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

it's a very good film, i haven't seen it in a decade though.

the apartment where it was shot was actually nicholas ray's apt complex at one time, where he and his then-wife would have routine squabbles, to be discreet about it.

ray was a rampant womanizer, natalie wood lost her virginity to him apparently, and he was known to carry on several affairs at once

peyton place?

it's playing in paris this weekend

"what an imagination, that must come from writing all those screenplays!"
"what a handshake, that must come from counting all that money!"

i just saw a movie where the lead character was named, i kid you not, "john smith"

Final day at Film Forum. Might try to go.

Ah, I only added this to my Lovefilm queue a few days ago. After returning The Big Sleep I felt the need for some more Bogart. Never seen this though, looking forward to it.

didn't remember liking it that much but saw it again sunday at the film forum (and dinner at Taim after!) and I loved it.

see it see it see it it's great

filmforum + taim combo: AMAZING

although getting lost on the way to taim because you're not starting on sixth tracing waverley but starting where west fourth somehow meets west 11th like some crease in the map: lame.

but yes: seeing this projected was so great, having previously thought it was just good. jazzed for they live by night, and to nonchalantly start using "remind me to buy you a new tie" in conversation.

Wow. Thanks for those directions. I was thinking of trying to eat there but I surely would have gotten lost in the manner you describe. I have always found that little patch of streets very easy to get confused. You can walk down a street and seem to come out at an intersection 180 degrees from where you think you should be!

What is it with this flick? It seems to be the ultimate in "saw it once disliked/loved it, saw it again loved/disliked it." I myself saw it eons ago and adored it, then again a few years ago and was unmoved. Maybe in another few years (perhaps after taking in Dana Polan's BFI on it), I'll adore it again. Maybe we should congratulate/condemn ourselves.

Liked it this time and the other times I saw it, but I think I know what you mean. If you saw it in multiple viewings that were too close to each other the bleakness might outweigh the style that is supposed to balance it out.

Last night the 7:40 show was sold out so had to go to the 9:50, which ended up selling out as well. Print was nice, but there was an awful splice at the very end when Gloria Grahame is reciting the catchphrase. Falafel place was delicious, although maybe I should have called order in ahead of time.

nick ray season in association with taim

is bigger than life worth catching? i seem to remember missing it at FF a while ago, and i'd just planned on hitting the double bill with they live by night in terms of the rest of the retro

Yes, it's definitely worth seeing.

I was a bit disappointed when I finally got to see it. I don't think it's right up there with the Noir greats (Out Of The Past, Double Indemnity...). Might have been a bit spoilt for me by reading the novel first, which is really good and harsher than the movie. It's an in-the-mind-of-a-serial-killer book (he's unambiguously a killer in the book).

i read that film forum audiences were laughing at a bunch of the nick ray movies! that upsets me.

not that it's completely unexpected, sadly.

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

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

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.

Campy wood has doubtless taken us all back from the brink many times, gazing suicidally into our local river, but the campy damp wood in JG does not seem intentional, and even if it is, it isn't realised in any way as to satisfy this viewer. And as for "interesting as a feminist film", bah! I mean, if a film is badly acted, has a dreadful script, who really cares if Joan Crawford is holding a gun - i.e. phallic symbol - in such a way as to imply feminist subversion of patriarchal society? That's the kind of thing for ponderous English Department babblers to get their teeth stuck into, not real people. Nevertheless, I'll try and dig out my old video of it, though I may have taped over it.

Your false dicthomies won't help matters.

?

yeah really. There's such a dense thicket of rong in that freedom forest that it'll take until Monday morning at the earliest to get back out of it. Wire me, though, if Joan Crawford in Della is showing sometime soon.

You are an enemy of Freedom.

i was pretty disappointed by 'johnny guitar' when i finally saw it.

not that big on this one either, to be honest. 'rebel' is still my favorite ray film.

I enjoy Rebel cause Natalie Wood is pretty - the film itself doesn't do much for me.

IMDB says that at on Johnny Guitar Yordan was a front for Ben Maddow, apparently . He did work on those final made-in-Spain Nick Ray Samuel Bronston productions mentioned above, 55 Days In Peking and King Of Kings. Apparently at one point on Peking they brought in Robert Hamer to script doctor, but he was such a wasted away death's doorstep alcoholic wreck that they sent him back to London after one day!

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

Dancin' Kid: I didn't get your name stranger.
Johnny: Guitar. Johnny Guitar.
Dancin' Kid: You call that a name?
Johnny: Care to try and change it? .

Past Friday would have been NR's ninety-eighth birthday.

I enjoy Rebel cause Natalie Wood is pretty - the film itself doesn't do much for me.

― Freedom, Sunday, August 9, 2009 6:35 PM

^ has it really come to this?

The smear campaign that gets under way all because I don't like Johnny Bloody Guitar! ;-)

Quite.

As for The Lusty Men, Arthur Kennedy was kind of annoying, I prefer his brother Edgar, as was Susan Hayward- at the screening Ray's daughter Nicca said Mitchum called her "The Old Gray Mare" and would eat garlic before their scenes together, but Mitchum, the rodeo footage of Lee Garmes and team and character actor Arthur Hunnicutt as the broken-boned tall-tale-telling rodeo veteran all make it worth seeing.

Here is link to article on NR I just found: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2005/03/rebel200503

xpost

Feminist status of Johnny Guitar is not of interest only to English professors and film journal contributors. Aren't the situations of women in movies of the past and present ever conspicuous to you? People use ideas ripped out of college courses because they help them understand a movie and figure out how to talk about their reaction to it, not because they necessarily want to overinflate the value of a piece of trash.

Of course, of course. I'm just saying making a claim for its goodness on that basis is wrong.

Tonight I found a flyer in the Jefferson Market branch of the NYPL for an imminent Oned-Eyed Auteurs festival at the Anthology. You can read about it here: http://www.tcm.com/movienews/index.jsp?cid=251309

Nicca Ray said she is writing a book about her dad. But I think she is going to beaten to publication by Orson Welles's daughter.

I knew about that fest -- have never seen Flying Leathernecks.

Just saw IALP thanks to this thread - amazing, thanks for that. Bitter Victory next.

Finally saw On Dangerous Ground tonight. Boy, is Robert Ryan wound tight here. And the kid villain is right purty.

this movie---in a lonely place----is soon to be remade with gerard butler and january jones.

wayne wang directing.

lol @ "Freedom" itt

i love On Dangerous Ground

One of my fave movies to watch for wallowing in romantic angst.

Just saw this film this evening at the BFI.

Really can't understand the love for this film: it's slow, clunky and stilted. And the worst problem is that Bogart/Dixon Steele is just such a horrible character there's no interest in watching him. If it was a more nuanced performance where he shows different sides to his character it might be different, but as it is he's just a violent bore.

I thought so the first time I watched it: a B-movie setup.

Then I watched the Criterion edition a couple weeks ago.

squeeze harder

Wow, I saw it at the BFI yesterday too, I thought it was really wonderful, didn't really know much about it in advance, only knew the stars and director and a vague sense that Graham and Ray were breaking up when it was filmed. She's fabulous in it and given more to do than usual, what a waste to always serve her up as the same conniving cheap dame. There was real charm in their relationship even as you knew that he was a serial abuser. I liked their outfits, her bomber jackets and drop earrings especially.

I thought there were lots of really excellent things about it. The offhand reveal of the murder and the remoteness of the investigation from the workings of the plot, how the film itself was situated in the margins of some other larger drama. Laurel's view of the action, her ability to know what happened seems to approximate our own so that the architecture of their apartment complex seems like the framing of the film itself, the view of her standing on her balcony from between the slats of the venetian blind, the vignetted scenes of domestic bliss that Dix's agent sees when he's checking in on the progress of the screenplay, the increasingly tangled criss cross views of the courtyard, in and out of doors and windows,and her and our gradually unravelling certainty about what happened to Mildred Atkinson, so that the paranoia of the noir genre seems to stand in for some general unease about what can be contained in an image and what subterranean violence frames it.

Definitely up there with Ray's best for me, although I've never really understood Rebel Without a Cause

There were elements I liked: the apartment complex, some of the photography (especially in the masseuse scene and some of the outside landscapes), but the off-centre murder didn;t work for me as it made the film less embedded in the noir genre.

Things I didn't like:

- I couldn't stand the Shakespearian actor/drunk
- the soundtrack music
- the 'clever' dialogue
- Bogart's performance - needed more light and shade
- the change in Gloria Grahame's character from smart strong female as the film goes on
- the wooden supporting characters

It's possible I could have been is something of a un receptive state of mind - but I don't think another viewing would lead me to re-think it as 'wonderful'.

the change in Gloria Grahame's character from smart strong female as the film goes on

well, love does things to people.

I wonder if anyone will ever film the plot of the novel, in which Dix is much younger, not a screenwriter, and (not a spoiler) a killer.

also, it is signalled that she might be a bit of a flake and a fantasist through her backstory about jilting the real estate magnate

in the movie Laurel lies to provide Dix with his alibi in the first place, "strong" might be one way of describing that but "implicated" would be another.

You’re ganging up to deny her agency!

does she lie? I thought she, like we the viewers, did see the girl leave, but can't be sure of what happened after. Why was he still dressed etc. ?

without going back to watch i can't be certain but i'm sure she makes the alibi stronger than what she actually could have seen, because she already finds Dix interesting - which isn't denying her agency! it's more that she starts the relationship already knowing that, at least, he has a propensity for "trouble"

this film is really something. it's very clever in how it first positions Dix as a wrongly accused, misunderstood suspect in a vicious murder, and puts us reflexively on his side, but then in a parallel fashion as he fights to clear his name, it shows what kind of monster he is.

He's a very violent, abusive, cruel man. His life is a tragedy, for somewhere in there is a good man who is completely destroyed by his anger and vicious streak. And it's only due to pure luck (a cry of protest, a timely phone call) that he winds up not being a killer. Narratively that initial set up (and then pulling the rug out from under the audience) is terrific.

Rewatched this for the first time in years, again in connection to James Harvey's Movie Love in the Fifties.

Morbidly fascinating for sure, although I wouldn't quite put it in my first rank of '50s American films (On the Waterfront, Sweet Smell of Success, Paths of Glory). Dix is another one for that Ethan Edwards/Scottie/Dave Bannion borderline psycho list.

Harvey doesn't mention something I just assumed: that Laurel was planning to run off with Martha the masseuse at the end. There are clear intimations of this, I think.

Not sure if this comes up in the thread, but according to Harvey, Ray's original script (all but four pages of which were altered) had the film end with Dix murdering Laurel, then having his friend arrive at the apartment to clear him of the other murder.

"Dix Steele"--that's like one Hays Code warning away from Johnny Wadd.

this is one of the best movies ever made imho

this is certainly Graham's best and that's saying something!

My fave Bogie performance (even if it isn't the most Bogie performance).

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.