Nicholas Ray's Other Western

Run for Cover (1954) Finally Arrives on Blu-ray

by Tony Dayoub

Following on the heels of Nicholas Ray's notable Western Johnny Guitar (1954) and released just before his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Ray's other Western, Run for Cover, fits rather nicely between the two from a historical perspective, refining some of the tangential themes of Johnny Guitar (including the growing influence of McCarthyism) while also serving as a transition to the "troubled youth" subject matter explored in Rebel.

A Blu-ray in Your Bonnet

An Easter parade of religious-themed movies on disc

by Tony Dayoub

The upswing in catalogue titles (meaning everything that is not a new theatrical release) finally making it onto Blu-ray may be one indicator of the improving economy. While Warner Home Video has been the least reluctant to wade into these less commercial waters, most of the other labels have heretofore neglected a considerable backlog of older, but significant, films. Late [in 2010], Paramount Home Entertainment, the stingiest of the labels in this regard, finally released a restored version of 1951’s The African Queen, which had been missing on home video since the days of VHS tapes (!). This was a sure sign that any of the oft-quoted “consumer obstacles” frequently blamed for such notable absences had become less important.

Movie Review: Party Girl (1958)

by Tony Dayoub

Halfway through Nicholas Ray's Party Girl, the film's big baddie, prohibition-era Chicago wiseguy Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb), holds a banquet honoring one of his henchmen. Angelo is the type of street tough you'd expect to find in this opulent MGM picture, one which bears little resemblance to the kind of real-life thug he's meant to represent. Up until this moment in the film, the eccentric Angelo (who we're introduced to at a party he throws for himself after actress Jean Harlow, unknowing object of his affections, gets married) has talked the talk—all "youses" and "dat guys"—but hasn't really come across as very threatening. Even his crippled lawyer, the lame Tommy Farrell (Robert Taylor), is unafraid to openly admit he'll defend the creep, but he won't sit to eat with him because Angelo is a "slob." So Party Girl finally gets a bit of a charge in this banquet scene, where Angelo is awarding an employee with a trophy shaped like a miniature pool cue, before his cadence and demeanor begin to turn from complimentary to seethingly resentful. Anyone who's seen Brian De Palma's The Untouchables will figure out what happens next, for this scene surely inspired it—Angelo begins beating his flunky with the pool cue until the poor sap lays bleeding in front of his horrified confreres.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon Postscript

by Tony Dayoub

Happy Friday. You'll notice I put up a poll on the sidebar, in which I ask readers to pick no more than 3 of their favorite Nicholas Ray movies. Unscientific, I know, but it's just for fun. I was so busy during the actual past 4 days, the poll idea didn't occur to me. So I'll leave this up for a week and see what develops. Feel free to discuss in this post's comment thread.

Someone suggested it would be great if they were all in one post, so after the jump, I have gathered all the links submitted to me during the blogathon, plus a few I found on my own. Enjoy!

Born to Be Bad (1950)

by Farran Smith Nehme (aka The Self-Styled Siren)

The Siren has been wondering what it would have been like to kiss Nicholas Ray in 1950.

From this you should not deduce that the Siren has a crush on the man. She likes her sex symbols on the louche side, but not quite that louche. Still, as she watched Robert Ryan lay one on Joan Fontaine for the sixth or seventh time in Born to Be Bad, the Siren found the thought crowding out all attempts at more formal analysis. Back goes Fontaine’s head, way back, so far back Ryan could undoubtedly have told us whether she still had her wisdom teeth. Up go Fontaine’s arms as Ryan embraces some part of her that the camera is tactfully cutting off. Down comes Ryan’s mouth on hers, until you can see that he doesn’t part his hair. Just before the Siren started in on her Ray-kissing reverie, she was reminded of the morning that she was watching a backyard bird-feeder and saw a hawk close its talons on a chickadee, then fly off to have its own breakfast elsewhere...

CONTINUE READING AT SELF-STYLED SIREN

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 4

by Tony Dayoub

Wow, I couldn't have timed it better if I tried. On this final day I received a bunch of first-time contributions from some of my favorite bloggers. These are the bloggers that I read and learn a lot from. So I highly recommend perusing through all of today's submissions.

In Re: Nicholas Ray

by Richard Brody

The first thing to say about the legacy of Nicholas Ray—the subject of an article by Patricia Cohen in today’s Times—is that, even in the absence on home video of some of his crucial movies, including “Johnny Guitar” and “The Lusty Men,” those that are around, such as “Bigger Than Life,” “In a Lonely Place,” “Bitter Victory,” “They Live by Night,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” and “Party Girl,” should suffice to assure that the legacy is recognized as one of the key artistic achievements in the history of cinema. The performances alone—James Dean’s in “Rebel,” Humphrey Bogart’s in “In a Lonely Place,” and, above all, Sterling Hayden’s turn in “Johnny Guitar” (perhaps the single coolest performance in all Hollywood history, the closest thing in movies to what Miles Davis was doing in jazz at exactly that moment) prove Ray to have been a director of a uniquely vulnerable and sensitive artistic temperament...

CONTINUE READING AT THE NEW YORKER'S BLOG, THE FRONT ROW

Richard T. Jameson on Bigger Than Life

This entry is a bit unusual. Richard T. Jameson is a personal hero of mine. He was editor of what, in my opinion, is still the best run of Film Comment (1990-2000). He now writes for outlets like MSN Movies, Parallax View, and the Queen Anne and Magnolia News, which hosts his online movie magaine, Straight Shooting. We correspond occasionally, and he submitted a write-up on Bigger Than Life which I can't post any part of here because it was done as work-for-hire. But I can link to it, and it is worth a read.

Thank you, Richard.

READ AT AMAZON.COM

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Bigger Than Life (1956) and Its Influence on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

by Tony Dayoub

In his films, Nicholas Ray often contemplates the psychodynamic turbulence hidden behind facades of normalcy. Bigger Than Life, with its focus on the degradation of patriarch Ed Avery (James Mason) speaks to the repression which plagues the seemingly typical fifties nuclear family. In this way the movie looks forward to those of another director, David Lynch. Though Lynch has explored similar themes throughout his work, most notably in Blue Velvet (1986), it is in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me where Bigger Than Life's influence is most strongly felt.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 3

by Tony Dayoub

Welcome to Day 3 of the Nicholas Ray Blogathon. We wrap up tomorrow, so today will be the last day I'll be accepting submissions (unless we've pre-arranged something). So keep them coming, and let all your friends know about the wonderful posts going up here from all corners of the web.

Here's what I've got today:

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Hot Blood (1956)

by Tony Dayoub

Those who've wished Nicholas Ray would turn his eye for color towards that most saturated of genres, the musical, can see the result in Hot Blood. And it's... not that great. Coming off the success of Rebel Without a Cause doubtless allowed the often embattled director to pursue his creative whims unopposed. And in this case, he turned to a project on the Romani—more popularly referred to by the derogatory term of Gypsies—long enough in development that the majority of the research was done by Ray's first wife, Jean Evans, whom he had divorced in 1940. Hot Blood began life as the sort of ethnography that one might be able to place next to other works of his like 1952's The Lusty Men (about rodeo riders) or 1961's The Savage Innocents (the Inuits). Except that Ray's affinity for folk music and his burgeoning foray into color cinematography likely got in the way and muddled this romance up. "Good" and "bad" are relative, though. For Jane Russell, this was probably a "good" picture. For Cornel Wilde, this was probably a not-so-"good" movie. And for Ray, with plenty of flawed features to be found in his filmography, this was still most definitely a "bad" one. And to think, it's sandwiched right between two of his best motion pictures, Rebel and Bigger Than Life. Still, its influence can obviously be found in at least two ethnic musicals, West Side Story (1961) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). I'd even argue that its presence is felt in a scene from the James Bond series, the lurid gypsy catfight setpiece in From Russia With Love (1963) (featuring a young Martine Beswick).

Since I've said about all I have to say on Hot Blood, let's look at its pretty screen captures, after the jump...

Interview with Author Patrick McGilligan

by John Greco

An excerpt:

...In 1951, Ray was divorcing Gloria Grahame, his second wife. His career seemed to be spiraling downward, becoming a Mr. Fix-It for Howard Hughes, working on films like "Jet Pilot," "Macao," "His Kind of Woman" and "The Racket." The one personal film that did come out of this period was "The Lusty Men," a work thematically right for Ray, with Robert Mitchum as an itinerant sensitive loser who comes to learn, you can’t go home again.

AT THE END OF HIS RKO CONTRACT RAY WAS ABLE TO TURN "THE LUSTY MEN" INTO ANOTHER PERSONAL STATEMENT. HE CONNECTED WITH THE MATERIAL IN A WAY THAT WASN’T TRUE OF "BORN TO BE BAD," "A WOMAN’S SECRET" OR "FLYING LEATHERNECKS." HE BENEFITED FROM THE INPUT OF PRODUCER JERRY WALD, WHO HAD CREATED THE IDEA FOR THE FILM. EVEN THOUGH RAY AND WALD HAD AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP, RAY HAD MORE CREATIVE LEEWAY THAN USUAL. THE DIRECTOR ALSO ESTABLISHED A SPECIAL CLOSENESS WITH ROBERT MITCHUM. RAY NEEDED TO BOND WITH HIS USUALLY MALE STARS, AND WHENEVER HE HAD WHAT I CALL IN THE BOOK A 'TWO-MAN CLUB' (RAY AND BOGART, OR MITCHUM, OR JAMES DEAN, OR JAMES MASON TO AN EXTENT) THE FILM WAS ELEVATED.

There was plenty of innovative use of the camera by Ray in this film. You write about how he strapped a 16mm camera on to a bronco rider giving us a view of what it’s like to ride a wild horse. There are plenty of other instances of his unique use of the camera which I find to be one of his most poetic.

THE FILM HAD A POETIC CAMERAMAN, REMEMBER, IN LEE GARMES, AND RAY WAS ALWAYS SHREWD ABOUT PICKING HIS CAMERAMEN. RAY WAS FEARLESS IN TERMS OF HIS VISUAL DESIGN AND BORED BY THE STANDARD ESTABLISHING SHOT, TWO-SHOT, CLOSE-UP KIND OF COVERAGE. THERE ARE MANY EXAMPLES – THE HELICOPTER SHOTS AT THE BEGINNING OF "THEY LIVE BY NIGHT," THE CAMERA STRAPPED ON BRONCS IN "THE LUSTY MEN," THE TILTED SHOTS AND EXTREME ANGLES OF "REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE." WHEN RAY IDENTIFIED WITH THE MATERIAL, HIS VISION WAS PARTICULARLY INTENSE AND YOU SEE THIS IN CODED COLOR SCHEMES AS WELL AS UNUSUAL CAMERAWORK...

CONTINUE READING AT TWENTY FOUR FRAMES

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

by Tony Dayoub

Rebel Without a Cause is one film of which so much has been written I hardly have anything new to contribute. Whether it's the legendary tales that have sprung up around the cult of its star, James Dean, the mysterious curse (proposed by some) which took its three leads' lives prematurely or the film's embrace of the explosive Method style of acting you can find a multitude of essays which pick the film apart from any number of perspectives. Continuing my look at the Nicholas Ray's work, I'd like to look at the director's collaborative relationship with Dean.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Knock on Any Door (1949) and Run for Cover (1955)

by Tony Dayoub

Two of the harder to find films to watch in Nicholas Ray's oeuvre both star future svengali to statuesque blonde starlets, John Derek (The Ten Commandments): the social conscience/proto-youth film Knock on Any Door, and the Western Run for Cover (now easy to view on Netflix streaming, albeit in the wrong aspect ratio). Knock on Any Door is both a precursor to Rebel Without a Cause and its opposite number. Its misguided juveniles are from the bad part of town and far enough down the road of delinquency as to be considered hopeless. Run for Cover is the last of Ray's Western trilogy which began with The Lusty Men (1952). (Ray's The True Story of Jesse James would come later and is quite different from his previous oaters). But as different as each sounds from the other, the fact that the two are tied together by Derek's casting is just one indication of how close Knock on Any Door and Run for Cover are thematically.

Nicholas Ray and the Nifty Fifties

by Richard Brody

I was talking yesterday about the glories that emerged, almost daily, from Hollywood in the nineteen-fifties (which made that decade, for that matter, a richer source of cinematic treasure than the vaunted post-“Bonnie and Clyde” “New Hollywood” of the late sixties and seventies). Well, let’s not bury the lede: tonight, our friends at AltScreen remind us, at 7 and 9:30, Clearview Chelsea will show one of that era’s masterworks, Nicholas Ray’s “Johnny Guitar,” from 1954—a Western that’s pulled to the breaking point on vectors of love, sex, power, and violence, and is one of the most grievous of DVD absences...

CONTINUE READING AT THE NEW YORKER'S BLOG, THE FRONT ROW

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Johnny Guitar (1954)

by Tony Dayoub

To say that Johnny Guitar is simply a Western is to ignore its quite substantial and not overly implicit meaning. Indeed much of what is going on in Nicholas Ray's film is happening underneath its shallow—and by this, I don't mean banal—surface. But to read Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of May 28, 1954, one would expect this film to be just another horse opera, and a rather weak one at that.

...Joan Crawford plays essentially the role that Van Heflin played in Shane...The only big difference in the character, as plainly rewritten for her, is that now it falls in love with the ex-gunfighter, whom Sterling Hayden here plays.

But this condescension to Miss Crawford and her technically recognized sex does nothing more for the picture than give it some academic aspects of romance. No more femininity comes from her than from the rugged Mr. Heflin in Shane. For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades.

Ouch, I think I cut myself with one of Crowther's metaphorical shavers.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 2

by Tony Dayoub

Well, so far the Nicholas Ray Blogathon is quite a success. Lots of readers are stopping by and clicking on the links to read each submission. Many writers I admire are contributing. And I'm reading plenty of interesting work from new writers I hadn't been familiar with (though I'm already behind so please bear with me).

Those looking to contribute, feel free to keep sending links to your work in. No surprise here, I've got a lot of gaps for some of Ray's later work, post-Bigger Than Life.

I know I promised some additional links that had not been personally submitted to me, but this is more exhausting than it looks. Look for those in a later post near the end of the Blogathon.

Here's what I've got today:

Woman Error

by David Cairns

...I leapt at the chance to view and write about the only Ray film I’d never watched at all, the reputedly minor opus known as A WOMAN’S SECRET.

I went in expecting little — programmers like KNOCK ON ANY DOOR, RUN FOR COVER and BORN TO BE BAD are perfectly enjoyable, but don’t let Ray flex his cinematic muscles much — as with the very different Von Sternberg, for whom Ray subbed on MACAO, he didn’t seem to commit fully to films that didn’t excite him. But I enjoyed this one: the titular SECRET is ambiguous, the tone uncertain, the structure wobbly, but all that adds a kind of intrigue and unpredictability to a first viewing. I’d never call this a major film, but it’s pleasingly flaky, and it doesn’t give up its mysteries...

CONTINUE READING AT SHADOWPLAY

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Flying Leathernecks (1951)

by Tony Dayoub

Another aviation-centered picture from billionaire Howard Hughes, Flying Leathernecks is also an uncharacteristic feature from director Nicholas Ray. Set during World War II's Battle of Guadalcanal, it essentially boils down to a two-hander pitting the stalwart John Wayne (Sands of Iwo Jima) against the pugnacious Robert Ryan (On Dangerous Ground). Given its use of an incredible amount of actual war footage, I'm assuming the story was built around the footage used (especially with such unique images as a pilot bailing out of a downed aircraft). So it's funny to think of a left-leaning maverick like Ray having to conform to all of these elements—a notoriously demanding eccentric as his studio chief, an equally iconic star who no doubt had demands of his own (both right-wingers) and the limitations demanded by such specific footage—in order to complete the war movie.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: On Dangerous Ground (1952)

by Tony Dayoub

Of all of Nicholas Ray's films, On Dangerous Ground may be the most difficult one for me to objectively get a handle on. It's my favorite of his films because of the duality of Robert Ryan's performance as Jim Wilson, a cop at wit's end with regard to the infectious nature of the corruption and violence he faces on the streets every day. On one hand, a virtuous true believer in the law, and on the other, an enforcer so efficient he will flout the rules to get his man, the short-tempered Wilson can be seen as a natural extension of Bogart's Dix Steele at the end of Ray's last film, In a Lonely Place (though released afterwards, Ground was filmed before Flying Leathernecks). In Ground, Wilson begins at the point where we left Steele in the previous film: an outsider aware of his capacity for violence, unable or unwilling to control his behavior, and resigned to the fact that he should stay away from the rest of polite society. However, reminders like an errant comment from a flirtatious counter-girl at the drugstore, scoffing at the idea of going out with a cop, still sting Wilson.