A former colleague of mine wrote about Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” proclaiming it to be one of those novels that “justify human existence and make the world seem a little less like a toilet.” Evan later went on to say that though he hadn’t seen the James Dean film adaptation, he knew that the film was limited to something like the last quarter of the source text and did a sloppy job of it.

For my part, I claim the exact polar opposite stance. I haven’t read the original novel, though I could never tolerate what little I have read of Steinbeck’s ouvre. However, I’ve just finished seeing the film adaptation, and I have no problem calling it a masterpiece on its own merit.

To summarize the film as briefly as I can, East of Eden is a cleverly staged allegory for the story of Cain and Abel, set in a couple of neighboring California towns at the start of World War I. In this case, the brothers are Caleb and Aron (Both biblical names that share initials with their allegorical counterparts. Cute.), who were abandoned by their mother at birth and subsequently raised by their good Christian father. One sibling is a constant troublemaker, the other is a do-gooder, and both of them work to earn their father’s love. Oh, and there’s a girl for them to fight over as well.

First of all, the scale of this movie is enormous. The main cast isn’t all that large and the movie never leaves these two towns, yet the film is staged and directed in such a way that the sheer global scope of WWI is always readily apparent. This is a surprisingly ambitious presentation of a very deep story, dealing with such themes as forgiveness, redemption, xenophobia, love, revenge, the morality of war and war profiteering, the practicality of thinking about good and evil in black and white terms, and all of that isn’t even counting the biblical overtones. Even if the allegory wasn’t intentional, this would still be an amazing story, beautifully told.

Then there’s the cast. There are only ten credited actors in this film, and three of them — Lois Smith, Julie Harris, and Richard Davalos — are amazingly still alive and making movies to this day. Also among the cast is Burl Ives, and I confess that I did a double-take when I saw him on the screen. After all these years of seeing him as Sam the Snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, here I was finally seeing him in a live-action role. As a sheriff, no less!

A lot of the characters don’t get nearly enough screen time — the employees at Kate’s bar disappeared without a trace early on, and an American of German descent gets a storyline that ends strangely unresolved — but they’re all cast superbly. Raymond Massey does an amazing job as a father who tried his best and didn’t realize the tragedy he was heading for until it was too late. Jo Van Fleet only gets one scene of any real substance, but her performance in that one scene was all she needed to get an Oscar. Aron’s development as a character seemed a little abrupt, but Richard Davalos made his devolution into madness fascinating to watch. As for Julie Harris, she’s absolutely adorable in the role of Abra, and her chemistry with James Dean is phenomenal.

Yes, it all comes back to James Dean.

As the Cain of the movie, Dean’s role here treads a lot of ground that looked familiar from Rebel Without a Cause. Here’s a guy who starts out as a directionless youth, always starting trouble for reasons that he can’t articulate, until he starts making an effort at cleaning up his act. The difference here, of course, is that he throws all that development away during the third act, once and for all learning about the consequences of his actions in the most tragic way possible. It’s a great performance, though it hinges on the “bad boy with a soft side” persona that he used in Rebel. Since this role could only ever be played by a young man of Dean’s age, I wonder how Dean might have parlayed that image into a developing and maturing career, if he hadn’t died so young.

Oh, and here’s a fun fact: Of the three movies that starred Dean, this was the only one released within his lifetime.

I greatly enjoyed watching East of Eden. The performances are all extraordinary, the scale is epic, the screenplay is wonderfully deep, the themes and biblical connections are all beautifully expressed, and the visuals are wonderful to look at. This is an ideal introduction to the brief filmography of James Dean, and a cinematic masterpiece in its own right. Seek this film out.