As part of his article “Jesse James, the Bourgeois Bandit”, film theorist Christopher Anderson attempts to explain the differences between Henry King’s 1939 western Jesse James and the later reworking of the narrative by Nicholas Ray entitled The True Story of Jesse James (1957) by scrutinising the historical context of the latter film. Anderson asserts that in contrast to earlier films depicting James’s life, Ray “wanted to dramatize parallels between the post-Civil War adolescent bandit and the delinquent youth of today” in order to capitalise on a developing teenage market. As evidence for this, Anderson points to the fact that Nicholas Ray had previously directed Rebel Without a Cause (1955), a film often credited with being the first to show sympathy toward America’s rebellious young adults.
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Firstly, it is far too speculative to assume that teenagers of the 1950s would readily identify with a bitter postbellum Confederate soldier such as Jesse James. While Henry King’s earlier depiction of the outlaw’s life only briefly touches upon his allegiance to the South, Ray uses this loyalism as the primary motivation for James’s actions. For example, while in the earlier film the decision to commit bank robberies appears to only be guided purely by financial gain, in the later True Story adaptation, James justifies his actions as an act of revenge against “the Yankee man” responsible for “sapping [the South] bone dry”. Given that the teenage rebellion of the 1950s was born out of the desire to rebel against post-WWII conservatism and reassess elements of black culture traditionally condemned by society (such as rock and roll music), it seems contradictory for someone with such strong ties to a cause regarded as anachronistic and bigoted to be held up as a hero to a movement so ideologically
Firstly, it is far too speculative to assume that teenagers of the 1950s would readily identify with a bitter postbellum Confederate soldier such as Jesse James. While Henry King’s earlier depiction of the outlaw’s life only briefly touches upon his allegiance to the South, Ray uses this loyalism as the primary motivation for James’s actions. For example, while in the earlier film the decision to commit bank robberies appears to only be guided purely by financial gain, in the later True Story adaptation, James justifies his actions as an act of revenge against “the Yankee man” responsible for “sapping [the South] bone dry”. Given that the teenage rebellion of the 1950s was born out of the desire to rebel against post-WWII conservatism and reassess elements of black culture traditionally condemned by society (such as rock and roll music), it seems contradictory for someone with such strong ties to a cause regarded as anachronistic and bigoted to be held up as a hero to a movement so ideologically