Another Glimpse of James Dean

Sure, you’ve seen “Rebel Without a Cause” one too many times on television. But have you seen the James Dean classic the way it was meant to be seen?

As part of the Warner Bros. Classics series at the AMC 30 in Orange, you can see Dean in all his big-screen, Cinemascope glory beginning Friday.

Buy a box of popcorn and, as you sit through those interminable screen advertisements before the show, ponder these “Rebel” facts, courtesy of “James Dean: The Mutant King,” David Dalton’s excellent 1974 biography:

* Director Nicholas Ray began filming “Rebel Without a Cause” in black and white, but after nearly a week he was forced to stop production. It turned out that, according to the contract with the inventor of Cinemascope, movies shot in that new wide-screen format could be filmed only in color. So Ray and company had to re-shoot the previous week’s work, including the famous knife fight.

* Both Dean (Jim Stark) and Corey Allen (gang leader Buzz) wore chest protectors under their shirts during the knife-fight scene outside Los Angeles’ Griffith Park Observatory, and they used real switchblades. During one take, Ray noticed a trickle of blood behind Dean’s ear and called a halt to filming so Dean’s cut could be tended to.

Dean was furious with Ray for stopping the scene.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dean yelled. “Can’t you see I’m having a real moment? Don’t you ever cut a scene while I’m having a real moment.”

* The famous “chicken” run, in which Dean and Allen race stolen cars toward the edge of a cliff, was shot on a plateau at the Warner Bros. ranch. But instead of a craggy cliff plunging into the ocean, the plateau ends at a ravine. An artificial cliff was built on a studio sound stage; when Dean, Natalie Wood and the others, who are filmed from behind, look down into the “ocean,” where Buzz’s car has crashed and exploded, they’re actually looking at a black velvet drape.

Unable to relate to looking at the black cloth for his reaction shot, Dean covered an apple core with catsup, threw it onto the floor and pretended it was Buzz.

* The old, abandoned estate that Dean, Wood and Sal Mineo hide in near the end of the movie is the old Getty mansion, which had also been used for Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic, “Sunset Boulevard.”

* When Mineo takes Dean and Wood on a mock tour of the mansion property as “newlyweds,” Dean and Wood joke about the possibility of having children. Dean responds with a perfect impression of Mr. Magoo, “Ark! Drown ‘em like puppies.” The impression was an inside joke; Jim Backus, who play’s Dean’s father in the movie, was the voice of Mr. Magoo.

When Warner Bros. got word that Dean was doing “Mr. Magoo” in the film, an executive promptly showed up on the sound stage to find out what was going on. “Well,” he finally told the steamed Dean, “as long as this is Warner Bros., why don’t you make it Bugs Bunny?” The Magoo moment stayed.

* “Rebel Without a Cause” opens Friday at AMC 30 at the Block, 20 City Blvd. West, Orange. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes. 111 minutes. (714) 769-4262.

Fantastical ‘Tin Drum’ Realistic and Bizarre

In his “Movie and Video Guide,” Leonard Maltin calls German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff’s 1979 film “The Tin Drum” “mesmerizing,” a realistic fantasy with “superb acting” and “memorable sequence after memorable sequence.”

Not to mention downright strange.

What other movie hero is introduced to the audience while still inside the womb? Then, moments after his birth, his beaming mother announces, “When little Oskar is 3 years old, he shall have a tin drum.” To which Oskar, in voice-over, says: “Only the prospect of the tin drum prevented me from expressing more forcefully my desire to return to the womb.”

Oskar clearly isn’t a happy camper.

After receiving the promised drum, Oskar realizes he wants nothing to do with the pettiness, hypocrisy and decadence of the “grown-up world.” Determined to stop growing, he throws himself down the cellar stairs. The accident permanently stunts his growth.

But don’t expect to fall in love with little Oskar. He bangs his drum incessantly whenever something angers or displeases him, and he discovers that he can shatter glass with his high-pitched scream.

Based on Gunter Grass’ internationally acclaimed novel, “The Tin Drum” follows the rise and fall of the Third Reich as seen through Oskar’s eyes.

The heavily symbolic film won the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar as best foreign film. Times film critic Kevin Thomas calls “The Tin Drum,” which the UC Irvine Film Society will screen on campus Friday, a “superb landmark achievement in the then-burgeoning New German Cinema” of the late ‘70s.

* “The Tin Drum” screens at 6:50 and 9:30 p.m. Friday at Crystal Cove Auditorium in UC Irvine’s student center, corner of West Peltason and Pereira drives. Rated R (for sexual content), with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours; 22 minutes. 142 minutes. $2.50-$4.50. (949) 824-5588.

Australian Aboriginal Filmmaker Moffatt

UC Irvine’s Film and Video Center continues its series The Third Eye: Race and Representation with Australian aboriginal filmmaker Tracey Moffatt’s “Bedevil” (1993) and “Night Cries” (1990).

In both films, Moffatt explores the violence and passion of growing up native in a spiritual land corrupted by colonialism and greed. Moffatt, who is considered a visionary filmmaker and one of Australia’s greatest contemporary artists, has shown her films at the Cannes, Vancouver, Sydney and Melbourne film festivals.

* Screening tonight at 7 in the Film and Video Center, Humanities Instruction Building, Room 100, near the corner of West Peltason and Pereira drives, Irvine. Not rated. Running times: “Night Cries,” 19 minutes; “Bedevil,” 90 minutes. $4-$6. (949) 824-7418.