Nicholas Ray

[Tom Amolad]

And it's not exactly the sort of project that's going to make her rich...

[matrixschmatrix]

Sorry, my response was needlessly aggressive, but I do think the premise of your question was vaguely misogynistic, or at least cynical. I would just assume that she has the best of intentions; it was her husband after all. And though you may not know much about her, she seems sincere and intelligent in the article - not the Anna Nicole Smith type. Of course, who the hell really knows? Whether the finished product is great or horrible, and whether it's her fault or not, we can never really know - but there's no reason to assume, based on the article, that she's exploiting him. (I've seen her interviewed on Criterion discs, and she's also in Lightning Over Water, and she does not seem to be an evil, manipulative spouse. I don't know, maybe she hated his guts, but I won't assume anything bad unless and until there's a reason).

I think 'cynical' is the word- the only thing I've seen of her outside that article is the interview on Bigger than Life, and she came off as intelligent and engaged in Ray's work, but this is exciting enough that I wanted to temper my enthusiasm.

Mostly, I was just wondering if she had a track record in any particular direction, but 'nothing bad' is good enough for me!

[Peacock]

She edited I was Interrupted : Nicholas Ray on Making Movies - a collection of interviews, writings and lectures by Ray. I don't think she's being exploitative at all.

[HarryLong]

A friend of mine scraped by between real jobs by doing apartment & office cleaning for a temp agency. One of the apartments he was assigned to was Susan Ray's. The impression he conveyed to me was tht she was totally devoted to the memory/career of her late husband. Yeah, she might see some bucks from this, but not exactly a lot of them (Ray or no Ray, it's still a documentary). I don't think we have a Beatrice Welles or Monroe Estate situation here.

[Cash Flagg]

According to Hi-Def Release Lists, King of Kings will be coming to Blu-ray on March 29th.

[Cold Bishop]

Fantastic! An OAR Wind Across the Everglades! This leaves Run for Cover as the only Ray still unavailable in a decent version.

[Tom Amolad]

Fantastic! An OAR Wind Across the Everglades! This leaves Run for Cover as the only Ray still unavailable in a decent version.

Did I miss the release of The Lusty Men? I remember when it was announced that a DVD was forthcoming in France (I think), but I haven't heard anything since.

Then there's We Can't Go Home Again...

[Cold Bishop]

Good quality bootlegs (from vhs and tv) have existed for ages, and TCM seems to play it every three months or so, so I've never gone without it. Run for Cover, on the other hand, has always looked terrible. And it's one of his most underrated, long due for rediscovery.

[otis]

Dvdclassik has details of the Wild Side release of Wind from the Everglades:

Wild Side s'apprête à sortir La Forêt interdite (Wind across the Everglades) dans sa collection 'Classic Confidential'. Le DVD (inédit et en exclusivité mondiale) sera accompagné du livre, Le Paradis perdu. Un ouvrage inédit signé Patrick Brion.

Caractéristiques techniques du DVD :
- Format Image : Master restauré – Couleur – 1.33, 4/3
- Format son : Anglais & Français Mono - Sous-titres : Français
- Durée : 1h29

Suppléments du DVD :
- Entretien avec Bertrand Tavernier et Bernard Eisenschitz (26‘)
- Galerie de photos rares

Contenu du livre :
- 80 pages
- Photos exclusives et documents d’archives rares

Prix annoncé de l'édition livre + DVD : 29,99 Euros

Date de sortie : 8 juin 2011

[Murdoch]

Brilliant news, ever since reading what Rosenbaum said about it in his Apocalypse Now review I've wanted to see it but I don't think there's a release anywhere.

[domino harvey]

There's a Spanish release, david hare gave it good marks

[perkizitore]

Pre-order up on Amazon

[Murdoch]

There's a Spanish release, david hare gave it good marks

Ah, so there is. Though it seems pretty difficult to come by, I could only find it on the UK Amazon marketplace going for £35.

[perkizitore]

There you go

[Murdoch]

Wow, thanks!

[tojoed]

Knock On Any Door is being released by Sony (Germany) on DVD.

[Cold Bishop]

An interesting bit of news from TCM's October 25th schedule

11:00 PM
We Can't Go Home Again (1976)
Dir: Nicholas Ray
BW-0 mins,

1:00 AM
Making of We Can't Go Home Again (2011)
BW-0 mins,

[htshell]

We Can't Go Home Again is set to play as part of the New York Film Festival in October.

[Fred Holywell]

Re "King of Kings": Loved the shot with the camera attached to the crucifix!

So did William Wyler when he did the same thing two years earlier in "Ben-Hur". Don't know if Ray cribbed it himself, or somebody else (Philip Yordan? Sam Bronstein?) stuck it into "K of K". At least it works, which is more than you can say for most of the crucifixion sequence. Ray or someone (you never knew on a Bronstein pic) dropped the ball big time when it came to effectively dramatizing Christ's journey to Calvary, imo. Just compare it to essentially the same sequence in "B-H", and you'll see what I mean.

[knives]

Funny this gets brought back when TCM is doing their Ray retrospective. Tonight seems to be interesting backstory to failures night with the tedious The True Story of Jesse James and now Wind Across the Everglades. The later actually has a lot going for it even if it's not a success by any measure. The use of colour is the only sensible thing here.

Just a second heads up, We Can't Go Home Again just started on TCM.

[Yojimbo]

Funny this gets brought back when TCM is doing their Ray retrospective. Tonight seems to be interesting backstory to failures night with the tedious The True Story of Jesse James and now Wind Across the Everglades. The later actually has a lot going for it even if it's not a success by any measure. The use of colour is the only sensible thing here.

I've had The True Story of Jesse James for a year or two now and have always found some excuse or other not to watch it; I guess you've just provided another one

So I finished my biblical marathon with King of Kings today and I thought it had its share of interesting choices. I liked how Ray handled the Salome subplot, playing up the sexual undertones of Wilde's play even if Hollywood would never have let the audience see her take it to its conclusion by laying a wet one on Robert Ryan's decapitated head! The film has a skeptic's focus, which generally works, but I did resent the way Ray set up the Last Supper as a proto-Manson Family cult meeting. Jeffrey Hunter is mostly creepy as Jesus but Rip Torn is pretty much the perfect Judas. Loved the shot with the camera attached to the crucifix!

Thats one Ray DVD thats long overdue a first viewing; to a certain extent I've been put off by the Jeffrey Hunter 'I Was A Teenage Jesus' epithets but Rip Torn is never less than interesting so I'll put it on my shorter finger!

DVR'd Party Girl from TCM the other night and finally caught up with it yesterday. It's not quite Johnny Guitar or anything, but it had enough of the usual Ray virtues for a fun night in. Stuff like Guys and Dolls and Some Like It Hot must have instilled some expectation in me that '30s gangsters in '50s movies are all buffoonish, lunkheaded comic relief, because I was actually surprised at how violent and scary Lee J. Cobb and John Ireland & co. were here, particularly

Spoiler

all that business with the acid, as well as the scene of Cobb beating the guy with the silver pool cue, which seems to have inspired some similar business in '87 Untouchables).

Biggest shock of the movie comes early on, though, when

Spoiler

Cyd Charisse discovers her roommate's body in the bloody tub! I actually jumped at this a bit; I can only imagine how this played on a giant screen to a 1958 audience unaccustomed to extremes in cinematic gruesomeness.

It's kind of a violent, shocking movie in general, with more "BOO!"s than I'm used to from films of this era. It must have seemed to be in very bad taste at the time.

Charisse's two dance numbers were swell, though they felt sort of shoehorned in - "Cyd Charisse is here, I guess we may as well let her dance for a scene or two." They certainly weren't important to the story in and of themselves, and I didn't get the sense that they expressed anything about the character or made any kind of hay about the movie's theme or anything. But, eh, as obligatory scenes go, not bad.

It's general stylistic stuff that seems to have stuck with me more than the plot, though. It was fun to see the usual sprawling use of the wide format; even for a movie with so many interior scenes of just two people talking, Ray found inventive ways to move the actors around the frame. Charisse's outrageously red costumes were great as well (especially near the end when she was on the train "to the coast", where you'd think she wouldn't want to be noticed!). I love the '50s color palette, and it seems like Ray did as well; again, I can only imagine what this looked like when first projected from a new print in a large format.

I may pick up the Warner Archives disc of this if it's not a total disaster. Is it at least a measurable improvement over the VHS copies that are likely floating around in junk shops across the US?

You should check out Kihachi Okamoto's 'Boss Of The Underworld' which might have been at least partly inspired by 'Party Girl', and I might even prefer it to the Ray film: its wonderful looking, wonderfully paced, - at times it hurtles along, by dint of a succession of brief scenes,- and, to quote Cilla Black 'is a lorra, lorra fun'

[knives]

I'm having a tough time deciding if We Can't go Home Again is one of his best or worst, because this movie goes to such an extreme that it sure can't be middle of the road. Anyone else catch it? It's like if Altman and Roeg directed Wicked, Wicked.

[SamLowry]

I'm having a tough time deciding if We Can't go Home Again is one of his best or worst, because this movie goes to such an extreme that it sure can't be middle of the road. Anyone else catch it? It's like if Altman and Roeg directed Wicked, Wicked.

I was just searching to see what films were playing in town (SF) as I have today off & noticed that this will be playing in a double feature with "Don't Expect Too Much" in January.

[JonasEB]

Re "King of Kings": Loved the shot with the camera attached to the crucifix!

So did William Wyler when he did the same thing two years earlier in "Ben-Hur". Don't know if Ray cribbed it himself, or somebody else (Philip Yordan? Sam Bronstein?) stuck it into "K of K".

That's not true. The King of Kings shot, later used in The Last Temptation of Christ, was the original, the Ben-Hur crucifixion is entirely different. In Ben-Hur, the camera is only behind the cross as it is being raised, not attached to it as it is in King of Kings.

As to the quality of the respective crucifixion scenes, I didn't have a problem with either. what I love about King of Kings is that the crucifixion, for once, seems less significant to the subject than other significant moments in the life of Jesus. The sermon on the mount is given the greater position in the film.

[Fred Holywell]

Re "King of Kings": Loved the shot with the camera attached to the crucifix!

So did William Wyler when he did the same thing two years earlier in "Ben-Hur". Don't know if Ray cribbed it himself, or somebody else (Philip Yordan? Sam Bronstein?) stuck it into "K of K".

That's not true. The King of Kings shot, later used in The Last Temptation of Christ, was the original, the Ben-Hur crucifixion is entirely different. In Ben-Hur, the camera is only behind the cross as it is being raised, not attached to it as it is in King of Kings.

As to the quality of the respective crucifixion scenes, I didn't have a problem with either. what I love about King of Kings is that the crucifixion, for once, seems less significant to the subject than other significant moments in the life of Jesus. The sermon on the mount is given the greater position in the film.

Well, maybe Wyler's camera wasn't attached to the cross, but the two shots are so similar (they both move with the cross as it's set in place) that Ray's, at least, recalls Wyler's. For anyone who'd seen "Ben-Hur", which by 1961 was just about everybody, the similarities were apparent... maybe not so much today, with the passage of time, and the fact that most people have no idea whether "Ben-Hur" was made before "King of Kings".

I'm not so sure that the crucifixion scene should seem less significant than other moments in Christ's life, but that's me. I do think Wyler's crucifixion scene works better than Ray's because, for one thing, it's more carefully and artfully rendered. The attention to performance, mood, and atmosphere are stronger in Wyler, and the scene benefits from that. And I love "King of Kings", sometimes more than I love "Ben-Hur". I just wish "K of K" were a better movie than it is.