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00:00♪
00:21Whoooo!
00:23♪
00:44Hold on, T-Double.
00:46♪
00:53♪
01:23♪
01:33Whoooo!
01:35♪
01:43So long, T-Double.
01:44See ya.
01:46Take it easy.
01:47But take it.
01:50What's next?
01:51Now we can start strutting.
01:53One thing you gotta learn, kid.
01:55You gotta look and act like other people.
01:57♪
02:02Hell, when I first got to France,
02:04and read the critiques of René, Godard, Truffaut, Romer,
02:11I didn't know who the hell they were talking about.
02:15But that's the way films should be.
02:17An artist should not moralize.
02:21A person who has the audacity to make a film in the first place
02:27shouldn't ever consciously put his own neuroses on screen.
02:32Most of your heroes are pretty neurotic.
02:38My heroes are no more neurotic than the audience.
02:42Unless you can feel that a hero is just as fucked up as you are
02:47and that you would make the same mistakes that he would make,
02:52you can have no satisfaction when he does commit a heroic act.
02:59Because then you can say,
03:00hell, I could have done that too.
03:04And that's the obligation of the filmmaker, of the theater worker,
03:08to give a heightened sense of experience to the people
03:12who pay to come to see his work.
03:16♪
03:23From 1947 to 1962,
03:25Nicholas Ray directed some of the most richly personal work in American cinema.
03:30Yet in 1971, when he accepted a teaching post
03:33at Harper College in Binghamton, New York,
03:35he had not completed a film in nearly a decade.
03:38At Binghamton, Ray trained his students to be a working production unit,
03:42teaching them filmmaking by shooting a feature film
03:45as a collaborative creative effort under his supervision.
03:49Grow, not grow, let the virgin go, but become us.
03:53You've just described it.
03:56All right.
03:57All right.
03:58Places, please.
03:59Places.
04:00Scene one, age take one.
04:03Action.
04:06Born in 1911,
04:08Nicholas Ray left his hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin at 16
04:12to study under Frank Lloyd Wright.
04:15After a brief university career,
04:17Ray emigrated to New York City at the height of the Depression.
04:20There he became involved in the lively experimental theater of the 30s,
04:24working as an actor with such politically progressive groups
04:27as the Workers' Theater and the Federal Theater Project,
04:30which included the Living Newspaper.
04:33It was there that Ray learned the improvisational methods
04:36that he would employ in Hollywood
04:38and would still be using with his students in Binghamton
04:40more than 30 years later.
04:43It began on East 12th Street, not a few blocks from here.
04:50Led to my association with Kazan and Hausman,
04:54from whom I learned more than any other two people in the world.
05:08I worked in a workers' theater.
05:13We graduated to Broadway,
05:16and somehow or other one day Kazan said,
05:19Come on, you've been spending enough time in radio, theater, television.
05:25I'm going out to Hollywood to make my first film.
05:30Come on along and help me.
05:36Hausman, same thing.
05:38I suppose I've collaborated with Hausman on more things
05:41than anybody else I've ever worked with.
05:44Nick had come to New York during the depths of the Depression
05:49when life was very strange, rather desperate,
05:53and at the same time extremely hopeful,
05:59and there was almost no limit to the dreams one could have
06:03because everything was so terrible that everything was dreams.
06:06Nick was himself a very vulnerable, very sensitive,
06:12almost too sensitive person in some ways,
06:16and in some ways very aggressive and assertive,
06:20in other ways extremely reticent and shy,
06:23and that combination is very good for a director with actors.
06:28Particularly, his real talent lay in what he could do
06:32with very young and tender and sensitive and insecure people
06:36like Cathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger.
06:42Hello. Hello.
06:57Do you do the marrying?
06:58That's my business.
06:59I have a $30 wedding which gives a complete recording of the ceremony on record.
07:03I have a $20 wedding.
07:04What will you just marry us?
07:05That'll be $20.
07:07Tilly, Herman.
07:08Who are they?
07:09A sister and her husband. Witnesses.
07:11We have to have them?
07:12Oh, yeah.
07:14First you've got to sign your names over here.
07:24If you'll just sign the register.
07:47There.
07:48Now rent your ring for a dollar or sell your one for five.
07:53I'll buy one.
07:56This one will do it.
08:24By virtue of the power vested in me, I hereby perform this wedding ceremony.
08:29Do you, Catherine, take this man, Arthur, as your lawful wedded husband
08:32to love, honor, and cherish henceforth?
08:34I do.
08:35Do you, Arthur, take this woman, Catherine, as your lawful wedded wife
08:38to love, honor, and cherish henceforth?
08:40I do.
08:41Well, put the ring on her finger.
08:47By virtue of the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.
09:05Wish all the health, happiness, and wealth in the world.
09:09Herman, you've got a cold.
09:12I'm sorry. I have.
09:15That'll be $20 plus five for the ring.
09:24You don't think much of my way of marrying people, do you?
09:26I sure don't.
09:28Well, me neither.
09:29I'm giving folks what they want.
09:31My way of thinking, folks ought to have what they want.
09:34As long as they can pay for it.
09:36Nick has always made almost all his best pictures, actually,
09:40have been about people whom society was oppressing and society was crushing
09:46and who were almost doomed to be defeated by society.
09:50Well, Nick himself is not altogether outside that category.
09:55In 1962, having become one of the highest paid American directors,
10:00Nicholas Ray dropped out of the film industry,
10:03plagued by personal problems and discouraged by the compromises
10:06of commercial movie making.
10:08For Ray, the 60s were a long, murky period,
10:12marred by a stream of unrealized projects and by failing health.
10:16In 1969, he returned to the United States after a 10-year absence
10:21to make a film about the Chicago Conspiracy Trial.
10:25What was it that captured your attention with the Conspiracy Trial?
10:29Well, it was the greatest circus of bigotry I'd ever heard,
10:34directed against young people who were the,
10:39now the 32 and 33-year-old equivalents of James Dean,
10:44who wrote pamphlets that were of such sophomoric and collegiate humor,
10:52like the stuff you write before homecoming games,
10:55which were taken seriously by the court.
10:59One day Lee Weiner came to me and asked if I were a friend of Groucho Marx's,
11:06and I said, yes.
11:09He said, do you suppose we could get Groucho as an expert witness for us?
11:17And so we'll try.
11:20And he says, somebody has to explain our sense of humor,
11:26and he's the only man in the United States that we know of who can explain our sense of humor.
11:34And to see Dave Dellinger, the oldest of the group,
11:39and a Quaker pacifist,
11:45be the only one to put his body in front of Bobby Seale
11:51to protect him from the blows of the police,
11:55and so many things.
11:59I'll make it someday.
12:02After we finish this one, maybe.
12:04And the next one.
12:09Hey, you bums, look at them.
12:13Hey, look at that bunch of, look at those magnificent bastards in there.
12:17Hey, get us out of those cats in there.
12:19Well, I was talking to Howard Hughes.
12:23Get in the window, you schmuck.
12:25Hey, get in the window.
12:34Nick came in and virtually changed the whole cinema department,
12:38the whole idea of filmmaking.
12:40And I think he has a huge amount of insight into everybody he's known for a while.
12:46And he uses, he employs those insights for characters in a film, even.
12:57He's a con artist, and he knows how to manipulate people, if that's an acceptable word.
13:04But that's part of the talent of a director.
13:07He's always wanted to be cherished by young people.
13:13And he scorns his own generation, which has rejected him, apparently.
13:20And he just likes working with young people, as far as his role in the film,
13:25which is an essential part of the whole film.
13:29He's, as a character, I guess he's something like the parole officer in Rebel,
13:36always caring for young people.
13:40He's like a father to us, and a counselor, and a teacher at the same time.
13:46Ray's unconventional teaching methods demanded intensive involvement from his students,
13:51leading them to adopt a communal living arrangement
13:54that brought down continual harassment from conservative university authorities.
13:58Eventually, the group was forced to move to a farm just outside of town.
14:02Gradually, under Ray's direction, teacher and students alike
14:05attempted to develop an original approach to filmmaking
14:08that would express in a new way the process of self-discovery
14:12that has always been one of Nick Ray's central themes.
14:15Look, I like this quality on here better than I like the correction one.
14:21Which one is that?
14:23The overexposed one.
14:25Why do you like that one better?
14:27Because I like it better.
14:31Look, this is dull. This is one of the most aesthetic characters in the world.
14:37I know what shot it is. I know what shot it is.
14:39This is dull as hell, you know?
14:43How did Bogart take to playing the part of the writer in In a Lonely Place,
14:48which is rather a departure for him?
14:50Well, I had taken the gun away from his hand for the first time in Knock on Any Door.
14:58And the second time, he was ready for it.
15:07A little bit more ready for it.
15:11And he obviously loved it. It's one of his favorite films.
15:18But it was a very personal story.
15:22A very personal story.
15:24The last part of it, I had written with Andrew Soult.
15:31And Bundy, Soult, had headed east.
15:39In the meantime, I had separated from my wife, Gloria Graham,
15:44who was playing opposite Bogie.
15:48And if I had let the producer, Bobby Lord, or Bogie know that,
15:54they would have gone crazy, or Harry Cohn would have gone crazy.
15:57And so I said, well, look, I'm having trouble with the third act.
16:02Make an apartment for me out of a couple dressing rooms.
16:07Because I don't want to drive to Malibu every night.
16:11And I want to get down and get on stage and work at night.
16:19Which I did, and Gloria behaved beautifully.
16:21Nobody knew that we were separated.
16:24And I just couldn't believe the ending that Bundy and I had written.
16:31I shot it because it was my obligation to do it.
16:35Then I kicked everybody off stage except Bogart, Art Smith, and Gloria.
16:41And we improvised the ending as it is now.
16:44The original ending we had written so that it was all tied up into a very neat package.
16:50Frank Lovejoy coming in and arresting him as he was writing the last lines, having killed Gloria.
16:57And I thought, shit, I can't do it. I just can't do it.
17:03Romances don't have to end that way.
17:06Marriages don't have to end that way.
17:08They don't have to end in violence, for Christ's sake, you know.
17:12And let the audience find out and make up its own mind about
17:16what's going to happen to Bogie when he goes outside of the apartment area.
17:24Which was the first apartment I lived in in Hollywood, by the way.
17:28This is a very personal film.
17:35Bogart plays a neurotic screenwriter with a violent temper who is unjustly suspected of murder.
17:40The police investigation places an intolerable strain on his relationship with Gloria Graham.
17:47Right there.
17:49The moment we see them together and talking, right after my rap for the detective.
17:54Working within the studio system, Ray, like other directors,
17:58often had to relinquish control of a picture at the vital stage of editing.
18:03Should we mix the speaker over this?
18:18Which take is this?
18:19This is like take four or something.
18:21Listen to take six.
18:23Six?
18:24Yes, there is one.
18:25And also, I want to put back in, because in seeing the assembly in Boston,
18:35it struck me that we have no resolution to this at all,
18:39and we must have that jump of Lesley into Doug's arms.
18:45Why don't you do the tape over there?
18:47Pull it.
18:48Right there.
18:49But I would cut every night after shooting.
18:51As you want.
18:52Right.
18:53I'll usually have a rough cut of the film within a week after I finish.
19:01But this is different. This is a...
19:07This is a method of taping.
19:09This is a method of taping.
19:11This is a method of taping.
19:13This is a method of taping.
19:16This is a method of taping.
19:18That we've come out with a film is, we hope, a very lucky accident.
19:33Now crescendo, right from here.
19:35Before that.
19:36This part comes in before that.
19:38Now, let's listen to another take, if you can.
19:41Okay.
19:42Because I have one which is almost on the nose.
19:45When do you want the crescendo?
19:46The crescendo begins while we're on their backs.
19:48Oh, while we're on their backs.
19:50Right, right.
19:51Right, so if I cut two bars, I think that will...
19:53No, the two bars will bring you into the la-la-la-la.
19:56How have you organized your students' work on this production?
19:59Following a rotation system with somebody being on one sequence,
20:04somebody else being on another sequence,
20:07somebody else being on another sequence.
20:10And finding that a person who may be emotionally involved in one sequence
20:19may not be doing as good an editing job as somebody else might do.
20:23Take him off, put him onto something else.
20:28Can you get a consistent rhythm to the picture with those?
20:31That's my final job.
20:34Everything that goes through here now goes through me.
20:41Finally, there can only be me.
20:44Finally, there must be the director.
20:46Whenever you're ready, Luke.
20:48Yeah, okay, at 16, you're ready.
20:50Turn out the lights, please.
20:51When the young French critics first began to develop the haute-haute theory,
20:54the concept of the director as the central creative force
20:57in the making of a film was a new one.
20:59No other American director attracted more sustained enthusiasm
21:02from François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and their colleagues than Nicolas Ray.
21:07I think what attracted us was that there was something European
21:12in this man from Hollywood.
21:14And what was European was perhaps the fragility,
21:18the vulnerability of the main characters.
21:21Although he sometimes shot with stars like John Wayne or Fred Bogart,
21:25these male characters were not macho or Sterling Gaiden.
21:30In Sterling Gaiden, there was this great sensitivity,
21:34and especially in the treatment of sentimental stories,
21:39which gave the impression of a great reality.
21:41At a time when Hollywood cinema was not easily personal or autobiographical,
21:46we always had the impression that the love stories in Nicolas Ray's films
21:50were true stories.
21:52I said once, and I am ready to say it again today in front of this camera,
22:01I said once that a film like Johnny Guitar
22:03had more importance in my life than in Nicolas Ray's.
22:06That is to say, it is a film for which I became passionate as soon as I saw it,
22:10but I was critical when I saw it, I wrote about it,
22:13and I wrote several articles about it,
22:15and we started a correspondence with Nicolas Ray.
22:19But I was talking about Johnny Guitar,
22:21which is a film that has a great importance in my life.
22:24I don't know why, because I found it very strong, very deep,
22:28about relationships between men and women,
22:31and I think it is the only film in which I saw a theme that is very interesting,
22:38at a certain stage of romantic relationships,
22:40which is bitterness.
22:41The bitterness of people who loved each other, who no longer love each other,
22:44and who see each other again.
22:45And I think that no film has treated it as well as Johnny Guitar.
23:16What I feel is that I want to give.
23:19Right, I know. It's very difficult right now.
23:24As the project's shortage of funds grew critical,
23:27production would cease intermittently for want of cash to buy film stock.
23:31Ray fell ill that winter and suffered from bouts of despair.
23:35Because when you hand her the blankets,
23:39you're the one who wanted to come in and warm Tom originally, as you did.
23:44Right? Right.
23:46And so at this moment...
23:48The company would work when it could,
23:50from noon throughout the night until dawn in bitter cold,
23:53functioning on a few hours sleep snatched between takes.
23:59Action!
24:05I don't think that I could have gotten him,
24:08or I could ever get him such a good acting teacher.
24:10I think he's the greatest teacher of acting in the world.
24:14I'm really excited by that.
24:16And the reason that I still work on the film,
24:19because I've wanted to leave, you know, now for...
24:22since May,
24:25is because this relationship that I have with Nick
24:29is still very exciting.
24:31The energy's still very high.
24:36You don't even take time with me anymore.
24:39Play your part or else get your ass off the set.
24:41My concentration is on him in this angle,
24:44and I don't want your personal hostility
24:48or whatever the hell you are feeling
24:50to take a part in the film.
24:52At this point, not at all.
24:55Not at all, at all, at all, Leslie!
24:58Leslie?
25:07My personal hostility is not involved in this film.
25:10It's not involved when I walk from here to there.
25:13So I don't know what you're talking about.
25:16Well, then, honey, you haven't learned anything about acting.
25:20If that's, you know, your judgment, fine, keep it.
25:25But I remain immune to it, because I know what I know.
25:29You sure know your immunities, you know.
25:32Yes.
25:35I will not try to convince you.
25:39I will not try to convince you.
25:41All you can do is just cut ass out.
25:48If I waited for you four hours tonight, that meant...
25:51You didn't wait for me for four hours!
25:54I beg your pardon.
25:56I beg your pardon.
26:01Tell me when you waited for four hours for me.
26:03From 8.15 till 12.
26:058.15 you called.
26:07That's right.
26:08Who did you talk to?
26:10Judy.
26:14So how did you wait for me?
26:16Because she's part of the crew.
26:18I thought there's some kind of communication.
26:24We waited for you, for Christ's sake.
26:27Well, how was I going to get over here?
26:29Somebody was going to come after you when you called.
26:31But they didn't.
26:32And I called, and no one came.
26:34You were going on to campus.
26:35I was not.
26:36You said, don't go on campus.
26:38I did not go on campus.
26:39Because then it would take even an hour.
26:41Oh, you're talking bullshit.
26:42I am not!
26:43You're talking petty bullshit.
26:45I am not.
26:46Four hours is a lot of time.
26:47You want to talk to me?
26:48You want to talk to me?
26:49You want to talk to me?
26:50You want to talk to me?
26:51You want to talk to me?
26:52Four hours is a lot of time.
26:53You want to talk about the part, I'll talk about the part.
26:55I will not talk about petty bullshit.
26:57It's not petty bullshit.
26:58It's a matter of time.
26:59That's all.
27:01And if time is of the essence in this film,
27:03then it's not petty.
27:16Do you have any questions about this?
27:18No, I just walk from there to there.
27:22Okay.
27:32It's not the actual scene, but what it is.
27:37How you feel.
27:38Alright.
27:39Alright.
27:40Even though we love you.
27:44Let her walk.
27:45I don't want to feel any kind of reluctance at all.
27:49No, you should, for the scene, because you want to do that thing for him, to show him, so it's with reluctance you give them to her, and that is, this is the only moment of heroic action you can do.
28:13All right, ready for picture, please.
28:17Ready.
28:19That's okay.
28:21Roll them.
28:22Sound on.
28:23Camera on.
28:24Speed.
28:25Action!
28:32All right, now, turn that way again.
28:35Turn that way again.
28:49Sorry.
28:51All right.
28:57I like this very much, I just want to see the other kind of graciousness coming through.
29:06I want to extend, extend the moment a little longer, because it may take a moment, or just a second in the thought.
29:24It's the kind of miracle of film, where you can extend that thought into 30 seconds, 40 seconds.
29:36No, we want to extend it to 8 seconds.
29:47The move was good.
29:49The move was good.
29:58So I think it's the move first, and then the, okay darling, you do it.
30:16Leslie!
30:19Wanda.
30:20Thanks.
30:22I try not to direct them until just before the scene, which is part of what the hassle was about last night.
30:28And, but when the person has the stink of the gallows about her,
30:34how, then you, then you're bound to run into the same thing that you might run into with a Tallulah Bankhead,
30:45or a...
30:50Well, hell, I've only had two fights with actors in my life, really.
30:55And you use what is of their essence at the moment.
31:03Because that is their easiest reference point, and you have to be aware of that and how to agitate it,
31:09how to make it work for you in the scene.
31:14What their immediate concern is.
31:17He showed me, about a year ago, little bits of the Binghamton film,
31:21and some of them were, I couldn't tell what the whole film was like at all.
31:25I mean, there wasn't enough of it.
31:26But I saw a couple of sequences that were quite amazing,
31:30and really reminded me of Nick's kind of talent,
31:36which he was showing in the days when he was making Rebel Without a Cause,
31:39and those extremely passionate and vital pictures about the young.
31:46How did you get the part in Rebel?
31:48Well, Nick made a lot of tests of different girls.
31:53I think there were about 50 of us, and it sort of narrowed down.
31:56There were 50 to begin with, and the second day it was down to 10,
31:59and the third day I think it was down to five or six.
32:04But the big problem was that I had really up to that point only played children,
32:09and although I was 15, the last thing I did was in Pigtails or something.
32:13And so I was finding it difficult to convince,
32:15and Nick was also finding it difficult to convince the studio that I was out of Pigtails.
32:20So one day I came on an interview with a boyfriend who had a cut on his face,
32:25and Nick said, where did he get that?
32:27And I said, drag racing.
32:29And then shortly afterward, I was actually in a bad car accident with Dennis Hopper,
32:35in which Dennis was driving too fast,
32:37and we were all thrown from the car and brought to the hospital.
32:40And I was sort of semi-conscious, and the police were called,
32:45and they were asking me my parents' phone number,
32:48and I kept saying, it's Nick Ray, call Nick Ray,
32:51and the number is so forth and so forth, the number of the Chateau Marmont,
32:54and I just kept repeating that, and so that's who they did call.
32:58And Nick sent his doctor down to the hospital, and then he came down,
33:02and I said, Nick, they called me a goddamn juvenile delinquent,
33:05now do I get the part.
33:07And you got it.
33:08And I got it.
33:09No director that I'd ever worked with had ever improvised,
33:13and Nick's bungalow at the Chateau Marmont where he lived,
33:18was the, the set was built from that,
33:23so that when we rehearsed, we really rehearsed as though in a set,
33:26and we improvised most of the scenes.
33:29Could you tell us something about the relationship between Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean?
33:36Well, they obviously had become very close,
33:39because before the film started they sort of hung around together and,
33:42as you mentioned, went to New York,
33:44and so that Jimmy trusted Nick a great deal,
33:47and I think Nick was very fatherly towards Jimmy.
33:52And he was to Sal and to myself as well.
33:57But I think Nick just absolutely understood Jimmy,
33:59they were just completely in tune in personality.
34:02I guess maybe Jimmy reminded Nick of himself a great deal,
34:06so that there was never any friction as there was between Jimmy
34:09and other directors that he worked with,
34:12and it was just a wonderful blend,
34:15and Nick brought out this feeling of trust in Jimmy.
34:19Working with Jimmy was like a real joy.
34:31But I had the advantage of his having worked with Kazan,
34:37and where he at least had a method of beginning,
34:46he developed the method a little bit more,
34:49because Kazan and I had matriculated at about the same time in the theater,
34:55and he had taught me a lot.
34:58I think the nicest thing Gadge ever said to me was,
35:03how did you get that spontaneous performance out of Jimmy?
35:08But method changes with damn near every actor,
35:14more than almost anything else.
35:16Dean was the only one in the cast who had any real comprehension of method,
35:21or of the school of theater in which I had grown up.
35:26And you couldn't use the word improvise.
35:34If you used the word improvise with people like Andoran,
35:39or Jim Backus, or Virginia Brissac,
35:46they'd say, oh, this artsy school, hmm?
35:55So I'd use old Vaudevillian terms.
35:58A director has to be able to work with everybody from every school, you know?
36:05No cast is ever made up of really the same people, the same background.
36:12So you have to use all the techniques you've ever learned,
36:17whether it's what you learned from a Vaudevillian,
36:20or from an old leading man like Fuller Mellish,
36:23who came over with Henry Irving and Minnie Madden Fisk,
36:26or burlesque people like Red Buttons,
36:32or Phil Silvers,
36:39or from miners or shrimp fishermen,
36:48or your own peers as you grow up in the theater.
36:53It's a Cary Grant, for instance,
36:58a fellow like Duke Ellington has in his trunk so many tunes.
37:06Well, Cary Grant has so many notes of sunsets, so many jokes,
37:12so many things that he's collected and remained collecting
37:15every single year of his life, you know,
37:18that his memory, his effective memory,
37:23is always implemented by an easy reference.
37:29He has them in the trunk, he doesn't have to refer to them
37:31because the compartments of the brain have them,
37:34but having written them down, having noted them,
37:36having taken the visual memory of,
37:44like that tree between those two little shacks there,
37:49being something which you might remember in the scene,
37:54say, why don't we use that?
37:58After Rebel Without a Cause,
38:00Nicholas Ray continued to produce some extraordinary work.
38:04Although he was one of Hollywood's most respected directors,
38:07Ray still suffered studio interference
38:09that bodilerized his conception on several films,
38:12and he began to work abroad.
38:14Thereafter, he drifted from one project to another
38:16through the Byzantine complications of independent production
38:19and multinational financing.
38:21Compromises were still required,
38:23but Ray did enjoy a measure of autonomy
38:25beyond that generally accorded him in Hollywood.
38:29Then, in 1960, he was drawn into the world of blockbuster spectacles.
38:34Although he brought his immense visual talent
38:36and some original conceptions to the rather inflated material,
38:40Nicholas Ray seemed glaringly out of place,
38:43overseeing the massive technology and impersonal logistics
38:47of A King of Kings or 55 Days at Peking.
38:51Why did he get discouraged?
38:54This is the terrible evil, I think, of the Hollywood system.
38:57I think you end up,
39:00because you do get screwed occasionally by studios,
39:04you do get frustrated,
39:06they do mess up your work and make it more difficult for you to work,
39:09or they did in those days when the studios really existed.
39:12They don't really exist anymore in that sense.
39:16I think Nick was probably much more vulnerable than other people.
39:19Everybody has this,
39:21but whereas a man like Kazan,
39:24whose tough is nailed, was able to take it in stride,
39:27I think Nick finally was partially destroyed by it
39:31and became almost perverse in his resistance,
39:36in his almost being prepared to be screwed
39:41anticipating the screwing before they actually occurred.
39:45Now that is not rare.
39:46That happens to many directors and many people who work in the business.
39:50It affected Nick more than other people.
39:53Most film courses or film classes
40:01concentrate on
40:06getting rid of the responsibilities to the students as quickly as possible
40:09by putting them off in corners and shooting 8mm films,
40:12which they can do all by themselves
40:16and present for a senior thesis.
40:21Therefore the emphasis is on a kind of static camera
40:29with cute ideas or masturbatory ideas
40:33or date-making ideas
40:37or anything except the relationship with other human beings.
40:43And film is a collective art.
40:45It's an eclectic art.
40:46It's a collective art.
40:52And it's by its own nature
40:56become the most communicative art that we have in the world.
41:02And the only two great ambassadors we've ever had
41:05from the United States have been jazz and film.
41:09And that doesn't come from sitting off in a corner.
41:21For all his hardships,
41:23Nicholas Ray remains both intransigent and optimistic,
41:26facing an uncertain future,
41:28determined to make films in his own way.
41:31In a sense,
41:32each project he undertakes might be likened to the blind run
41:35in Rebel Without a Cause
41:37as a slightly mad test of courage
41:39that leads him up to and perhaps over the edge of disaster.
41:43While Ray did find in Binghamton momentarily
41:45a kind of community and collective endeavor
41:48for which he had long been searching,
41:50in the end,
41:51Nick Ray knows that he must drive his blind run alone.
41:54As he has often remarked,
41:56the working title of every film he has ever made has been
41:59I'm a stranger here myself.
42:03Uh, the low camera on this...
42:06Uh...
42:16It might be good emotionally for you to take the low camera.
42:26She's putting the blankets on Tom.
42:29Yeah.
42:31Huh?
42:33Yeah, go ahead.
42:34That you tip up to her.
42:37What do you mean? I take a camera that's...
42:39That's the low camera, huh?
42:41As the blankets come on to her, huh?
42:43Usually the 75, yeah.
42:47And you tip up into her.
42:51I think it's emotionally a good thing.
42:54All right, okay.
42:56Ahem.
42:57Footage, please.
42:58Um, 155.
43:01It looks very beautiful to me.
43:04That's a wrap.
43:25© BF-WATCH TV 2021