Nicholas Ray

Raymond Nicholas Kienzle (real name of Nicholas Ray) was born on August 7, 1911, in Galesville (Wisconsin), into a family of Norwegian and German origin. His father had problems with alcohol, which greatly overshadowed the future filmmaker’s childhood. He started studying at the University of Chicago, but after a year he decided to drop out. He had had the writer Thornton Wilder as a teacher, who recommended him for a place at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture , which became his protector. Finally, both distanced themselves, because Wright did not agree with Ray’s political ideas, very left. He decided to go to New York, where he became a member of the Theater of Action, the theater group where he would become good friends withElya Kazan . Ray led a messy, bohemian life. In addition, he was an active militant of the socialist movement. No scholar of the time can explain why Nicholas Ray was never called to testify – like so many other fellow directors – before the Committee on Un-American Activities during McCarthyism. Apparently it was pure luck.

It was Elia Kazan who brought Nicholas Ray to Hollywood. Kazan was directing his first feature, Human Bonds , and had been impressed with the way his friend was able to get stage actors to better themselves. So he hired him as an assistant for that film, even though he doesn’t appear in the credits. Soon, Ray would also have the opportunity to direct his debut, the brilliant The Night owls , based on a novel by Edward Anderson , which also led to Robert Altman ‘s Thieves Like Us .. This classic film-noir starred a couple of bank robbers in love, who would be the first of many anti-social misfits to appear in Ray’s films. One of the most remembered is Nick Romano (played by the very young John Derek ), the humble young man turned to crime, who tries to defend the lawyer played by Humphrey Bogart, in Knock on any door .

In his first films, Ray set the bar so high that he ended up disappointing with the correct but conventional film A Woman’s Secret , about a jealous successful singer who shoots her protégé. The first was played by Maureen O’Hara , while the victim was Gloria Grahame , who had captivated Nicholas Ray. After two previous divorces, the filmmaker had married this actress in 1948 who can only be described as excellent –as can be seen in titles such as The Bribed– , although at the time she was a star considered ‘ugly’ (“Whoever the camera wants it, the public also wants it, and whoever doesn’t want the camera, like Gloria Grahame, I want it”, he said of herGuillermo Cabrera Infante . Before ending the relationship in 1952, Grahame was also under the command of her husband in the magisterial In a Lonely Place , where the actress played the enigmatic neighbor with whom screenwriter Dixon Steele, played by Humphrey Bogart , falls in love. . After amassing commissioned films that he did brilliantly ( Born for Evil , Hell in the Clouds , Valley of Radiation , Wandering Men , Androcles and the Lion ), Ray directed Johnny Guitar, one of the peaks of the western, a genre to which he was able to give a great turn of the screw, since the protagonists were for the first time two women of character ( Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge ), in a genre where they had always been secondary.

John Derek once again became a troubled young man under Ray’s orders, in the very interesting Find Your Shelter , where he found a protective figure, as he was left in the care of an ex-convict, played by James Cagney , in a character similar to that of Bogart in Knock on Any Door . Although the quintessential portrait of troubled youth directed by Ray is undoubtedly Rebel Without a Cause , his best-known film and a true movie classic. The filmmaker achieved a convincing portrait of young people, who identified with bewildered characters, who feel the need to rise up in the face of a world that is disappointing to them. Natalie Wood and Sal MineoThey were accompanying the legendary James Dean , who had just filmed the also well-rounded East of Eden .

Apparently, Ray could never get over Dean’s tragic death, which occurred a week before the film’s premiere. He talked over and over again about the actor, and apparently, during a conference, he came to take out a shotgun to tell the audience that Dean had given it to him. In cinema he began his decline, with Bitter Victory , a masterful anti-war film with Richard Burton playing an officer in charge of a difficult mission in the Libyan army, while his wife is being unfaithful. Although it was highly praised by critics, and by director Jean-Luc Godard , it did not win public support. After the excellent Chicago, the 30s and The Devil’s Teeth, the producer Samuel Bronston recruited him to shoot in Spain Rey de Reyes , a version of the evangelical texts that was not rigorous, but respectful and spectacular. Although he returned to repeat with Bronston, in 55 days from Peking , the conflictive relationship between the two during filming ended with the director’s dismissal, replaced by Gay Green after two and a half months of grueling filming. Like the film’s protagonist, Ray had become an alcoholic with self-destructive tendencies, marrying 18-year-old Susan Schwartz when he was 58. “While filming 55 Days in Beijing , Nick had a nightmare . Upon awakening, he knew that he would never finish a movie in his life. And indeed, it did,” recalls Susan.

Indeed, Nicholas Ray did not release any commercial feature films again, although he did shoot a film entitled We Can’t Go Home Again , which came to have an incomplete cut premiered at the Cannes festival, and he also finished the shorts Marco and The Janitor , which It belongs to the film Wet Dreams . Ray spent the last years of his life busy with ambitious projects that no production company wanted to finance, such as Mister, Mister – which never came to fruition, despite the fact that the script was already ready. He started a collection of paintings, mounted a version of the film Ashes , by the Pole Andrzej Wajdaand in addition to carrying out numerous activities, he opened the ‘Nikka’, a jazz club in Madrid. Compulsive gambler, he also spent everything he had earned throughout his career. When he was very sick with cancer, and before his death on June 16, 1979, he volunteered to be filmed by Wim Wenders , which gave rise to the curious documentary Lightning over Water .