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March 9 - March 16,2003 |
Outtakes
The cinema is Nicholas Ray
By Angela Baldassarre
Originally Published: 2003-02-09
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Rebel Without a Cause
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There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforward there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray."
Thus French New Wave founder Jean-Luc Godard immortalized the American filmmaker in his review of 1957's Bitter Victory.
According to Godard, Ray reinvented cinema with his unique visual sense and gift for attaining fluid motion on the screen. As a tribute to a man who lived and died as passionately as his art, Cinematheque Ontario is presenting The Cinema is Nicholas Ray from February 7 to March 11.
Born in Michigan, Ray studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright, and then drama with John Houseman for whom he directed several plays and propaganda movies during World War II. His first directorial effort was an adaptation of Edward Anderson's They Live by Night (Feb. 7), originally titled Thieves by Night, about the doomed love between emotionally scarred fugitives (Farley Granger, Cathy O'Donnell) from justice.
Other important Ray films include 1950's In a Lonely Place (February 13 & 15), about a screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart) suspected of murder and his bizarre relationship with an actress (Ray's wife, Gloria Grahame); 1954's Johnny Guitar (Feb. 8), a kinky Western starring Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden; the groundbreaking 1955 Rebel Without a Cause (Feb. 18 & 22), which sky-rocketed the career of James Dean as the alienated modern-day youth; and 1956's Bigger Than Life (Feb. 16 & 20), about a seemingly perfect teacher (James Mason) who slowly begins to turn into a monster.
Ray's last significant film was 1963's 55 Days at Peking (Mar. 8), with Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and David Niven, following which he found himself unable to get any projects off the ground. After lecturing on the university circuit, and increasingly fallen victim to drugs and alcohol, he was able to complete We Can't Go Home Again (Mar. 7) in 1973 with his Harpur College students. Ray would have a major role in Wim Wenders' The American Friend (Mar. 4), with whom he would make Lightning Over Water (Mar.7), a documentary about his final days before succumbing to cancer in 1979.
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