“In 1957, the great filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard wrote something that’s been quoted many times over the years but it is important to remember it tonight,” said Leonardo DiCaprio at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater on Friday, November 1. DiCaprio was reading a message penned by The Film Foundation founder Martin Scorsese to introduce Nicholas Ray’s 1955 film, Rebel Without A Cause. After a quick pause, DiCaprio continued Scorsese’s note quoting Godard’s thoughts on Ray, “‘If the cinema no longer existed, Nicholas Ray alone gives the impression of being capable of reinventing it. And what is more, of wanting to. After seeing Johnny Guitar or Rebel Without A Cause, one cannot help but feel that here is something that exists only in cinema, which would be nothing in a novel, the stage, or anything else, but which becomes fantastically beautiful on the screen.’”

DiCaprio, who was also slated to co-chair the following evening’s third annual LACMA Art+ Film Gala, said he was reading Scorsese’s note because the famed director was detained in New York, at work on his latest project. “Mr. Scorsese personally apologizes that he couldn’t be here tonight because he’s very busy editing our new film, The Wolf of Wall Street,” DiCaprio said. On this night Scorsese found himself in the impossible situation of being double-booked on two coasts. Nevertheless—through DiCaprio—Scorsese characteristically had a lot to say about Rebel Without A Cause and the protection of motion picture history at a screening that LACMA director Michael Govan called, “the world restoration premiere” of the movie. The project, mounted by Gucci, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and The Film Foundation, was part of an ongoing effort to preserve and restore faded negatives and sound recordings that slowly deteriorate with age. Gucci President and CEO Patrizio di Marco praised the ongoing partnership between the three organizations that has resulted in the reconditioning and repair of  John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Le Amiche (1955), and Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), among other works. “Tonight we celebrate our 10th movie that we helped restore together,” he said.

But Scorsese was far from finished with his introduction for Rebel Without A Cause. “What did Godard mean? Well, you’re about to find out,” read DiCaprio from Scorsese’s note. “I was 13 when I saw Rebel Without A Cause,” said DiCaprio, adding, “That’s Marty speaking, I was 16.” DiCaprio noted Scorsese’s observation that Ray’s film came out only a month after James Dean was killed in a car accident, and it resonated with the young movie fan. “‘It was about us, the adolescents and the teenagers,'” read DiCaprio. “‘And it seemed to be taking place in some legendary realm. And everything hit me like a lightning bolt: every color, every form, every composition, every gesture, every tragic turn of events. It was all fused together into one great tragic cinematic vision… When I saw this restoration, I was suddenly back to 1955, seeing it again for the first time with all its force and beauty.” With that, and a brief explanation of how Warner Bros. went about completing the digital restoration, DiCaprio exited the stage and the curtain came up. Then Dean, playing a gloriously disheveled and drunk Jim Stark, proceeded to lie down on the sidewalk beside a toy monkey in the film’s famed opening scene.

By Elizabeth Varnell

Pictured: Frank Mazzola as Crunch and James Dean as Jim Stark in a film still from a restored version of Rebel Without A Cause
Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

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