I know this film, Giant and Rebel Without a Cause aren't the only three films James Dean featured in before his untimely death, but they were his big stardom moments, and - having seen the other two – now I had to complete the trilogy.

Interestingly I saw a strong parallel between this film and Rebel – both of them about a young man searching for the love and acceptance of a father (or a father figure). As Cal (Dean) plaintively cries to his father Adam (Raymond Massey) at one point towards the end of the film; 'Tonight, I even tried to buy your love'.

Cal is kind of a layabout, seeing himself as the black sheep in the Trask family. His straight laced, upstanding brother Aron (Richard Davalos) is engaged to the pretty local girl Abra (Julie Harris) and contributes much more to their father's business, including the new venture he's particularly interested in – refrigeration.

We first meet Cal following a woman home through a dusty central Californian hamlet in the 1910s, apparently harbouring some secret or fascination with her.

He and Aron's father Adam is steadfast, pious and endlessly frustrated with Cal's gadding about town, but when he loses the family fortune on the refrigeration venture, Cal sees his opportunity to win his father's favour, going into business with an associate of his father's to farm beans, which everyone thinks will skyrocket in price thanks to the brewing First World War.

And while he does, he grows closer to Abra and learns the truth about the mother he's always been told left town and never returned. I won't spoil it if you don't know but she is the woman he was following in the beginning.

It's an operatic family melodrama and, to be quite honest, a pretty boring watch. Dean doesn't play that different a character from Jim in Rebel Without a Cause, and it makes you wonder how much he would have stretched himself if he hadn't plowed his Porsche into another car in Salinas and cemented the credo to live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse.