Nicholas Ray

Ford himself was not a fan of ‘My Darling Clementine,’ though through the years, many critics have understandably held it up as one of his finest achievements

That Rebel Without a Cause was such a success upon its initial 1955 release, and that it still stands as a hugely influential classic of American cinema, is not just a result of star James Dean’s most iconic performance, nor is it simply the outcome of director Nicholas Ray’s talents. Why this film is truly a triumph has more to do with how superbly it encapsulates the artistic inclinations of these two particular artists. This is the film Dean and Ray were destined to make. And this was the time to make it.

The Friday Noir column has been tugging along at a steady pace for well over a year at this point. After being privy to so many double-crosses, back stabbings, bleak outlooks and cynical one-liners, it feels like the right time to shine some proverbial light on the sinister world of film noir. What follows is …

The 2012 installment of the Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from June 20th to July 1st, and marks the return of major awards of incarnations prior to 2011’s edition. This year’s line-up is distinctive in its feeling of being a heavily curated affair courtesy of artistic director Chris Fujiwara, rather than just a selection of …

They Live by Night Directed by Nicholas Ray Screenplay by Charles Schnee U.S.A., 1949 Young love is a powerful thing, even dangerously so when it blinds people from reality. When the hearts of two youths are intertwined as they are between the protagonists in They Live by Night, a sense of invincibility can slowly and …

The only way to start talking about Nicholas Ray’s We Can’t Go Home Again is to first search for the words to describe how the film appears on screen. For the most part, a black rectangle appears over a matte – a shifting series of still images of the Binghamton University campus, where Ray was …

We Can’t Go Home Again Directed by Nicholas Ray Screenplay by Nicholas Ray USA, 1976 After much commercial success in the 1950s with such great films as Rebel Without a Cause (James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Dennis Hopper) and Johnny Guitar (Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge), Nicholas Ray increasingly became shut out of Hollywood in …

We Can’t Go Home Again Directed by Nicholas Ray Screenplay by Nicholas Ray 1976 – USA Rain isn’t stopping reviewers and critics alike from getting their first tastes of the 49th annual New York Film Festival. With cups of coffee readily in hand, the New York mentality is definitely in the air as the festival …

Bigger Than Life Directed by Nicholas Ray United States, 1956 Leonard Cohen’s song Story of Isaac recontextualizes the biblical story to modern times with the lyrics, “You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children, you must not do it anymore. The scheme is not a vision if you never have been tempted by …