Nicholas Ray

  • Nicholas Ray – We Can’t Go Home Again (1973)

    1971-1980ExperimentalNicholas RayUSAVideo Art

    Quote:
    A decade after quitting Hollywood, legendary director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, In a Lonely Place) accepted a teaching contract at Harpur College in Binghamton, NY. There, with the intensive collaboration of his students, he began work on a project unlike anything he had done before, the making of which would consume his creative energies for the remainder of his life. Entitled We Can’t Go Home Again, that film is Ray’s enormously ambitious, profoundly personal, wildly experimental magnum opus – a collection of notes on Vietnam-era America, the generation gap and the filmmaking process itself, conceived in a dizzying kaleidoscope of split screens, superimpositions and other radical image manipulations that anticipate later trends in video art and digital effects.Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray – Hot Blood (1956)

    Nicholas Ray1951-1960DramaMusicalUSA

    Stephen Torino (Wilde), who is tricked by his brother Marco (Adler) into an arranged marriage with tempestuous Annie Caldash (Russell). Annie is willing to give the union a go, but Torino wants none of it.Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray & Guy Green – 55 Days at Peking (1963)

    1961-1970DramaNicholas RayUSAWar

    Synopsis:
    This historical epic dramatizes the Battle of Peking, a turning point of the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. When Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi (Flora Robson) orders the Boxers, a group of Chinese secret societies, to massacre foreigners within China, a group of ambassadors, their families and staff hole up in a diplomatic compound. Major Matt Lewis of the United States Marine Corps (Charlton Heston) leads the defense while romancing Russian baroness Natalie Ivanoff (Ava Gardner).Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray – Johnny Guitar (Widescreen) (1954)

    Drama1951-1960Nicholas RayUSAWestern

    Quote:
    Vienna has built a saloon outside of town, and she hopes to build her own town once the railroad is put through, but the townsfolk want her gone. When four men hold up a stagecoach and kill a man the town officials, led by Emma Small, come to the saloon to grab four of Vienna’s friends, the Dancin’ Kid and his men. Vienna stands strong against them, and is aided by the presence of an old acquaintance of hers, Johnny Guitar, who is not what he seems.Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray & Budd Schulberg – Wind Across the Everglades (1958)

    1951-1960AdventureBudd SchulbergClassicsNicholas RayUSA

    The co-drectorial attribution to producer Budd Schulberg is both miselading and unjustified. BP’s meddling “contribution” consisted of cutting and re editing a number of key sequences, beginning with the very opening. Thus Christopher Plummer’s train carraige shared with the array of befeathered floozies en route to Florida is weighed down by a banal voiceover making Ray’s subtle and amusing connection between the finery of the whores and the pillaging of native wildlife screaminlgy obvious, rather than visually graceful. Accordingn to Bernard Eisenschitz Ray was effectively locked out of the shoot for the final sequence – the film was shot largely in sequence- thus the closing scenes in the swamp were in fact directed by Bud Schulberg. Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray – Bitter Victory (1957)

    USA1951-1960ClassicsNicholas RayWar

    Synopsis:
    In North Africa during World War II, Major David Brand is assigned to lead a British commando raid into German-held Benghazi to retrieve whatever documents they can lay their hands on at the German headquarters. His number two will be Capt. Jimmy Leith who speaks Arabic fluently and knows Benghazi well. Brand also learns that his beautiful wife Jane and Leith were lovers before the war, creating tension between the two. Brand is untested in battle and freezes at a critical moment, losing the respect of his men. After the raid, the trek back is arduous and takes its toll on the men. It also results in only one of the two senior officers surviving.Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray – The True Story of Jesse James (1957)

    1951-1960ClassicsNicholas RayUSAWestern

    Synopsis:
    The last eighteen years in the life of Jesse James, showing his home life in Missouri, his experiences with Quantrill’s raiders, his career of banditry with his brother Frank and the Younger brothers, and his attempt to lead a peaceful life after the disastrous attempt to rob the bank at Northfield, Minn.Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray & Wim Wenders – Lightning Over Water [+ Extras] (1980)

    1971-1980ArthouseDocumentaryNicholas RaySwedenWim Wenders

    Lightning Over Water is a penetrating and touching film of the last days of cult American director Nicholas Ray, most well-known for Rebel Without a Cause.

    .”I knew that he wanted to work, to die working”, Wim Wenders says in the movie. And through his work with Wenders and the crew, Ray transformed his dying into an act of collaboration and a work of art.

    Dying slowly of terminal cancer, Ray chose not to institutionalize himself in a hospice and fade away in an old people’s home but stayed in his modest New York City loft, surrounded by his closest friends — a sharp and poignant contrast to the comparative luxury of his Hollywood years.Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray & Ida Lupino – On Dangerous Ground (1951)

    1951-1960Film NoirIda LupinoNicholas RayUSA

    Quote:
    A superb noir thriller with a difference. Ray’s second film with producer John Houseman (the first being They Live By Night) starts off in the sinister urban jungle, with Ryan’s cop increasingly brutalised by the ‘garbage’ he is forced to deal with. Finally, his methods become so violent that he is sent to cool off in snowy upstate New York, where his search for a sex killer brings him into contact with Lupino’s blind woman and her mentally retarded brother (Williams). It’s a film about the violence within us all, about the effects of environment and family upon character (Lupino, peaceful and a healing force, even has a tree in her living room), and about the spiritual redemption of a fallen man.Read More »

Back to top button