In A Lonely Place (the Nicholas Ray-directed film not the Joy Division song)

I wasn't totally enraptured with this movie the first time around, Kevin, so I can't wait to watch it again now.

this is a very good movie, but perhaps the autobiographical elements have lent it a suggestion of centrality that it doesn't completely earn?

i must say, rebel w/o a cause is still my favorite nick ray movie, after only they live by night, which is powerful and unassailable i think.

Johnny Guitar is my fave, but I haven't seen They Live By Night or Bigger Than Life yet. < / shame >

i forget if i've seen TLbN! i know i haven't seen IaLP.

film forum audiences laugh at everything btw

Kevin OTM. I told Morbs this over AIM last Tuesday (he was going to watch it) and he nearly plotzed. The supporting cast, even Dixon, seem conceived in B-movie terms, and with the substandard lighting and indifferent staging the whole thing looks undercooked if you're in the wrong mood.

it's a fine line; some amount of amusement as a result of the archaic genre style is to be expected, but it's when it lapses into lol cellphones used to be massive that it gets distracting

Not everybody who goes to the FF is a snickerer but yes, there are always there. But don't know what can be done about them. One time I got annoyed them and spoke up and then realized I was defending Will Hays.

The supporting cast, even Dixon, seem conceived in B-movie terms

the substandard lighting and indifferent staging the whole thing looks undercooked if you're in the wrong mood.

i have a funny story about a very well-known film professor yelling at members of audience who were howling with derisive glee at a 1950s melodrama. at the end of the screening one such member yelled back, "i have a right to laugh at whatever i want!" the professor replied, "i don't think you do."

They should all be impaled on the Hadley Family derrick.

Bogart's tenderness/madness is just so heartbreaking in this. Also, apparently Ray slept on the set cuz he and Grahame were busting up during production.

I was also much more touched by seeing On Dangerous Ground last week than previously -- Robert Ryan is like a younger, more inarticulate variation on Bogie's man-brute. And Party Girl has Robert Taylor better than I've ever seen him, and Cyd Charisse with more gravity, 3 dance numbers and all. (There's also Lee J Cobb beating a guy's head in with a mini-pool cue, swiped straightaway by Mamet and De Palma for The Untouchables.)

so sad i was not in NYC for the retro.

on dangerous ground is startlingly moving

i prefer the sequel

http://a8.vietbao.vn/images/vn855/giai-tri/55202819-thaodtOn-Deadly-Ground-Posters.jpg

u kids make this world lousy

:D

the remake was alright

http://www.sofacinema.co.uk/guardian/images/products/2/24262-large.jpg/

http://www.sofacinema.co.uk/guardian/images/products/2/24262-large.jpg

imagine what nicholas ray could hve done with ice cube and elizabeth hurley if they'd been around in his day

our beautiful thread

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Love this, and They Live By Night. Rebel Without A Cause and On Dangerous Ground are really strong too. The only Nick Ray that has left me cold so far is Knock On Any Door, where Ray's social conscience got way overbearing (also charismaless lead, and Bogart playing a milquetoast.)

I'm sort of scared to see Bigger Than Life and The Lusty Men (wotta title, Dixon Steele should've been in this) because they look too perfect on paper.

Don't worry, they both live up to their billing, especially Bigger Than Life.

I was born when I logged on, I died when I logged out, I lived a few weeks while I posted.

amazing
i totally missed the later grandiose ray pics later on in the season. the lead out of they live by night was talking after the screening about catching one of his later films, made in china with some enormous ensemble cast, and not being able to follow it. seeing his early stuff working in pretty tight parameters was nice

Oh yeah that 55 Days At Peking movie! Ava Gardner, David Niven, Charlton Heston! I have a soft spot for Hollywood's big decadent epics phase (loved The Fall Of The Roman Empire, wouldn't mind seeing that.

I was born when I logged on, I died when I logged out, I lived a few weeks while I posted.

amazing

In A Lonely Place (the Nicholas Ray-directed film not the Joy Division song)

the lead out of they live by night was talking after the screening about catching one of his later films, made in china with some enormous ensemble cast, and not being able to follow it. seeing his early stuff working in pretty tight parameters was nice

55 Days at Peking was really a producer's film, it was sold with just a premise and a star, Charlton Heston, but no story or script. Ray was more of a hired hand and at that point was not in good shape- he may have had the monkey on his back, Ava Gardner wore him out with her own dipsomaniac diva behavior- so much so that he ended up suffering a heart attack and being taken off the picture. All of which I just learned by looking at my copy of Lee Server's Ava Gardner bio Love Is Nothing, which also tells an amazing story of how she got the part in the first place, which I won't put here. I highly recommend any book with Lee Server's name on the cover, especially his Robert Mitchum bio called Baby, I Don't Care and the source book The Big Book Of Noir that he co-edited.

Oh, Lee Server is the fucking man. That Mitchum bio is compulsively readable even if you didn't care about the dude (I do, obv.) I've been tracking some of Server's books down, he wrote a really interesting take on asian genre cinema that works as a good time capsule now (speculation on whether annexation will destroy the Hong Kong film industry, Korean described in pre-boom terms) and is laudable for giving time to a lot of the less well known countries (Taiwan, Philippines.)

Bitter Victory has one of Richard Burton's best performances and is unremittingly bleak.

Love this thread and the film in question, obv.

So much else that I haven't seen tho'.

It's a very good film. Everything else I've seen by Ray seems to have dated far less well. Is this just me?

What's "dated"? I think Johnny Guitar is timeless, ditto Bitter Victory.

The acting. I'm thinking of "They Live By night" and "On Dangerous Ground". It's been years since I've seen them though.

And call me a reactionary philistine, but Johnny Guitar has always struck me as laughably bad.

You may just be a trendy, ahistorical philistine.

Didn't make it to Bitter Victory and heard a friend of a friend badmouth it, but also heard others say good things about it. Still would like to see.

Ahistorical? Do you mean to say that I must accept the creakiness of certain old films as part of the deal or...? I'd genuinely like to know what people think is good about JG. The only person of note I've heard speak of its astonishing awfulness is the very unhip Michael Winner, which doubtless fortifies you cool kids in your sense of artistic superiority. ;-)

I had to get over the boring performance of Curt Jurgens to enjoy Bitter Victory.

you must ENTER INTO THE SPIRIT of the aesthetic goals and cultural environment of a classic-era film, yes. Or be a hipster yutz at the Film Forum.

That "tell me you love me" JG dialogue is even great w/out the images, in JLG par JLG.

But with JG, it isn't just a question of ropey acting or whatever, the campy woodenness is just so all-consuming.

I'm also not much of a Johnny Guitar fan, honestly, but it's not enough to get me voted off the island.

I would not want to see Elia Kazan's Johnny Guitar.

btw, TCM has Gloria Grahame day on Thursday, with IaLP in primetime.

People like Johnny Guitar for the tension created between the tone of the screenplay and its direction; they sense a subtle, pleasurable irony in the dissonance between the two. It's not awful so much as high kitsch, kitsch as high art. It also stands on mythopoetic strength, and is interesting as a feminist film.

IMDB says the guy who wrote the script treatment or "adaptation" for In a Lonely Place won the Oscar for best screenplay for Patton.

Philip Yordan, the guy with primary credit for Johnny Guitar, wrote some interesting pictures, but mostly westerns I haven't heard of.

Also the blatant Freudian symbolism.

xpost

One era's realism (i.e. the ever-present) is another's all-consuming campy woodenness (p.s. I'd avoid Last Year at Marienbad like the plague if I were you). Although Mercedes McCambridge's Emma is about as wooden as well-cooked spaghetti.

Also, all-consuming camp (with or w/o wood) has saved my life on numberless occasions so I don't understand it as a pejorative.

I would not want to see Elia Kazan's Johnny Guitar.

The OTMness of this statement just took out Paris. Phone lines across France are down so do not attempt to call.

xpost yes, def.

all-consuming camp (with or w/o wood)

http://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/thumbs/7/76/Aged%20in%20Wood-Margo%20Channing.bmp/100x100px-LS-Aged%20in%20Wood-Margo%20Channing.bmp

Click to add to your cart.

Philip Yordan, the guy with primary credit for Johnny Guitar, wrote some interesting pictures, but mostly westerns I haven't heard of.

And unwittingly contributed to the grade-Z omnibus film Night Train to Terror which just might be the most shameless and preposterous concoction in English-speaking cinema history. HIGHLY recommended.

This is a good movie.

this is one of the best movies ever made imho
― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Monday, May 25, 2020 12:32 PM (yesterday0

This.