Review: James Dean Living Famously BBC One
Deep Sehal's Documentary Starring William Bast and Martin Landau
Apr 23, 2009
Through a combination of rare archival footage and candid interviews with some of Jimmy’s closest friends, the programme attempts to uncover the real man behind the scrupulous method actor. To this day, Dean is infamous for embracing the expression live fast, die young, a radical idea first suggested to the cinema going public in the early fifties.
Leaving this world tragically at the tender age of twenty four, Dean’s brooding good looks and distinctive talent continue to secure his place as a cinematic legend and make him a perfect candidate for biographical research.
Biographer Donald Spoto talks about James Dean's Biography
The documentary endeavours, rather precariously, to provide a quick overview of his personality. Grainy footage of Dean standing alone is paired adeptly with anecdotes from the upcoming interviews. As Dean looks shiftily around the set with his hands in his pockets he is described as a vulnerable and unsettling young man. Then as he inhales and adjusts his collar with a masculine air, reference is made to his terrible temper and homosexual tendencies. As he turns playfully from the camera he is described as wreck less and immature. Disappointingly, these are the most common stereotypes surrounding his narrative and one might wonder what else there is to discover about the legendary James Dean but the documentary recovers by delving into his biography.
Born in February 1931, during a period of severe depression, in Indiana, California, Dean is portrayed as an insecure child lacking emotional security. At the age of nine he was packed onto a train with the body of his late mother, by his estranged father, to live with his Aunt and Uncle in sleepy Fairmount.
He is promptly established as the enigmatic loner that teenage audiences so passionately identified with. Biographer Donald Spoto talks in depth about his life story but in spite of his obvious passion for the subject, he is somewhat uninspiring. Quotes from his Uncle and cousin which describe him as a normal boy and a sports enthusiast with a devilish side prove to be more interesting.
Friend William Bast discusses Kazan, Strasberg and The Actors Studio in BBC Documentary
William Bast, arguably James’ closest friend, talks openly about their five year friendship giving a valuable insight into the actor’s private life. He discusses his time of study at the infamous Actors Studio under the direction of film greats Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. James’ animosity toward criticism made him an unstable energy to work with, not unlike a young Marlon Brando.
Rare Footage of Hill Number One and East of Eden reveal Dean as the Young Method Actor
The programme contains rare footage of his first roles in a Pepsi commercial and a cameo in Hill Number One. Fellow actors Martin Landau and Betsy Palmer also contribute to the discussion of his personality as we hear about his first leading part in East of Eden and later the role which secured his fame as seventeen year old Jim Stark in Rebel without a Cause.
Sehal's Documentary Features Iconic Personalities Monroe and Bogart
What makes this documentary so effective, are not the familiar credentials of Jimmy’s life but the filmic images of Dean himself which haunt the eye and deliver the beauty of James Dean’s suffering. He was an actor who dangerously blurred the line between fiction and reality. The programme explores this along with the symbolic nature of his lasting presence within popular culture and the persistent infiltration of these iconic personalities into our daily existences. The opening credits express this most proficiently by superimposing images of the deceased Humphrey Bogart as he emerges from the tube or Marilyn Monroe as she sits leisurely having a coffee in New York.
What disperses the myth surrounding Dean most effectively is the testimony from characters like Bob Hinkle whose emotions resurface when talking about the death of his dear friend and his love of speed and sports car racing. Alongside clips of his most dramatic performances, these excerpts allow us to understand more clearly what the film world lost when James Dean died on the 30th September 1955.
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