Nicholas Ray , of its true name Raymond Nicholas Kienzle , is a realizer, scenario writer and American actor born the August 7th 1911 with Galesville (Wisconsin), deceased the June 16th 1979 with New York (New York).

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Biography

Born in 1911, with Galesville, the Wisconsin, it is youngest of four children. His/her father, who had already had two girls of a preceding marriage, was alcoholic. Of Catholic German , it becomes Luthérien. His/her mother belonged to the artistic field.

Ray studies initially with the Université of Chicago but it leaves it in 1932. He moves thereafter with New York and he changes name. Thereafter, it turns over to Wisconsin, because it received an invitation of Frank Lloyd Wright, with which it studies in a school of architecture, named Taliesin. Unfortunately, this beautiful duet will not last and Ray leaves this school again… to go back to New York.

With hardly 100 dollars out of pocket, Ray joined a group of Theater of Improvisation of New York. It is there that it meets the producer Elia Kazan who was especially known for his not very common way to push his students within their limits, and it is this way of teaching which will mark Ray for the remainder of its life. Moreover, when Kazan produces its first film in Hollywood the Lily of Brooklyn , it engages Ray as assistant.

Thereafter, Ray starts to make its own films. The first is entitled the Lovers of the night . In 1949, it produces Secret of woman , who puts in the high-speed motorboat Gloria Grahame, that it will marry following turning. Then turnings follow one another: Lanes of misfortune with Humphrey Bogart, the Violent one in 1950, film which put in the high-speed motorboat Bogart and Grahame and which had as a history a scenario writer suspected of murder. Then was with the turn of Born To Be Bad , of the Devils of Guadalcanal (with John Wayne), the House in the shade , Untameable the and Johnny Guitare , which was a success with the boxoffice.

After this great success, Ray meets the company Warner Bros., which will require of him to carry out the famous the Fury of living . This film was to be, at the beginning, a vision of work of Doctor Robert Mr. Lindner on the disturbed teenagers and violent one. Warner Bros had bought the rights of this work and had two young main actors at the head (Marlon Brando and Sidney Lumet). However, none of both agreed to endorse this project.

The subject of the juvenile delinquency was already omnipresent in the American media for a long time at the time and it is what pushed Ray to be engaged in the project. He declared besides on this subject: “It was neither the psychopathe nor the son of a badly famed family which interested me”. A little later Ray however starts to write its own history, entitled The Blind Run , a raw history of 17 pages which was a series of shocking scenes and brutal and of criminal acts. Joint with him the producer David Weisbart, with whom it redesigns the history to make it more acceptable. Thereafter, Ray carries out all the nonsense of the study of which Rebel Without because must expose the theories: the malicious ones come poor small families, the rich person are the nice ones. “They is completely false, known as Ray. It is us all”.

To polish the scenario of Rebel , it calls upon a dynamics author 32 year old, Stewart Stern. Ray selects James Dean in order to play the main character of the feature-length film. The two men have much in common, they for example had a bad father (the father of Dean gave up it at the six years age) and they were both of the introverted adults.

The soundtrack of film will profit from very recognized Leonard Rosenman, which composed the music for In the east of Eden .

However the Warner Bros remained of ice compared to the choice of the main actor. The company wanted rather young actors, rising stars, like Robert Wagner, Hunter or John Kerr. To find the high-speed motorboat female of film, it then called upon Natalie Wood, 16 years old.

James Dean dies a little later a week before the big first of the film Géant . Whereas its tragic destiny the registered voter in the legend, Ray, is to him at the end of the roller. The death of Dean represents a great loss for him. Hopelessly wanting to replace it, it carries out the King of the kings and the 55 days of Beijing . However, it is victim of an mild heart attack on the plate of 55 Days . That rang the knell of its career. It had very lost. It became increasingly insane about James Dean, said that it had bequeathed tangible properties to him. It for example exhibé a rifle with students of the Sorbonne while protesting that Dean had bequeathed to him.

Then he became an alcoholic and a compulsif player. Its fortune founded at sight of eye. In 1969, with the University of Chicago, it meets its fourth and last woman, a coed of the faculty which fore-mentioned Susan Schwartz. It had 58 years and it then… 18 years.

He dies of a lung cancer, the June 16th 1979.

Nicholas Ray and the revival of Hollywood

Nicholas Ray is one of the initiators of the evolution of the cinema hollywodien in after second world war, with inter alia Elia Kazan and Joseph Losey and the vogue of the Black film. The outstanding features of this new cinema is the figure of the Anti-héros: far from the guns of pre-war period, the main characters of these films are “losers”, the marginal ones, of the growing old or tired heroes, in shift with their medium or their time. That is particularly true in the work of Nicholas Ray where, generally, the hero or one of the main characters knows a fine tragedy.

Even when it attacked a hollywodien kind par excellence, the biblical Superproduction, with the King of the kings (moreover inspired by the Master of the kind, Cecil B. Of Thousand, which carried out a film of the same title and on the same topic in 1927), the treatment of its subject remained in the tonality of the remainder of its catalog of films, since contrary to the former practice, who in general chose his topics in the Old Testament and in any case in a laudatory approach, exultante and pious, it chooses to deal what makes the heart of the New Testament and with the Évangiles , life of Jesus, but while sticking as well to the religious aspect of the topic as to the terrestrial course of the individual in a mode of narration close to that of the Peplum, course which, from an objective point of view, is that of a loser , rejected by the hébreuses religious institutions and condemned to died by the Roman occupant, if one does not consider to become it of his message.

The specificity of Nicholas Ray in the cinema states-unien and more especially hollywodien is than, contrary to many of its contemporaries (Elia Kazan and Joseph Losey, already quoted, but also Jules Dassin and many other scenario writers of the beginning of the Années 1950), his catalog of films remains registered in the “cinema of kind” (Western, Black film, “ancient” spectacular, Peplum…) but also that, contrary to its other “traditional” contemporaries, in each kind where it is illustrated it dynamites the guns: the central figure is thus often a “anti-hero”, the male characters appear often weak or filled up of doubt, in many his films the strong character is a female figure, finally it often introduces an element which will make the heart of films of kind in the following decades, that of violence without goal. The work of Sam Peckinpah or Gift Siegel (however its contemporary), just as that of many Italian realizers of Western spaghetti, the first of which Sergio Leone, is very indebted sets of themes and esthetics of Nicholas Ray.

Tragedy in the work of Nicholas Ray

A paradoxical feature of this realizer is the real absence of Suspense in its films of which it is however an essential spring (black films, westerns, thrillers). One can regard it as a tragic author in the sense that the trajectory of its characters is generally foreseeable with the beginning of film, in a way rather similar to the processes of the Greek tragedy.

As in the tragedy, Nicholas Ray makes rest the tension of the account not on the indetermination but on this foreseeability, the spectator being then captivated by contradictory waiting between anticipation of an inescapable end and the desire to see the heroes escaping this end.

Influence

In the decades following its apogee, Ray remains a major influence for large realizers:
  • Jean-Luc Godard is a large laudator of the scenario writer who " the cinéma" personified; in its eyes
  • Martin Scorsese admires particularly Johnny Guitare , the Fury of living and Behind the mirror . It in particular included extracts of these films in its documentary: a voyage with Martin Scorsese through the American cinema .
  • Curtis Hanson appears in documentary for the DVD of the Violent one , expressing his analysis of the film which was one of the many influences for the realization of sound L.A. Confidential (1997).
  • François Truffaut wrote on Ray (very present in its book Films of my life ). He affirms that the Lovers of the night (1949) is the best film of Ray, but grants a great place also to Behind the mirror and Johnny Guitare .
  • Wim Wenders is another of its European admirors, paying him his tribute in many films. It gives to a small role to the scenario writer in his film the American Friend . Then they Co-sign Lightning Over Water , semi-documentary which shows the two scenario writers collaborating in the design of a new film a few weeks before the death of Ray.
  • Then teaching with the New York University, Ray had Jim Jarmusch as raises, the young independent scenario writer became his assistant. In return, Jarmusch required council for its scenarios of him and regrets still today it.

Catalog of films

like Realizer

as Scenario writer

  • 1945 : The Caribbean Mystery
  • 1949 : Lovers of the night ( They Live by Night )
  • 1952: the House in the shade ( One Dangerous Ground )
  • 1954: Johnny Guitar ( Johnny Guitar )
  • 1956: Behind the mirror ( Bigger Than Life )
  • 1957: Bitter victory ( Bitter Victory )
  • 1959: Teeth of the devil ( The Savage Innocent )
  • 1976: We Can' T Go Home Again
  • 1980: Lightning Over Toilets / Nick' S Movie

as Actor

Rewards and Nominations

Rewards

Nominations

Anecdotes

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

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