Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

East of Eden Blu-ray Movie Review

A Legend's Debut

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 3, 2013

(Note: This review is based on the James Dean Ultimate Collector's Edition, which contains the same Blu-ray disc with different packaging.)

James Dean's status as a cultural icon extends far beyond the three films he made in his brief career. Of those three, Rebel Without a Cause remains the best known, but the critical consensus holds that East of Eden contains Dean's finest screen performance. Part of the success of Dean's work as Cal Trask, the angrily inarticulate son of a California farmer, is due to the perfect match between actor and role. Upon first meeting Dean, novelist John Steinbeck, who based the character on one of his brothers, is reported to have exclaimed, "My God, he is Cal!" But certainly major credit for Dean's performance must go to director Elia Kazan, who picked Dean for the part (over another unknown named Paul Newman), then steered him through production as he steered so many other actors through legendary performances on the screen and stage.

East of Eden was one of Steinbeck's most successful novels, a sprawling and complex story set in the Salinas Valley of Northern California where Steinbeck grew up. Kazan had screenwriter Paul Osborn (The Yearling) adapt the latter portion of the book, which transposed the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel to 1917. As many of his fans have observed, Steinbeck had a unique gift for reinventing grand old tales in contemporary and ordinary circumstances (or so they seemed), as if these familiar stories were happening next door. But in Steinbeck's hands, what started out as ordinary assumed mythic proportions.

The challenge for a film adapation was to find a visual equivalent to Steinbeck's narrative voice that would make the story resonate with honest emotion instead of descending into melodrama. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Ford used stark black-and-white imagery and the solemn, open face of Henry Fonda (among other things). In East of Eden, Kazan used Dean's unique energy, which literally bursts off the screen, to suggest the larger dimensions of a conflict that extends far beyond one family, one father and one pair of brothers.

Dean's Cal Trask is the younger son of Adam Trask (Raymond Massey), an indefatigably upright vegetable farmer in the Salinas Valley. Cal's older brother, Aron (Richard Davalos), is the favored son, and the old man warms to everything Aron does. His look darkens whenever Cal comes into view. As Cal puts it, Aron is "good" like their father—but Cal is "bad". He might as well have said "evil".

As the film opens, Cal has hopped a freight train north to the fishing town of Monterey, where he is hesitantly stalking a woman in a black hat, who is the owner and madam of the town's most popular brothel. Her name is Kate (Jo Van Fleet, who won an Oscar for her performance), and Cal has been told by a man in a bar that she's the mother he has always believed to be dead. When Cal's actions get him arrested, the local sheriff, Sam (Burl Ives), an old friend of Cal's father, confirms the rumor. Yes, Kate is the mother of Cal and Aron, and yes, she left Adam Trask when the two boys were small. Beyond those bare facts, Sam doesn't know much more. He's kept it from his old friend that the wife who left him has returned and set up shop in nearby Monterey, and he tells Cal that neither his brother nor his father needs to know. Cal agrees, but you can see from the moment he appears on screen that he responds to the emotion of the moment, and if his feelings turn that way, he'll tell his father or brother everything.

The principal action of East of Eden is Cal's desperate efforts to win his father's approval (really his love) despite the knowledge that he's "bad" like his mother. Much of the plot is bound up with Adam Trask's efforts to develop a system for shipping frozen vegetables back east, a far-sighted enterprise that was just slightly ahead of its time because the technology for effectively refrigerated railroad cars did not yet exist. When Adam loses a major investment on the venture, Cal attempts to do something "good" by making back what his father lost on bean futures in anticipation of the U.S. entry into World War I. Cal strikes a partnership with a local businessman, Will Hamilton (Albert Dekker), but he requires startup capital, which he obtains from an unlikely source.

The tragedy for Cal is that love cannot be bought or coerced. Whatever has made Adam Trask withhold his affection from Cal, it isn't within Cal's power to change. It may not be in anyone's power to change, which is the dirty secret of many family relationships. Just because people are related by blood doesn't guarantee they will love one other.

The most understanding witness to these events is Aron's girlfriend and presumptive fiancée, Abra (Julie Harris), who has suffered through her own issues with a distant father. She and Adam Trask feel warmly toward each other, but she doesn't share Adam's negative view of his younger son, even though Cal "frightens" her ("fright" being thinly disguised code for sexual attraction). Attempting to act as a buffer among the Trask men, Abra ends up intensifying the sibling rivalry between Cal and Aron, as her feelings of sympathy for Cal quickly deepen into something more intense and primal. Aron can't help but notice, and his angry disbelief (Cal? she cares for Cal?) is what triggers the ultimate confrontation between the brothers.

Without major speeches, Dean makes Cal a whirligig of conflicting emotions, using twisted postures, unexpected movement, a face contorted by some ineffable pain and words spoken as if ripped from his interior. He plays Cal as if whatever he's feeling at the moment is literally tying his guts in knots and yanking at them, and Dean makes it believable in a way that nobody else has done before or since. Massey famously hated Dean's performance and repeatedly begged Kazan to rein him in. Kazan said he would, then quietly told Dean to keep it up. The two actors ended up hating each other, but they provided one of the most searing father/son conflicts ever recorded on film.

East of Eden Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kazan requested Warner cinematographer Ted McCord, whose versatility extended from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to The Sound of Music, to shoot East of Eden in the format then known as "Cinemascope". McCord's widescreen vistas of the Salinas Valley, as well as the streets of Monterey (and portions of Mendocino, standing in for Monterey), are essential to the sense of place and time that give East of Eden its feel of authenticity.

Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, created from a 4k scan of the original camera negative restored by MPI, Warner's on-site post house, reveals depth, detail and luster that haven't been seen in East of Eden probably since the original release prints. The subtleties of the colors, especially the predominant green of Salinas, but also the earth tones of the Trask household and the bright lights of the carnival visited by Cal, Aron and Abra, are noteworthy, but so too are the blacks and dark shadows of Kate's establishment, either deserted in daylight or in full swing at night. (Kate herself prefers solitude in her office.) The sequence of townspeople marching in celebration after the U.S. declares war on Germany pops with patriotic hues, but darker tones prevail when the citizens turn on one of their own who emigrated from Germany and is now treated as a symbol of the enemy.

The only flaw in the presentation is a slight and occasional hiccup at dissolves between scenes, presumably as a result of MPI's efforts to maintain image quality while simulating electronically an effect that, in 1955, would have been achieved optically. It's a minor flaw that many viewers will not notice.

A fine but unobtrusive grain pattern is visible throughout. MPI is one of the top facilities in film restoration. One would not expect to encounter noise reduction, high frequency filtering or artificial sharpening, and I saw none. Nor did I encounter any compression-related issues. This is a gorgeous, film-like image.

East of Eden Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

East of Eden was released in both mono (optical) and four-track stereo (magnetic) formats. The Blu-ray features a 5.1 remix prepared for Warner's 2005 special edition DVD, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA. Although the multi-channel format allows for a full-bodied presence, the mix remains largely front-oriented, which is to be expected for a film of this era. The sophisticated sound editing registers with genuine impact, e.g., the racket caused by the ice blocks that Cal impulsively dumps from an ice house in a rage over witnessing his brother and Abra in a romantic moment, or the din in the bar at Kate's establishment. The dialogue is always clear, even with Dean deliberately muttering many of Cal's lines. The film score by Leonard Rosenman, his first after his friend James Dean recommended him to Kazan, is the ideal complement to Dean's performance; it's direct and unsubtle, but there's nothing trite about it. The Blu-ray track's presentation has good fidelity and remarkably broad dynamic range for a 1955 recording. (Rosenman would later win Oscars for Barry Lyndon and Bound for Glory.)

East of Eden Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2005 two-disc special edition of East of Eden.

• Commentary with Richard Schickel: Film critic Schickel discusses the film as a fan who has seen it many times, but his commentary lacks the detailed presentation that one might expect from a scholar like Jeffrey Vance. Most of Schickel's historical points (e.g., the animosity between Dean and Massey) are covered in the "Art in Search of Life" feature. His primary contribution in the commentary is an evaluation of the performances and direction.



• Forever James Dean (480i; 1.33:1; 59:50): This 1988 documentary narrated by Bob Gunton is valuable primarily for its compilation of archival photographs and interviews with childhood acquaintances and other interview subjects who are probably no longer alive. But one doesn't get a strong sense of who Dean was or what made him distinctive.



• East of Eden: Art in Search of Life (480i; 1.33:1; 19:31): This documentary short was made in 2005 for Warner's two-disc special edition DVD. It includes informative interviews with Steinbeck's son, Thomas, and Susan Schillinglaw of the Center for Steinbeck Studies, as well as Schickel, Kazan, Harris and others (many via archive footage).



• Screen Tests (480i; 1.33:1; 6:21): Dean and Davalos.



• Wardrobe Tests (480i; 2.35:1, non-enhanced).
• Richard Davalos (3:27);
• James Dean and Richard Davalos (3:57);
• James Dean, Julie Harris and Richard Davalos (2:21);
• James Dean and Lois Smith (3:09);
• Lois Smith (2:55);
• James Dean and Jo Van Fleet (0:41);
• Jo Van Fleet (4:21);
• Costumes and Production Design (1:38).



• Deleted Scenes (480i; 2.35:1, non-enhanced; 19:15): Two variations of a conversation between Cal and Aron. Six versions of a scene between Cal and Abra while they await Adam Trask for a birthday celebration.



• 3/9/55 NYC Premiere (480i; 1.33:1; 14:42): With appearances by Steinbeck, Kazan, Massey and many others.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2.35:1, non-enhanced; 2:54): What's notable about the trailer is how much effort has been made to sensationalize the story.



• Digibook.

East of Eden Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even if East of Eden weren't notable for being James Dean's screen debut, it would still be a worthy film for its effective adaptation of a major work by a Nobel Prize-winning author and its searing portrayal of sibling competition for the love and approval of a stern partriarch. Combine all these elements with the breakthrough performance of a unique talent that was cut short just as its owner was beginning to explore where it might lead him, and you have one of the essential works of American cinema. Warner has provided a superior treatment on Blu-ray. Highly recommended.