filmmaker NICHOLAS RAY, born August 7, 1911

thought the use os widescreen to look at interior spaces was interesting

*of

the way an Eisenhower family is portrayed in this film is also fascinating, maybe even more than in Rebel Without a Cause

"You know what? You read too many comic books."

Without knowing it I watched Johnny Guitar again tonight, for his birthday - probably?

And noticed how conspicuous he is in his nearly wordless role as one of Crawford's employees.

huh is he really, i never noticed!

In fact, no, it is Robert Osterloh. But this resemblance!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMzRjOWYyMjAtYmMzZi00NWFiLTgxM2ItNDgxNGIxY2IzYWJlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTk2MzI2Ng@@._V1_.jpg

Far right:

https://dancinglady39.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/image305.jpg

He doesn't look much like Nicholas Ray to me!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7XMfRPwU2Sc/UJ0YGwtNaXI/AAAAAAAAYE0/Nq6oFkyMIVs/s1600/NicholasRay.jpg

"Bitter Victory" was on TV today. I'm surprised I'd never seen it before! I'm not sure I like as much as Godard did but it is good, and Richard Burton really is good in it.

Criterion has They Live By Night right now - never seen but looking forward to it

It's good.

It stood out for me because it seemed feral. It was like a shadow on the rest of his work.

I compared and contrasted the opening scenes of They Live By Night and Thieves Like Us once in a film class presentation (they're based on the same novel). A stark difference in pacing (and casting).
We Can't Go Home Again doesn't really work, but there's a scene where the young hippie characters are clad in rubber masks that strongly brought to mind the early Devo films; it showed the through line from psychedelic horror to post-punk abjection. I may be the only person to imagine Devo in a Nicholas Ray film.

the young hippie characters are clad in rubber masks that strongly brought to mind the early Devo films; it showed the through line from psychedelic horror to post-punk abjection

I can't find a still of it online, but there's a moment in Roger Corman's Gas-s-s (1970) that sounds very similar, tho I'm sure they're v different viewing experiences.

Happy revive for me - just reading Patrick McGilligan's Nicholas Ray bio, which is ... OK. Perhaps because I didn't know that much about it, but he's v good on Ray's pre-film involvement with left-wing theatre and especially his work with Alan Lomax; McGilligan is also very knowledgeable about HUAC and Hollywood screenwriting in general. Once he gets to Ray's films, he's perversely less interesting, and of course he can't resist the womanising, boozing, fucked up side of Ray's life - fine, but it's at the expense of accuracy and insight elsewhere. I've been annoyed by lots of the book's critical shorthand and one-line character judgements that often don't stand up to real scrutiny (eg claiming that Godard was the only 'political' member of the Cahiers crowd, ignoring Rivette, who both in print and as an editor was more stridently left than any of them).

Love this photo of Ray and Rip Torn on the set of King of Kings that's reproduced in the bio:

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/american-film-director-nicholas-ray-and-american-actor-rip-torn-in-picture-id51871899?s=594x594

Bitter Victory's rhythms are so strange.

Rebel Without a Cause has been a favorite of mine for 20+ years.

Seeing it now older, it seems such a weird Freudian mess, yet I'm a sucker for it. Like the scene where Jim Backus is taking food up to his wife and drops it on the floor, while James Dean just wants some answers to adolescence, but all he gets is his ineffectual father cleaning up while wearing an apron!

There is a ton of repressed homosexual feeling between Sal Mineo and James Dean, no?

And the ending. Backus says, "I'll be as strong as you [Dean] want me to be." Then Dean walks by with Wood and the overbearing mother starts to chastise him, but the father stands up to the mother and, therefore, everything will be ok? WTF!

I'm not as much a film expert as ilx, so would love to read what others have to say.

I first saw the film at about 19 or 20, and I guess I had the erroneous assumption that Dean's character was some kind of tough guy. The way he started whining and wailing in the police station (probably less than 10 minutes into the film) was so much against my expectations that I don't think I ever recovered.
This film might be a prime example of excellent direction in the service of terrible ideas, inasmuch as a bad film can be well-directed. I'm thinking of scenes like the one in the planetarium, or the opening titles sequence.

Seeing it now older, it seems such a weird Freudian mess, yet I'm a sucker for it. Like the scene where Jim Backus is taking food up to his wife and drops it on the floor, while James Dean just wants some answers to adolescence, but all he gets is his ineffectual father cleaning up while wearing an apron!

Susan Bordo mentions this scene in a discussion of how there were fears about men becoming "domestified" in the 50's. You can still see this in the early 60's with Terry-Thomas needling Milton Berle in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World with "you americans let your wives boss you around!" jibes. Basically if the internet had been around in the 50's there'd be tons of "MEN...WHAT HAPPENED?" memes.

LOL, yes, that Terry-Thomas/ Milton Berle exchange, well spotted! That also taps into a British (European?) prejudice about the US which I don't think exists anymore.

My film students laughed at the YER TEARIN' ME APAAHT scene last March as much for its overwroughtness (to which they were unaccustomed) as to distance themselves from how close it cut.

they might also have seen it first in The Room & related memes, at this point

Those scenes where Dean is angered not by his father's inattentiveness/squareness but by his father's lack of strength - I kept thinking that the father character probably fought in WW2 and stormed a beach somewhere and then has to listen to his punk son complain about how the father won't protect the son from the mother. It sorta presaged a bunch of generational/parenting stuff in the 60s.

Also, the scenes with just the kids in the planetarium are so gorgeous.

Because of this movie, the planetarium was my #1 sight to see the first time I went to LA (lol).

There is a ton of repressed homosexual feeling between Sal Mineo and James Dean, no?

"repressed"

Good point. It's almost explicit, but framed as Dean and Wood as ersatz parents of Mineo.

Or I should say that is another framing.

Because of this movie, the planetarium was my #1 sight to see the first time I went to LA (lol).

Me too! But it was closed for renovations (d'oh).

It sorta presaged a bunch of generational/parenting stuff in the 60s.

BACKUS: Don't I buy you everything you want, son?
DEAN (drunkenly agreeable): You buy me many things.

I do not get Rebel without a cause

Like many Ray films, it's closer to opera or ballet; it takes no place in no known world.

Ebert's "Great Movies" entry on the film makes a lot of the points that are being made in this thread ("Seen today, Rebel Without a Cause plays like a Todd Solondz movie, in which characters with bizarre problems perform a charade of normal behavior"), and is an overall great read: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-rebel-without-a-cause-1955

Some of you seem to be saying that some of these so-called flaws are bad things.

Like many Ray films, it's closer to opera or ballet; it takes no place in no known world.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 21, 2021

true

Screenwriter Stewart Stern and bit player Dennis Hopper would team up again 16 years later to make The Last Movie, where Hopper emulates Dean at one point.

Indeed, good point

Ebert's "Great Movies" entry on the film makes a lot of the points that are being made in this thread ("Seen today, Rebel Without a Cause plays like a Todd Solondz movie, in which characters with bizarre problems perform a charade of normal behavior"), and is an overall great read: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-rebel-without-a-cause-1955

― edited for dog profanity (cryptosicko), Wednesday, July 21, 2021 7:46 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks for the link; review is great.

That was pretty good, yeah

I think what put me off the film so early was how completely it seemed to be on Jim's side, which I guess was a bold choice at the time, but came across as the filmmakers congratulating themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

you're tearin me APPAAAAHHHHT

Classic

I couldn't believe the fatherly advice in a frilly apron scene the first time I saw it. Rebel is more subversive and weird than Johnny Guitar imo

And that’s pretty damn weird, so yeah