Nicholas Ray

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matrixschmatrix
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm

Re: Nicholas Ray

#76 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Jun 17, 2010 1:12 pm

Lemmy Caution wrote:NYTimes article on Ray.
an unfinished experimental movie, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” to which Ray devoted the last years of his life.
...
Now a new finished print of the film is being prepared by Ray’s widow, Susan, for a premiere at the Venice International Film Festival next year to celebrate the centenary of her husband’s birth.
Damn, that's exciting!

I don't know much about Susan Ray- should we be worried that this is exploitation, or confident she was acting with respect for his memory?

montgomery
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2005 6:02 pm
Location: Brooklyn, NY

Re: Nicholas Ray

#77 Post by montgomery » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:13 pm

I think we should just assume that the bitch will exploit her wonderful, perfect, genius dead husband, like all women do.

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matrixschmatrix
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm

Re: Nicholas Ray

#78 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:25 pm

montgomery wrote:I think we should just assume that the bitch will exploit her wonderful, perfect, genius dead husband, like all women do.
Uh... it's more that I get sort of wary when someone else finishes a dead person's work? Not real clear on where the misogyny is there.

edit: I should clarify, I'm not worried because she's a woman, or because of some idea that she was a Great Man's wife and therefore a leech or whatever, that would be stupid. Just wary after the history of sort of weird rumors about rights issues with family estates like Chaplin and Welles, and wondering if anyone knew if there was anything like that here.

montgomery
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2005 6:02 pm
Location: Brooklyn, NY

Re: Nicholas Ray

#79 Post by montgomery » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:44 pm

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).

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Tom Amolad
Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:30 pm
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Re: Nicholas Ray

#80 Post by Tom Amolad » Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:06 pm

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

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matrixschmatrix
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm

Re: Nicholas Ray

#81 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:13 pm

montgomery wrote: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!

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Peacock
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:47 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: Nicholas Ray

#82 Post by Peacock » Thu Jun 17, 2010 8:09 pm

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
Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2008 12:39 pm
Location: Lebanon, PA

Re: Nicholas Ray

#83 Post by HarryLong » Fri Jun 18, 2010 9:37 am

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.

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Cash Flagg
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:15 pm

Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#84 Post by Cash Flagg » Thu Dec 16, 2010 12:39 am

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

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Cold Bishop
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 9:45 pm
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#85 Post by Cold Bishop » Thu Dec 16, 2010 1:16 am

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

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Tom Amolad
Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:30 pm
Location: New York

Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#86 Post by Tom Amolad » Thu Dec 16, 2010 1:20 am

Cold Bishop wrote: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...

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Cold Bishop
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 9:45 pm
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#87 Post by Cold Bishop » Thu Dec 16, 2010 1:33 am

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.

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otis
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:43 am

Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#88 Post by otis » Sat Mar 19, 2011 12:30 pm

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

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Murdoch
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:59 pm
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#89 Post by Murdoch » Sat Mar 19, 2011 12:45 pm

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.

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domino harvey
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#90 Post by domino harvey » Sat Mar 19, 2011 12:51 pm

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

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perkizitore
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#91 Post by perkizitore » Sat Mar 19, 2011 1:07 pm


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Murdoch
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:59 pm
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#92 Post by Murdoch » Sat Mar 19, 2011 1:12 pm

domino harvey wrote: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.

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perkizitore
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#93 Post by perkizitore » Sat Mar 19, 2011 1:25 pm


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Murdoch
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:59 pm
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#94 Post by Murdoch » Sat Mar 19, 2011 1:36 pm

Wow, thanks!

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tojoed
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:47 am
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Re: Nicholas Ray on DVD

#95 Post by tojoed » Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:04 pm

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

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Cold Bishop
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 9:45 pm
Location: Portland, OR

Re: Nicholas Ray

#96 Post by Cold Bishop » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:01 pm

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,

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htshell
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 4:15 pm

Re: Nicholas Ray

#97 Post by htshell » Thu Aug 04, 2011 10:55 pm

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

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Fred Holywell
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:45 pm

Re: Nicholas Ray

#98 Post by Fred Holywell » Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:51 pm

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.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Nicholas Ray

#99 Post by knives » Tue Oct 25, 2011 11:04 pm

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.

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Yojimbo
Joined: Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:06 am
Location: Ireland

Re: Nicholas Ray

#100 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:49 am

knives wrote: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
domino harvey wrote: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!
Handsome Dan wrote: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
SpoilerShow
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
SpoilerShow
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'

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