Whaddya Got? Greatest Youth Rebels of Cinema

I began this list by trying to pick my most esteemed film rebels. But with so many, it was an impossible task. They spill out of every cinematic avenue. It is also hard to define a ‘rebel’. Is a slasher murderer a rebel? I suppose, since they are breaking moral and legal conventions. But Michael Myers is not like Bonnie and Clyde. Similarly, people seem to see bank robbers as rebels proper, but not mafia dons. Cary Grant in North by Northwest is a rebel, and one could compile a list based purely on the work of Sam Peckinpah. Also, enthusiasts will enjoy getting all uppity that Johnny Depp got on from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and not Dead Man.

So instead, I picked a more limited and recognisable form: the youth rebel. This archetype largely begins in the 1950s, with that decade signalling the advent of the teenager and youth culture in any recognisable form. Some are good: loveable rogues. Some are misunderstood: piteous exemplars of troubled youth. And some are just bad: murderers and actors of evil. This is the top ten:

Johnny Strabler, The Wild One (1953)

And with this, the rebellious youth was born, screeching across the screen in the form of Marlon Brando. He is Johnny, leader of a motorcycle gang much like the early Hells Angels, intent of smashing suburbia and sticking two dirty fingers up at domesticity. Brando’s men-in-leather snarl through gritted teeth, arrogantly pestering middle America. The film terrified audiences, being banned in Britain until 1968, especially with the opening credits claiming that the story was born out of reality. The lawless anarchy of these vagrants, not restrained by geography, family or wholesome values, terrified pleasant Americans. It was as if marauding Visigoths would burst out of the screen at Brando's insistence.

Jim Stark, Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

A few years on and the teenage rebel reached full maturation with this definitive picture. James Dean as Jim Stark is the teenage rebel: the archetype, the hyperbole, the cliché. Perhaps no one will ever embody juvenile delinquency quite like Dean. He is the start and end point for rebels on-screen. Problematically, he is not a dismissible snotty-nosed punk: he is supremely cool, daring without breaking a sweat, tough and masculine, and ultimately honourable. Basically someone who young viewers would admire and emulate. The middle-class family setting in which he was placed put youth delinquency into everyone’s homes: the situation is so much more real than some temporary motorcycle gang. Perhaps what makes Stark so vivid and immediate is the fact that his rebellion comes from emotional vulnerabilities. He is not evil, just misunderstood. Dean's portrayal flags ideas of estrangement, growing pains and social rejection. This rebel is just trying to get along. But many will only see the jeans, cigarette and assured attitude.

Mick Travis, If.... (1968)

Malcolm McDowell took the rebellious youth screaming into the '60s, fuming and plotting all the way. If Guy Fawkes had been in the Stones, he would act something like Mick Travis. Throughout, he is an undisputed victim, a social replica of one of the resistance fighters in his posters. The viewer will naturally sympathise, because Travis is a representation of all the times that one is wronged by a bigger system. At the crossroads of the old class system and modern Britain, poor Mick struggles to exist. His eccentric personality and unorthodox methods of recreation cause constant battles with the bullies, thuggish prefects who beat and humiliate him. But his solution is excessive even for someone who believes that violence is the only pure act. In one of the most gruesome finales of cinema, Mick and his merry men machine-gun, bomb and snipe their way through speech day. This Robin Hood becomes a mass murderer. It is twisted irony that the iconic school massacre in film should be set in a British boarding school. So however much the viewer tries to condemn him, it is the awkward fact that his terrorist attack elicits a modicum of sympathy.

Alex DeLarge, A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Another of Malcolm McDowell’s tortured individuals: it appears that he is as good at playing rebellious lunatics as Jack Nicholson (he made his name as an outlaw in Easy Rider, but at 32 he was no youngster). This is the pinnacle of youth delinquency: there is no simple schoolyard scrapping for Alex DeLarge. Instead, he and his demonic followers, slaves to his psychotic designs like Lucifer's minions, base their Friday nights out on murder, rape and torture. His tipple of milk spiked with various narcotics would make a contemporary binge-drinking session look like a Quaker service. Of course, after a while he is imprisoned and brainwashed and the whole thing becomes about more than this one character (ethics and that), but while he leers horror into the camera, he is an unstable and untouchable rebel.

Veda Pierce, Mildred Pierce (1945)

The daughter of Joan Crawford's Mildred, Veda (Ann Blyth) really is annoying. So phenomenally spoiled as well. She is the only girl on this list, but really deserves it. Veda was always a bit of a madam (if you declare people to be 'middle class' as an insult then you're probably not destined for a life of deference). She forces her mother to work so that she can have nice dresses, then sarcastically maligns the employment's low status. She is a rebel because she acts above her station, forces others to work for her every desire, and murders to keep it that way. Every social and moral constraint is a boundary to be callously kicked down. It is also interesting to note (maybe) that this film is from before the 1950s, something which perhaps makes her conceited posturing even more stark. In a world of children and adults, nothing in the middle, Veda seems happy to skip any phase which keeps her away from fur and diamonds. In a sense, she is years ahead of her time.

Frank Abignale Junior, Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Frank Abignale (Leonardo DiCaprio) plays the big time mastermind of this list. Given a blank cheque-book, Abignale starts to con his way into riches, and a federal agent’s (Tom Hanks) wanted list. In no time he’s flying Pan-Am jets, having suits tailored like James Bond’s, hoodwinking and outfoxing the FBI, and wearing garish Italian knit. Frank lives the high life for years, simply through indefatigable chutzpah and an eye for fraud. And all before he’s 19. He is rebelling against the poverty that his idolised father (Christopher Walken) is reduced to, fighting the system at every juncture like he is entitled to the wealth that law enforcement is trying to deny. Perhaps the best example of how to live as a rebel success.

Li’l Zé, City of God (2002)

Portrayed by both Leandro Firmino de Hora and Douglas Silva for different stages of youth, Li'l is a monster from Latin cinema. A Brazilian classic from 2002 (clearly a good year for cinema’s young buccaneers), both actors give exceptional performances as this child murderer from the favelas. His first act of terror involves shooting an entire hotel of people, chuckling all the way: a Brazilian Damien. His bubbly joy is almost infectious.  By the time that he has reached adulthood, he has established a drugs empire in Rio because he has slaughtered everyone else. Whereas Alex DeLarge was scary in his hyperbolised wrongdoing, this rebel is terrifying because his is so realistic. 

Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Bueller..? Bueller..? Bueller..?. Ferris Bueller (Mathew Broderick) is hands down the most loveable rogue in this selection (trying to keep it light). He’s possibly the most successful, too: the only one to get away with his nefarious activities, undiscovered and unharmed (the same can’t be said for his calamitous predator, accident-prone school dean Edward Rooney). Wanting a day off from his mind-numbingly boring school, Ferris tricks his whole society into believing that he is ill. His masterful manipulation of circumstance is not delusional hubris: it's genius. While tributes flood in and rumours fly about his condition (in reality a recording of coughs and some licking of his palms), the don of deception is driving Ferraris, dining in the same restaurant as his father and singing Twist and Shout on a float during Von Stauben Day celebrations. And he does it with a charming smile and stream of witticisms straight to the viewer ('it's a little childish and stupid, but then, so is school').

Chris McCandless, Into the Wild (2007)

Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) just can't handle society anymore ('society *cough* *cough* *cough*' in his eloquent phrasing). So, instead of lashing out at it, he rebels by simply leaving. After a baptism in a public toilet, the reborn 'Alexander Supertramp' abandons civilisation and lives in the wild. So extreme is his rebellion that he severs all contact with family. His previous life ceases to exist as he wallows in Kerouacian asceticism. No by-law or grieving relative will turn him from his course. Ultimately, Chris dies alone due to stubbornness, selfishness, and complete lack of remorse or empathy. His rebellion is so complete that it kills him.

McLovin, Superbad (2007)

So desperate is high-school nerd Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to rebel against the legal constraints of U.S. liquor laws that he hastily buys a fake ID with just one name on it. And so McLovin was born, embodiment of the geek rebel, torch-bearer for the outcast mutineers who want to revolt against the tyranny of social order. The funniest of the pick, this phenomenally annoying dweeb should be considered a die-hard rebel not because he buys alcohol illegally, shoots a police firearm or torches a patrol car. No, it’s because McLovin manages to become cool in one evening, scaling the social ladder from the bottom rung to the top, gaining whooping approval of the high school royalty. Something which Jim Stark never managed.