![]() When during one of their many fights, Adam tells Cal "You're bad, through and through, bad," Cal replies, "You're right. He knows she's his mother, and in his simplistic analysis of family dynamics, he reasons that her fall from grace has predestined his fate. Hopping the freight train to town whenever he gets the chance, he spies on the madam who runs the local cathouse. Trask ( Jo Van Fleet) died long ago, but Cal knows better. It's 1917, and World War I is raging overseas.Īron believes dear old Dad's story that Mrs. Together they work a lettuce farm in central California's fertile Salinas Valley. Dean brings his emotive Method style to the role of Cal Trask, the "bad" son who must compete with his golden boy brother Aron ( Richard Davalos) for the love of their cold, Bible-thumping father Adam ( Raymond Massey). John Steinbeck's classic story draws on the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel, the two warring brothers from the Old Testament, and although Cain doesn't slay Abel in this version of the story, he comes close. It's the kind of movie that a million Ashton Kutchers and a million Brett Ratners couldn't make in a million years. This is big moviemaking, with big themes, big performances, big CinemaScope shots, and big, bright "WarnerColor" images. Elia Kazan's East of Eden packs as powerful a punch today as it must have 50 years ago when it introduced an exciting new star, James Dean, to a wide-eyed audience that had never seen anything quite him before.
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