East of Eden was one of the more fetishized films around when I was growing up. Because of James Dean of course. There is something about THIS particular actor in THIS particular role that people have always responded to on a very deep level. What is it? How is it done? Certainly, many actors have misread the situation and assumed that if they adopt the outward manifestations of Dean's performance in this film, they too, would make a splash. Think again!

Everyone knows the concept of this film I think, so there is no need to withhold details of the story here, but it revolves around the idea of there being these non-identical twins, Cal (James Dean) and Aron (Richard Davalos). They are sons to the widowed Adam Trask (Raymond Massey). The story hinges on Cal's awareness of the "evil" in his character (as opposed to the "good" in the character of his brother Aron); his discovery of the identity and location, (not to mention profession) of his supposedly dead mother Kate (Jo Van Fleet); Cal's attempt to connect with his father Adam, and the latter's inability to do so.

The film has always struck me as a very strong work. Despite the fact that almost all of it has that touch of 50s angst going on in it, from the way that the trumpets blare occasionally to announce emotional rawness to its sqeamishness over the subject of prostitution, the film is certainly not without its flaws. But all of these considerations are swept aside as one watches the film. The camera disappears, the script disappears, Elia Kazan's HUAC testimony disappears, and what you are left with is the sense that you are watching — no — taking part in — a great drama that is unfolding. It's more than a mere film.

John Steinbeck began writing East of Eden in 1948. Some say that it was the death of his close friend "Doc" Ricketts that caused Steinbeck to begin it, settling into a long period of research in Monterey and Salinas. Steinbeck, by this time, was considered one of America's greatest novelists, having written Of Mice and Men (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and Cannery Row (1945). By the time Steinbeck decided to write East of Eden, he was a household name — all of his books had been huge sellers. Many of them had been filmed, even filmed well, most notably The Grapes of Wrath (1940, directed by John Ford), and Of Mice and Men (1939, directed by Lewis Milestone). He had also been around Hollywood too, having done things like write the story for Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). Somewhere in between all of this activity, Steinbeck also wrote an original script for director Elia Kazan called Viva Zapata! (1952) relating the saga of the Mexican Revolutionary.

So what you had was one of the giants of Twentieth-Century literature, an unlimitedly gifted and insightful author sitting down at the full height of his powers to write "The Great American Novel." He said later that in Eden, he was writing about himself for the first time. Much of his previous work had been taken from life to be sure, but in a reportage sort of manner. This book was different. In the others, Steinbeck felt that he was always "holding back." Many of his stories appeal because of their very simplicity, which could be one reason why they make such good films.

In East of Eden, Steinbeck admitted that he "held nothing back." The flow of events in just the first 100 pages of what would eventually turn out to be a 600-page book, just knocks you out. How could anybody make a movie of all this?

You couldn't. Because of the Elia Kazan connection, combined with the interest Steinbeck took in the films made from his work, the two of them must have made the decision that, when the time came, that only the last third (that's right!) of the novel would be filmed. "Holding nothing back," Steinbeck proceeded to turn out one of the most involving novels ever written — casting concerns about how a film would be made from it into the wind.

East of Eden was published in November of 1952, and became an enormous best seller. Elia Kazan had set the project up at Warner Bros., who doubtless were hoping lighting could strike twice, since Kazan had directed the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) for the studio. Streetcar had been a huge, prestige hit for Warner Bros.; they expected the same for East of Eden, setting it up with a large budget, agreeing to location shooting in Northern California and, my goodness, CinemaScope!

In directing the first production of Tennessee William's Streetcar, Kazan had plucked from relative obscurity a young unknown actor named Marlon Brando, placed him in the spotlight. Then when Brando proceeded to become a sensation in the role of Stanley Kowalski, it was just a hop, skip and a jump to the film version and all the rest. Kazan had the instinct to do the same thing with the part of Cal in East of Eden, and he had the credentials to be able to follow this idea. Fortunately, Kazan had lots of experience hanging around Off-Broadway theatres looking for people to put in his films.

Just where Kazan first spotted James Dean is not quite known, but legend has it that it was in a production called See the Jaguar, which was presented in December of 1952, one month after the publication of East of Eden. Jaguar flopped, but by the time 1954 rolled around, Kazan had made up his mind. It was Dean. Kazan offered him the chance of a lifetime: the lead role in a large-scale Hollywood movie of a whopping best selling novel. Can you imagine? Dean was just a struggling actor. He had never been on an airplane before. Kazan was able to play Svengali to Dean, and Dean was just raw enough to be molded by him — to an extent. Dean's fee to be in the film? $10.000.

One of the things that makes for the James Dean legend is that, supposedly, Dean was Cal Trask. That the emotional turmoil of the character was something Dean was intimately acquainted with. There is truth to this, certainly. But this notion that Dean was just "winging it" belies the career path that he had been striving toward all his young life.

Born in Marion, Indiana in 1931, Dean had a very close relationship with his mother Mildred, who died of cancer when he was 9. A lousy time to loose your mother. Not only that, but his father Winton, who was a dental tech in the Veteran's Administration, had accepted a permanent gig at the VA in Los Angeles. The Deans were living in LA when Mildred died in 1940. Winton decided to ship James back to Indiana, to live with his Grandmother in a small town called Fairmount. Winton visited the boy occasionally and watched, as the strapping youngster became a star athlete in high school.

Dean however, was drawn to the theatre. He attended all the acting classes one could get in Indiana in the 40s — which probably did not amount to much. In 1949, Dean lit out for California, attending junior college in Santa Monica and acting classes at UCLA, where he studied with James Whitmore, who encouraged him to go to New York. He did.

You have to figure that this is not the easiest thing in the world to do. It still isn't. He was young and he had this idea in his head that wouldn't go away, and this is what he was doing with the notion. It takes a great deal of determination to head to the big city, work for free, study, act poorly in ungratifying productions, while everyone else your age is trying to set themselves up in a career or, "getting married."

When you read all that has been written about Dean's antics while shooting East of Eden, then you see him in the film, it hard to imagine him as he must have been at this time: a committed young man tying to learn how to act.

Kazan must have known he was on to something when he and James visited Winton when they first arrived in Los Angeles. To Kazan, it was clear that they "loathed" one another. This dynamic Kazan decided to intensify during the shooting of the picture. All of these things contributed to the portrait Dean gives onscreen. And Dean gives a performance, make no mistake.

One aspect of our fascination with Dean is that he makes it seem as though we ourselves are up on that screen; that if only there were cameras recording our lives, it would look a lot like a James Dean movie. Dean is so completely natural in the film that one forgets that one is watching a performance, especially in scenes most producers would consider pure time wasters today. It is obvious in the "blow out" scenes, but I think his approach works even better in the scenes where he is listening. In the lunch scene where Abra (Julie Harris) tells Cal about her relationship with her father or the scene at the top of the Ferris Wheel. Even though Cal is mostly just sitting there with Abra in these two scenes, it is the fact that you know that Cal is listening to her that holds it together. He's not just waiting for his cue so that he can spit out his next line. He's really there.

This looks so effortless that it still takes our breath away. Like watching Fred Astaire, we feel that we could do these things too — if only in our imaginations. I suppose that this is why there are so many Dean clones running around. As I mentioned before, putting on a certain Deanlike air does not a star make you.

It's being in East of Eden that does it. One of the greatest books ever written, one of the most skilled directors ever to work in pictures — this is what the Dean clones are lacking, with all due respect to Ridley Scott and his Thelma and Louise (1991).

So, having decided to film only the last third of Steinbeck's book, we have overstepped the usual laws regarding film adaptations of novels by a considerable distance. The film begins roughly where Book Four starts in the novel, a place where the very last vestiges of the Hamilton Family storyline are buried and forgotten.

Until recently, I had never read the novel. I only knew it to be a vast work, so it was a bit daunting to me. My more than favorable impression of the film all these years is unmarred by thoughts of "look what they did there!" But in preparation for writing this piece, I read the novel and I have to admit that the opening reels (apart from the depiction of Cal following Kate through the streets of Monterey) of the film strike me as being incredibly awkward, censorial and limited. Because literally tons of background material is jettisoned, one has to make up for this somehow — however fitfully.

The movie opens with a vaguely late-teenaged Cal already knowing about Kate and following her around. Boy, if ever there was a way to throw the attention on Cal, this would be the way to do it. The novel is really about Adam. I have even heard people say that the book is about Lee! But the film is Cal's odyssey in every way.

I have always liked the whole opening sequence of Kate walking around the town and noticing Cal following her. The atmosphere of a sleepy California oceanside village is wonderfully caught by the great Cameraman Ted McCord. The whole set up is done very neatly. Joe (Timothy Carey), Kate's bouncer, gets to go out there and talk to the inarticulate kid about why he's following Kate, Cal hitches a ride back to Salinas on a train, and we are introduced to the "good" son, Aron, who is walking along carrying the books of his sweetheart Abra.

Fine. Adam is introduced buying the ice factory for his lettuce theory. He seems like a rather well wound-up sort of guy, but the film cannot tell you how it all got that way! Adam is talking about his dream of redemption to Will Hamilton (Albert Dekker), and it just rings in my ears as the most horrible mish-mash! "All the years I've laid fallow!" My God!!

But I mean, what else were they going to do? I have a lot of admiration for the adaptation job playwright Paul Osborn (who also, like Dean, was born in small Indiana town) did on this project. Usually, I feel that the first thing to go in a film adaptation of anything is you have to make a conscious decision to get rid of the author — the narrator of the story. One cannot concern oneself with trying to put across many of the things that Steinbeck, as a narrator, can tell us in his novel. But the movies have a certain edge too. The film acquires its own voice at unexpected moments, such as when Cal jumps off of the train in Salinas, the camera pans as he walks along a beanfield, which is slowly overshadowed by the smoke from the train. Good film adaptations reach for things like this every now and again in order to fill in the first thing they have to cut out: the voice of the author!

Another thing that had to happen was: What do we do now that we have cut out Lee, who is a major character? Lee is a very well read, intelligent, American-born Chinese who has been looking after the Trasks ever since Adam was married. After Kate walks out on him, and Adam sinks into the largest funk on record, Lee raises the two boys, teaching them Chinese and everything. He even plays a part in the naming of the boys. It must have been difficult to make this decision to eliminate this very important character.

More than one viewer might have suspected that the cutting of Lee from the proceedings stems from good ol' American racism. I would admit that American films of this period are notably absent of well-rounded Asian characters.

However, in refocusing the attention in the telling of the last third of the book, and focusing attention on Cal, Lee could be sacrificed because Lee is the character who is the catalyst for Adam's redemption at the end of the book. It is Adam who has to redeem himself, not Cal. At the end of the book, it is Lee who is standing over the bed of this dying man he has served for over 50 years, and screams at Adam on the very last page, "Adam, give him (Cal) your blessing!"

Lee is connected to Adam, and in the decision to make the film Cal's story, Lee had to go. But an interesting thing happened when they did that. With Lee gone, they faced a mechanical problem of what to do with all of the things that Lee does in the story. For instance, it is Lee who loans Cal the money to go into bean futures. So who is Cal going to borrow the money from? From Kate, that's who. Just about everything in this fantastic scene between Dean and Jo Van Fleet is from Osborn's pen (with a little polishing I suspect from John Steinbeck himself), and I love the added dimension it gives the whole thing. Cal is doing something that is wholly consistent with someone his age. He is using a practicality as a springboard to establishing a bond with another person, assuming that the older person couldn't care less about the younger one (and in Kate's case, this seems to be true).

Lee is also the philosopher who more or less draws the distinctions between the "good" of Aron and the "bad" of Cal, and as the boys grow up, Lee is constantly having to explain things to both of the boys regarding the other.

But in the film, the boys are introduced to the viewer just at the height of their high school years; it is Abra's character who is emotionally equipped to do much of this philosophizing.

Just after the introduction of Adam and Will (who needs to be introduced to Cal and Aron!) at the ice factory, while the film is still in the "sketch it out with a crayon" phase, Cal is observed by his father trying to light a cigarette while atop a flight of outside stairs. Already annoyed with Cal for staying out all night, Adam is forced to admit to a stranger, Will Hamilton (who in the book was only a baby when Adam Trask moved into the neighborhood), that there is a rift between the father and the son. Oddly, it isn't the smoking that bugs Adam; it's the fire hazard. Will suggests that Cal is, "Just young and thoughtless." But Adam, who has had more time to mull this over, replies, "He's inconsiderate. I don't understand him — I never have."

Abra goes even further than that in the next scene where she and Aron are in the attic of the ice factory. Thinking they are alone but being watched and overheard by Cal, she comes right out and says it. "He's scary. He scares me like some sort of animal." This scene never fails to get me. Kazan takes advantage of the akwardness in achieving close compositions in CinemaScope here in this scene, while the rest of the film contains looser compositions, subtly emphasizing the emotional distance between the characters. Abra is standing in medium shot leaning against some sort of railing. The look of sexual yearning on her face as she describes Cal and his animal characteristics just can't be overlooked. She absently rubs a post up and down, then turns to Aron in the background and asks, "Aron, when are we going to get married?" Even though Abra is supposed to be the "good" girl for the "good" boy, the through-line for her character is established here, and early.

There are some who do not care for Julie Harris in this part, but I would not side with them. Abra is not an easy role. She has to appeal to the women in the audience, and she has to be desirable in a sense, to the men. Part of what made the film work for Dean was that from a chemistry standpoint, men went along with the assessment that Dean was a hunk because Julie Harris thought so!

Abra and Aron cement their young love by humming their theme song (which Leonard Roseman eventually turns into Abra's theme and then it becomes the theme for the movie itself), and as they declare their love for each other, Cal lashes out because he feels that no one loves him. In a great show of teenage angst, he sends much of the ice blocks from the attic down a chute. Adam flips out.

This drawing of Cal as "bad" or rebellious continues into the next scene. For anyone who has ever been in hot water with a parent or the law, the retribution always seems to come at night. There is a dark, confessional long shot of the darkened dining room with the light above the table with the white tablecloth standing out. By placing the opposing generations on either side of the screen, the filmmakers have created a textbook case in showing how scenes like this ought to be staged — it is a standard that no one can possibly forget or ignore.

Kazan decides to go in a Kafkaesque direction, staging the subsequent action in tilted compositions, for this is an inquisition, first by Adam, wanting to know about the ice, and then by Cal, who reveals to his father that he knows that his mother is not dead. The angle of the shots I have always found arbitrarily stylistic, but I know now why they are there — it's because of the wooziness men feel when they are asked to talk about things that they have subjugated in themselves for so long. Cal can't come out and say, "I slid the ice down the chute because no one loves me" any more than Adam can say, "Your Mother left me because she was finished using me." But the pain of not being able to say these things is clear on the actor's faces (Actually, it's rather interesting to know that in the book, Adam had full knowledge not only of Kate's whereabouts and that she was running the town whorehouse, but he had also gone there several times to confront his demons with her until he was no longer afraid of her or what she might do. Kate and her house were in Salinas too, not Monterey. When you know all this, Adam's telling Cal that he didn't know what had become of her comes off as a deliberate withholding of the truth from his son. Without knowing the book's details, he is just a big dumbbell).

Cal lights out, and in so doing, almost bumps into a Mister Gustav Albrecht (Harold Gordon). Albrecht is another invention of the creative team. It was easy enough to show Cal being "bad." Well, trying to track down your mother in a whorehouse to the point of their having to throw you out forcibly, might not be "good" behavior, but it was certainly "bad" in 1955, right? It was harder to show Aron being "good." Steinbeck solved the problem in an entirely legitimate way, he had Aron become a divinity student and to remove him from the scene, having him go off to school someplace. He writes Abra letters where he idolizes her to such an extent that she feels that he loves the idea of her, rather than the reality of her.

Anyway, Albrecht was invented more-or-less to show the inherent problems of being a German-American while the United States was going to war against Germany. Osborn takes a number of rather disparate and fuzzy actions from the novel, and brings them into crystal clear focus. The hatred for the Germans during the war, and the fear Abra has concerning Aron's idealization of her.

It is in the midway scenes. I love the soldier whose opening line with the girls is, "Here I am, baby, I'm the one you're waiting for . . ." One has to put this in your screen writing notebook: have several things going on at once.

Abra is shown standing around waiting (no wonder that creepy soldier makes a play for her), waiting for — what? Her lover. Cal shows up, and they kill time together. Meanwhile, there are some Officials on a platform who are inflaming the crowd with their stories of the brutality of the Hun. Albrecht, though an American, cannot bear this. He rather stupidly stands in the crowd with his arm folded, saying, "Lies — all lies." This is one of the most important things about film writing, I think. Here is this guy who is a German-American during World War I. He is standing in a big crowd of people who are listening to the horrors of the German foe. The guy is enraged that these people are listening and accepting this crap. He would be better off to keep his mouth shut, and I am sure that in reality, he would have.

But this is a movie, and this is what I think is so great about what they have cooked up here. Albrecht does something that no one in his right mind would do, and you buy it because — people do that sort of thing!

While this is going on, Abra and Cal have gone for a ride on the Ferris Wheel. The Operator is listening with increasing anger to Albrecht. In a slow-boil fit of pique, he stops the Ferris Wheel, leaving Abra and Cal stranded near the top.

This is the scene I mentioned earlier as being one of the interesting scenes with Dean. It is completely Abra's scene. She has to go and explain to Cal how she is afraid that Aron loves her because of his idealized image of her, but that she is a human being just like anyone else and that this terrifies her beyond description — she goes on and on. And Dean as Cal, he is actually listening to her.

There is a steady and controlled way that all of this leads slowly, inexorably up through the hounding of Albrecht through the streets to his home, to Aron's heartfelt (but inadequate) defense of Albrecht, the flying entrance of Cal into the fray, culminating in the sudden appearance of Sam the Sherrif (Burl Ives). The way Sam wanders through these people, who have been caught red-handed doing something deplorable is just fabulous.

Aron has a problem with the violent manner in which Cal had attempted to stop the wave of hatred toward Albrecht. Abra does too, but she can handle it. This leads to their mutual admiration phase, where Abra is continually inserting herself into Cal's doings (this is something that Lee did in the novel), while Aron looks on and stews — he knows that Abra is switching her leanings to Cal, and he is not happy about it.

So we go on to the scene of Adam's birthday (Thanksgiving in the novel). Cal is beside himself at the prospect of actually doing something right for the first time in his life. He is touchingly nervous and keyed up, while Abra is right there with him as he flits about the room in anticipation.

Finally, Adam arrives. Just when he is on the point of opening Cal's present, Aron interrupts to announce his present — that he and Abra are engaged. The viewer has been set up properly to know that this is bullshit. Aron tries to hold her hand, but she spurns it with a twisted look on her face. Adam opens Cal's gift and — well it's a P.R. thing, and we have all been through it. The supposedly "good" son gives the Patriarch something that is a flat-out sham, and the Patriarch loves it, while the "bad" son gives the ol' bastard something that he knocked himself out for and the Old Boy doesn't want. This is the genius of Steinbeck's accomplishment. Just a fantastic way to get these ideas across. Dean is so over the top in the scene where he is trying to embrace his father and then stomps out, but you know, it works. The guy is at his wit's end.

Cal goes under the willow tree in the backyard to bawl his head off, while Abra rushes to comfort him, and this has not failed to attract Aron's notice. He warns Cal to lay off. Aron has come to agree with Adam. Cal is no good. Cal, who is able to see through Aron's posturing, decides to take him on a little trip to a whorehouse in Monterey. This is done fairly economically in terms of screen time, but packs a whollop anyway. "Mother. . . this is Aron. Aron is everything that is good." Cal pushes him in there, slams the door, while the whorehouse piano drowns out their cries of anguish. Brilliant.

Another great scene I like is when Cal returns to the house to tell everybody to go to hell. This is the kind of scene that every actor would give the old left nad to play. He tells Adam, "Tonight, I even tried to buy your love, but you know what? Now, I don't want it — I can't use it." We see, even though Cal has scored a cosmic victory over his brother Aron, that he is well on his way to becoming a Monster. "Cal, don't talk to your father like that," Abra manages to slip in. Great touch.

Aron goes though the most rapid mental deterioration ever, gets drunk and joins the Army. There is a terrifying scene where Aron crashes his head through the window of the troop train as his father tries to puzzle out what is happening. Adam has a heart attack purdy quick, you betcha'. Things are falling quicker than the last 30 minutes of Gone with the Wind. Adam is paralyzed and lying in his dark, dark, dark bedroom. The crotchetyest old buzzard of a Doctor they could find (Richard Garrick), who has absolutely nothing comforting to say to either Cal or Abra, leaves behind a nurse who just leaps from the pages of the novel (Barbara Baxley). She is just about the most annoying person you could want to have at the end of a multi-generational family drama, where everything that is old has to die in order to make way for the new.

Abra goes in to ask Adam if he can show Cal some sign that he loves him or else Cal will be a cripple for life. Jesus, she is great in this scene. The whole thing is done very quickly in terms of screen time, but boy howdy, do you get it. When Cal tells the Nurse to "Get out!" Wow! It's like you have been waiting for this for hours! Even Adam manages to smile a little at this outburst of Cals. "That nurse. . . Can't stand her — find me another."

And with this, Cal and Abra are fused into one whole and the theme music starts up and this is where it fades out, and it all feels kind of abrupt, but the ending in the novel is even more so.

I have no big theme for you this time, other than the fact that this might be one of the greatest examples of a film that veers rather wildly from its source material. But it still manages to find its own greatness. I suppose that this is the sort of thing that we all used to argue about in the old days — whether a film was faithful to its source. Nowadays of course, we all argue about whether a film is "true."

But I think that given the fact that the first 400 pages of Steinbeck's East of Eden concerns the adventures of a murdering whore — this was not going to get up on the screen in the mid 50s. It just wasn't. No matter how big a best seller it was. Now that we have the freedom to do this — no one is interested. Besides, it would be difficult to remake any of the Dean films. His shadow is too large.

I like the clash of the acting styles represented in the film — Dean's and Massey's. I like the fact that in the middle of the "I Like IKE" 50s America, there was a movie that took a bold look at the past and showed us that history only repeats itself over and over again. Most of the things that are talked about in East of Eden are still being struggled with today by people all over the world, and that is what will always make this film a rewarding experience.