The time frame of the film's plot is set over a little more than one twenty-four hour period in status-conscious mid-50's Los Angeles, and confined to a limited number of locations. Both the beginning and ending of the film occur at night time (late night and early morning hours respectively) and are marked by the sound of approaching and departing police car sirens. The film ends with the fatal transference of Dean's red-jacket/windbreaker to Mineo.
Befitting classic tragedy (partly inspired by Shakespeare's melodrama/tragedy Romeo and Juliet), the narrative film is neatly divided into five acts:.
the exposition of the conflict between parents and children.
interaction between the teenage characters, both befriending and taunting.
the climactic challenge of the daredevil 'chicken run'.
the peaceful and loving, but transitory denouement following the fatal challenge.
and the final tragedy of the last act when the three young people are brought together and only two survive.
As the film draws to it's end, an enigmatic, mute figure [director Nicholas Ray] walks toward the front steps of the planetarium, appearing beneath the end title.
Ray's low budget dictated that the new film be shot in black and white, but when East of Eden (1955 - directed by Harvey Hart, and one of Deans first films) really took off at the box office, the existing footage was scrapped and re-shot in colour. This was great, so far as Ray was concerned, inasmuch as he had a preference towards using symbolic colour schemes. James Dean's hot red shirt, for example, indicated rebellion, while his very blue jeans created a near luminescent effect (Ray had previously used the same vivid colour combination on Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar). As part of an overall bid for authenticity, real-life gang member Frank Mazzola was hired as technical advisor for the fight scenes. To extract as natural a performance as possible from Dean, Ray redesigned the Stark family's living room set to resemble Ray's own home, where Dean did most of his rehearsing.
