SECOND CHANCES

christopher funderburg

NICHOLAS RAY: Part IV

page 4

Conclusions:
At a certain point even Godard started to hedge his bets:

"The whole cinema and nothing but the cinema, I was saying of Nicholas Ray. This eulogy entails a reservation. Nothing but cinema may not be the whole cinema."

That's some very typical Godardian double-speak that confuses as much as it clarifies (the confusion seemingly the result of wanting to make a clever turn of phrase), but I really think he's expressing something with which I agree. By and large, the pleasures of Nicholas Ray's films are purely cinematic - the texture of his images, the cadences of his dialog and performers, the qualities of what's on-screen. A generous appraisal of his talents as a filmmaker would characterize them as instinctual in nature, unusually perceptive to heightened emotions. But no one could honestly make the argument that his films display intellectual complexity or philosophical depth or even much emotional nuance. He's also not even a particularly sharp or original story-teller - "plot" is decidedly not his strong suit.

The "camp" elements in his work reinforce this idea that his pleasures are purely cinematic: the flaws that resulted from the production, from the filmmaking are the most interesting, compelling element of those "camp" works. But I agree with Godard, "Nothing but cinema may not be the whole cinema." It's possible for film to be engaging on a deeper, more complex level than the dazzling hues of over-saturated Technicolor Cinemascope or memorably cheesy histrionics. Pure cinema doesn't necessarily engage the medium's significant capacity for handling philosophy and morality and politics and drama. Ray's signature films simply don't exploit the possibilities of the medium: Le cinema, c'est Nicholas Ray - Nicholas Ray mais n'est pas l'ensemble du cinema.

So, where do I stand with Ray? Let's try to break it down somewhat coherently because I did like several of his films and I'm not coming away from this with the basic antipathy for him with which I started out. Re-reading what I wrote, there's a heapin' helpin' of negativity, but so much of that stems from factors outside of my reaction to the films themselves - them hoity-toity critics get my blood boilin'! Anyhoo, let's break it down...

I enjoyed: Bigger than Life, Knock on Any Door, They Live by Night, Bitter Victory. And the first half of In a Lonely Place is so good that I need to put it on this list.

I did not enjoy: Johnny Guitar, Wind Across the Everglades, Hot Blood, Rebel without a Cause.

Enjoyed as camp: Bigger than Life, Knock on Any Door.

Thought were actually, you know, good: They Live by Night, Bitter Victory, the first half of In a Lonely Place.

Hmm. I'm not sure that makes things any clearer: 2 out of 9 films, I think are great without reservation. There's a fantastic little .5 floating around out there for In a Lonely Place, too. Ray only made 18 feature films, so I've seen exactly half of his output. I can decisively say that I disagree with the critical assessment of Ray - he's not all he's cracked up to be, for certain. Putting aside the critics, though, I definitely wouldn't want to still say that I dislike Ray's work - I enjoyed more than half of what I saw on some level. And I sorta think Bigger than Life and They live by Night are essential films for me - I can imagine returning to them over the years and bringing them up in conversation and writing about them in other contexts. Even if I don't think they're unassailable works of True Genius, I still have a huge amount of affection for them.

Bitter Victory and his failed attempt at a masterpiece, In a Lonely Place, I have a more complicated relationship to and only time will tell on those - even though both are frequently fantastic, I can imagine feeling complete indifference to either one. Bitter Victory is great, but at the end of the day, it's no Play Dirty (or even Men in War). There are just similar films with which I connected more, so it's hard for me to hold it too high of a regard. Plus, Michael Caine and Robert Ryan trump Richard Burton. With In a Lonely Place, it's hard to say whether the memories of the excellent first half or my loathing of the awful second half will overpower my general thoughts on it - it's a film that I could easily see mentally filing away as junk I don't care about, but at the same time I'll always think of those opening scenes with His Girl Friday, Sullivan's Travels and Philadelphia Story.* They have their virtues, but I'm not sure if they'll matter to me personally.

On the negative side of things, any time I'm in an unforgiving mood with Ray, I'll always have Hot Blood in my back pocket. A gruelingly unfunny ethnic comedy in which the main character beats his wife into loving him, peppered with atrocious, technically embarrassingly dance sequence? I recommend all Ray fanatics to really think about what they're endorsing there. Wind Across the Everglades and Johnny Guitar are the unfortunate result of production disasters; because of their troubled histories of meddling producers and egomaniacal stars, it's impossible to hold Ray's feet over the fire too much for their complete worthlessness. Wind Across the Everglades heightened my dislike for the recently deceased Budd Schulberg - but now's not the time to dwell on that. After watching more Ray films, Rebel Without a Cause now clearly seems to me to be a cheesy, whiny howl of tedious teen angst - and James Dean trumps nobody.**

But it was Godard and Truffaut who got me into this mess and it's my feelings on Godard and Truffaut on which I'll end. I spent a lot of time reading their critical work and a lot of time thinking about their taste in movies in relationship to their films - how their opinions and ideas grew up to be their movies. With Truffaut, it was a pleasure becoming reacquainted with The Films in My Life. He's a really great writer; sensitive, perceptive, elegant - one of the rare critics who even when I disagree with him I still enjoy reading what he has to say. He can be just as hyperbolic as Godard: the proclamation "Down with the amateur!" in the middle of his Bigger Than Life review is just as baffling and strident as anything Godard wrote; but with Truffaut, the words are always tinged with an elegiac tone that never failed to disarm me. After these past few weeks, *** the jury's not out anymore: I admire Truffaut. For his intelligence, for his sincerity, for his willingness to argue passionately on behalf of unpopular films and ideas. A lot of the reason I feel affection for Bigger than Life is tied to Truffaut's essay - I ultimately don't agree with him, my enjoyment of what he wrote spills over onto the film about which he was writing.

With Godard, the positive vibes are even more miraculous: the past few years have seen my thoughts and feelings on the Swiss crank curdle into something dark and rotten. And while his writing can be every bit as exasperating, intellectually evasive and overly clever as his filmmaking, reading the words of a young Godard - back before he's was cinema's greatest unrepentant asshole -  I was frequently wistful and amused, wistful because I was amused and amused because I was wistful. At the end of the day, he's just a guy who loved movies and, despite whatever way his absurd proclamations ended up influencing the history of cinema, there's something fascinating and forgivable about the passion that clearly possesses him as he writes. Sometimes the language and demeanor obscure it, but he loves movies and so do I - and any negativity I felt towards him would completely dissolve during those flashes where I thought, "Yes, that's exactly right!" about Curd Jurgens' excellent performance or pure cinema's limitations.

And, on that level, Nicholas Ray ends up being beside the point - Truffaut and Godard are the ones who made the films in my life and adding another layer to my interaction with their work more than justified the time I spent watching and writing about Ray. It doesn't matter that I really, really, really don't think Johnny Guitar is the Beauty and the Beast of westerns as much it was important for me to understand Godard and Truffaut's arguments, to better understand Truffaut and Godard. But it doesn't hurt that They Live by Night and Bitter Victory popped up in the process as well - seeing a couple truly great films is as much as I can ask for in a given year and sneaking these in during a thus far dismal 2009 is a real relief. Plus, filling this gap in my film knowledge, at very least, enriches my understanding of other films and filmmakers I already liked - while I am fairly certain Nicholas Ray is just an unremarkable Hollywood journeyman, seeing his movies did confirm my love of Preston Sturges, Andre de Toth and, yes, Jean-Luc Godard. Talking about Ray and Godard, the temptation would to end on a bombastic proclamation, but I don't have it in me: to tell the truth, I'm not sure what is le cinema and I am still searching, piece by piece.

* For the record, Humphrey Bogart trumps Joel McCrea and is on the level with James Stewart and Cary Grant. So... so, there you go.   

** He's also dead - should I not have said anything bad about him?

*** I also happened to watch Shoot the Piano Player and Love on the Run last week, so I've been fairly Truffaut-intensive these days.

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