins to understand and talk to him unlike Adam and Aron, she starts to fall for him just like the audience does. When he starts to be happy, she is happy watching him. Abra takes the place of the viewer, and she relates to him due to her own complicated relationship with her father in a conversation the two have that knowing Aron, was probably never brought up. When things start to heat up between Cal and Abra, you understand it from her end, despite Aron not deserving of Abra’s newfound attention toward Cal. Abra is attracted to the realness of Cal, his attempts in showing his potential and his newfound happiness, and the lack of depth she gets from her interactions with Aron in comparison. At the same time, Aron puts her on this pedestal, and she’s not the person Aron thinks she is. Just like how they discuss on the Ferris wheel, Abra doesn’t think she’s good enough for the picture-perfect Aron. She thinks she’s bad like Cal and turns to him because he’s the only one who may understand her, adding that Aron made up who she is, and she’s not living up to it. It’s a great scene that turns into a kiss that she acts like she regrets, but it’s vital to the second half of the plot. As interesting as it is to watch her do a full 180 on Cal, her attraction to him isn’t because she’s “bad”. She wants to be bad and uses this as an excuse to be attracted to the prototypical bad boy that Dean’s Cal is. These older films try to justify things by giving Abra some reasoning for her troubled thoughts at the time, but it’s much simpler than that. Let’s just call a spade a spade. She wanted to walk on the wild side and was tired of the boring Aron. It’s really that simple. She knows Cal has the sauce, and so does he, as evidenced by that carnival sequence. Abra can’t justify this. She wants to cheat on Aron with a guy who is cooler, twisted, and dark. She’s excited by it.

It’s a tale as old as time. Again, grow up Abra. Accept what you did.

For fans of cinema and the history of Hollywood, James Dean’s three starring films are required viewing, but that goes without saying. Though not without issues of its own, East of Eden solidifies itself in our consciousness for giving us James Dean at his agonizing best, as he tries to find his place in his family and in his own life and nearly reaching his breaking point in doing so. Wonderfully directed by Elia Kazan who captures the emotion, intensity, and authenticity of every conversation being had that leads to some devastating and powerful events, along with a bit of exploration on early xenophobia, East of Eden is a multidimensional film that speaks in some way or another to anyone who views it.

Fun Fact: Director Elia Kazan considered casting Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift as Cal and Aron but realized they were way too old to play teenagers. Paul Newman was also almost considered to play Cal.