Rebel Without A Cause or The Breakfast Club

And that qualifies his acting as being shocking?

Great topic because each one attempted to speak for a generation, or rather, each generation kind of adopted it as their own reflection. My guess is that not every teen in the 50's got into knife fights and played chicken with cars driving off cliffs - but the conversations with Mineo, Wood and Dean alone were just as relevant as anything John Hughes ever wrote.

The biggest difference between Rebel and Breakfast is that with Breakfast Club, you had a whole movie where teenagers talked about their problems - you could only guess at what their lives were like outside of detention, but that was also a big part of its allure. Rebel showed everything - there was nothing left to chance, with a few scenes where people talked about their feelings, etc. I think the diversity of the character types in Breakfast Club makes it more relatable to more teenagers, but the themes in both movies are the same as any teen psyche would have.

I don't know - I think Rebel was a more complete movie but Breakfast Club was better for taking one element and running with it for an entire movie. Actually the two movies compliment each other very well.