Movies like Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
The best movies like Rebel Without a Cause (1955) are Tex (1982), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) and The Wanderers (1979). If Rebel Without a Cause hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe 400 Blows (1959)8.0/10 from 2,426 votes
- NewestLiberty Heights (1999)Released 1999
Tex (1982)
After their mother dies and their father leaves them, teenage brothers Tex and Mason McCormick struggle to make it on their own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
Singer is a deaf-mute whose small world brings him in contact with a young girl, Mick, who cherishes a seemingly hopeless dream of becoming a concert pianist. At first hostile, Mick soon becomes friends with Singer, hoping to enlarge his small world. Three other central characters come to Singer for help also, each of them seeing in him a powerful force.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wanderers (1979)
The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Outsiders (1983)
In 1960s Tulsa, class divisions ignite a violent rivalry between the working-class Greasers and the privileged Socs. When a deadly encounter forces two Greasers, Ponyboy and Johnny, to flee, their struggle for survival and redemption exposes the fragile innocence and enduring bonds of youth on the wrong side of town.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBreaking Away (1979)
Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe 400 Blows (1959)
For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisAmerican Graffiti (1973)
A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Long, Hot Summer (1958)
Accused barn burner and conman Ben Quick arrives in a small Mississippi town and quickly ingratiates himself with its richest family, the Varners.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEast of Eden (1955)
In the Salinas Valley in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother for the love of their father. Cal is frustrated at every turn, from his reaction to the war, how to get ahead in business and in life, and how to relate to his estranged mother.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Taste of Honey (1961)
While out to avoid spending time with her narcissistic and promiscuous mother, sixteen-year-old Jo has a brief affair that leaves her pregnant and abandoned. When her mother remarries, Jo's only support becomes her friend Geoffrey, a homosexual.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLast Summer (1969)
During summer vacation on Fire Island, three young people become very close. When an uncool girl tries to infiltrate the trio's newly found relationship, they construct an elaborate plot that has violent results.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSomebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
The story of boxer Rocky Graziano's rise from juvenile delinquent to world champ.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Last Picture Show (1971)
High school seniors and best friends, Sonny and Duane, live in a dying Texas town. The handsome Duane is dating a local beauty, while Sonny is having an affair with the coach's wife. As graduation nears and both boys contemplate their futures, Duane eyes the army and Sonny takes over a local business. Each struggles to figure out if he can escape this dead-end town and build a better life somewhere else.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSchool Ties (1992)
When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLiberty Heights (1999)
This semi-autobiographical film by Barry Levinson follows various members of the Kurtzman clan, a Jewish family living in suburban Baltimore during the 1950s. As teenaged Ben completes high school, he falls for Sylvia, a black classmate, creating inevitable tensions. Meanwhile, Ben's brother, Van, attends college and becomes smitten with a mysterious woman while their father tries to maintain his burlesque business.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOver the Edge (1979)
A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlackboard Jungle (1955)
Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Wild One (1953)
The Black Rebels Motorcycle Club ride into the small California town of Wrightsville, eager to raise hell. Brooding gang leader Johnny Strabler takes a liking to Kathie, the daughter of the local lawman, as another club rolls into town.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
A headstrong young teacher in a private school in 1930s Edinburgh ignores the curriculum and influences her impressionable 12-year-old charges with her over-romanticized worldview.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Reivers (1969)
In turn-of-the-century Mississippi, an 11-year-old boy comes of age as two mischievous adult friends talk him into sneaking the family car out for a trip to Memphis and a series of adventures.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Own Private Idaho (1991)
Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVision Quest (1985)
A high school wrestler in Spokane, Washington has trouble focusing on his training regimen when a beautiful young drifter takes up temporary residence at his home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBigger Than Life (1956)
A friendly, successful suburban teacher and father grows dangerously addicted to cortisone, resulting in his transformation into a household despot.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Face in the Crowd (1957)
The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSweet Smell of Success (1957)
New York City newspaper writer J.J. Hunsecker holds considerable sway over public opinion with his Broadway column, but one thing that he can't control is his younger sister, Susan, who is in a relationship with aspiring jazz guitarist Steve Dallas. Hunsecker strongly disapproves of the romance and recruits publicist Sidney Falco to find a way to split the couple, no matter how ruthless the method.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Fugitive Kind (1960)
Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins, arrives at a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence. Her husband, Jabe M. Torrance, is dying of cancer. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, the enigmatic local tramp-of-good-family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThere Goes My Baby (1994)
It's the summer of 1965, and the members of the graduating class of upscale Westwood High are eager to reinvent themselves. Valedictorian Mary Beth wants to attend a liberal university. Surfer bum Stick plans to enlist to fight in Vietnam. Calvin lives in the poor Watts section of Los Angeles, which is slowly erupting in violence. As the summer nights grow long, they'll all be forced to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Hud (1963)
Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore. In the world of the takers and the taken, Hud is a winner. He's a cheat, but, he explains, "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner."
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
A rebellious youth, sentenced to a boy’s reformatory for robbing a bakery, rises through the ranks of the institution by impressing its Governor through his prowess as a long distance runner. He is encouraged to compete in an upcoming race, but faces ridicule from his peers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChampion (1949)
An unscrupulous boxer fights his way to the top, but eventually alienates all of the people who helped him on the way up.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
Like Rebel Without a Cause and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Rebel Without a Cause?
The closest matches to Rebel Without a Cause are Tex (1982), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) and The Wanderers (1979). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Rebel Without a Cause?
People who watched Rebel Without a Cause most often go on to Tex (1982), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) and The Wanderers (1979).
What is the highest-rated movie like Rebel Without a Cause?
The 400 Blows (1959), rated 8.0/10 by 2,426 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Rebel Without a Cause?
Liberty Heights (1999) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Rebel Without a Cause?
Yes: Tex (1982), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) and The Wanderers (1979).
How are movies similar to Rebel Without a Cause chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Rebel Without a Cause, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.