10 Best Nicholas Ray Films

Well over a year ago, over at Tony Dayoub's fine fine site, Cinema Viewfinder, a Nicholas Ray Blogathon was held.  Among the many many many great contributions to this blogathon, were two by yours truly (hopefully at least half as great as the others).  These were called "The Dangerous Beauty of Nick Ray Parts 1 & 2" (originally meant as just one piece, I could not stop myself from writing, so split into two it would go) and took a film historical overview of the great auteur's equally great oeuvre.  As I went about watching the Ray films I had yet to see (and re-watching old favourites) I thought to myself what a great time for a top ten list.  I was now what one would call a Nick Ray completest, so a list was most certainly in order.  Regular readers of this site as well as those regulars over at Anomalous Material where I write a weekly series of differing top tens, know full well how excited I get at even just the mere thought of a top ten list (or for that matter a top eleven or twelve or thirteen or twenty-five of one hundred or so on and so on).  Yeah, it's a turn on - gotta problem with that!

Anyway, I ended up not fitting it into my blogathon schedule and instead, as the great procrastinator that I am, give it to you now.  I would like to preface this list with the fact that out of Nick Ray's 20 directed films (22 if you should count his two final films, the experimental group directed We Can't Go Home Again and the Wim Wenders' directed Lightning Over Water for which the German filmmaker gave Ray a co-director credit, or even 23 if you count Macao, mainly directed by Josef von Sternberg but finished by Ray who, against his own wishes was given co-credit) there has not been one I disliked.  Yes, there are a few I could (and would and have) call average and/or even mediocre, but still not a truly bad one in the bunch - even those few, like King of Kings and The Savage Innocents, that are most often panned by my fellow critics.  But the following ten are the be all and end all of Nicholas Ray cinema.  A director by the way who Godard once famously called "Cinema" itself.  So without further ado, here are my choices for the 10 Best Nicholas Ray Films.

1. Johnny Guitar (1954)  I may be showing my old school affinity with Godard and the French New Wave with my number one choice, but the sheer gaudy decadence of Ray's visuals, combined with the audacious nature of Joan Crawford and the batshitcrazy Mercedes McCambridge make this one a no-brainer - even amongst the deep-pocketed oeuvre that is the career of Nicholas Ray.  Perhaps the auteur's strangest film and the one most likely to elicit complaints and criticisms of cheesiness (pure camp and done the way camp should be done!), Johnny Guitar is nonetheless the director's boldest and bravest film as well.  Still waiting for a proper home video release in the US (my copy is a European PAL version) let alone its rightful, and hopefully inevitable, transfer onto Bluray, this bizarro-world western is a film I could watch over and over and over again without ever tiring of it.

2. Rebel Without A Cause (1955)  The first Nick Ray film I ever saw (around the age of thirteen or so) and probably the most iconic, thanks to the tragic status of James Dean, this prototypical teen angst motion picture is an emotionally draining, psychologically searing, philosophically drenching cinematic event - and that is a description  without adding extra hyperbole.  The story of three teens, played by Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo (all dying violent deaths, at 25, 43 and 37 respectively) trying to cope with the complexities of life, and the pressures of growing up (and varying degrees of parental problems), this film is probably the director's most emotionally intense work, and yes, Ray's wiles with a camera make it worthy of inclusion here, but much of this hullabaloo, much of this rather, for lack of a better term, magical touch, has to do with Ray's allowing method actor Dean to do his own improv thing throughout the film.  Oh yeah, and it looks damn beautiful as well.

3. In A Lonely Place (1950)  A cynical Humphrey Bogart.  A sexy Gloria Grahame.  A salacious murder.  Film noir.  Nick Ray.  Who could ask for anything more?  In a Lonely Place tells the story of a Hollywood screenwriter who has had a rather bad run of luck, and who is suspected of the murder of a young hat check girl who is found dead the day after spending the night at his place.  Bogie plays the screenwriter with his typical blend of machismo and urbane refinement.  Meanwhile, we also get Gloria Grahame as the new neighbour and obvious love interest for our hero.  But that is just it.  Is this guy really a tragic heroic figure brought down by innuendo and bad timing, or is he indeed a cold-blooded killer?  We do get an answer one way or the other by film's end, but before that, the question remains looming in the air, ready to destroy everyone and everything around it.  The sexual chemistry between Bogie and Grahame is rather palpitating, and Ray's weaving, voyeuristic camera, makes it all the more intriguing.

4. They Live By Night (1949)  This was Ray's first film.  It was made in 1947, but due to the chaos of Howard Hughes' takeover of RKO, it was not released for two years.  Meanwhile, many big names in Hollywood saw the film via private screenings, leading to Hitchcock casting Farley Granger in Rope, and Bogart hiring Ray to direct Knock on any Door.  Once it was released, it became sort of the prototype for the couple on the run movie, influencing everything from Gun Crazy to Bonnie and Clyde to Badlands to (of course) Robert Altman's remake, Thieves Like Us.  Granger, along with Cathy O'Donnell, who, story be told, was handpicked by Granger, play a young couple on the wrong side of the law.  Innocent (the naive kind of innocent) and in love, these two play the tragic lovers/heroes of the story.  Raw and natural, as is often the case for directorial debuts, this is probably Ray's most grounded picture - and in this grounding, we get a story of harrowing circumstances, done in the most cinematically innocent way.

5. On Dangerous Ground (1952) The first act of this film plays out like a gritty police procedural - something akin to the cop shows of today - the second and third acts, though still full of intensity and urgency, come off as a more lyrical kind of storytelling.  These two sides of Ray's proverbial coin - the roughness of They Live by Night alongside the smoothness of In a Lonely Place - come together to make this tale of hard-boiled NY police detective Robert Ryan and bitter and blind Ida Lupino, soar with the most powerful of wings.  Watching these two stellar - and often overlooked and/or underappreciated - actors pair off against each other, is worth the price of admission alone.  Ray's weaving, sometimes invasive, sometimes ethereal camera, makes it a bargain indeed.

6. Bigger Than Life (1956)  I first saw this film just last year, projected on the big screen, and I was mesmerized from beginning to end.  Ray's sultry use of colour, his play with lighting and shadows and tilted camera angles, the bravura performance of James Mason - possibly the actor's greatest performance - all come together in an explosive and quite harrowing drama.  On the edge, both thematically and stylistically, Bigger Than Life tells the story of a drug addict, back in a time when films did not readily breach such divisive subjects - but then, Nick Ray was never known as one who would shy away from controversy.  Of course, the bigger controversy came not with drug addiction, but the way Ray portrayed the American family and the so-called values that went with them.  Again, that is Nick Ray, and, as I and Jean-Luc Godard stated earlier, he is cinema.  And speaking of Godard, in 1963, the director named this film one of the Ten Best American Sound Films ever made.

7. The Lusty Men (1952)  Yes, Ray was supposedly bisexual, and yes, there is more than it's fair share of homoeroticism not so hidden away in this appropriately titled film, but this does not mean this isn't a manly film.  A real man's man kind of film.  The kind of film where men are men and...um, yeah, anyway, I digress.  Seriously though, this Robert Mitchum picture is truly a manly movie.  A movie for men, as the Spike channel has been heard to say.  It is the story of a retiring rodeo buck, played with the usual barrel-chested charm associated with Mitchum, and the newbie he takes under his wing, played with the usual sideways-glancing snarkiness of Arthur Kennedy, and the woman who comes between them, played with the usual casual sexiness of Susan Hayward.  Full of vim and vigor, and not too low on the sexual tension, The Lusty Men takes Ray's typical undercurrent of eroticism and brings it out to the glaring forefront.

8. Run For Cover (1955)  This Jimmy Cagney western is usually criminally overlooked when discussion of Nick Ray's oeuvre comes up, and that is just a goddamn shame.  With the usual pastiche of such directors as Ford and Mann and Hawks, Ray gives his own cock-eyed subversiveness to the whole shebang, and creates a genre picture that manages to perfectly blend the classic era of the genre to the revisionist beginnings of the, then modern day cinema.  But the real reason this film is so enjoyable, other than Ray's not-so-subtle touch, is because it is always fun to watch James Cagney ply his trade - be it as a gangster, a hoofer or, in this case a cowboy. 

9. The Savage Innocents (1960)  More than any other Nicholas Ray film, save perhaps for King of Kings, this tale of an Eskimo trying to survive in the wilderness, and trying to survive the encroaching modern world, is the most often cited dud on the director's filmography.  Starring the Mexican born Anthony Quinn, an actor who probably played just about every ethnicity in Hollywood at one time or another, as Inuk the Eskimo, The Savage Innocents is often referred to as racist, but I do not think Ray had anything like that in mind when he made the film - this was just the norm for the time.  What the film really is, is pure, and sometimes quite ridiculous, fun.  Hey, and Dylan wrote a song about the whole damn thing too.

10. Born to Be Bad (1950)  This early career melodrama, much in the same vein as John M. Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven, is about a beautiful and quite manipulative young woman, who will do anything to get what she wants.  In fact, one could even say that she was born to be bad.  This manipulative young woman, someone who in less classy circumstances would be called a fucking bitch from Hell, is played beautifully by Joan Fontaine, one of my favourite actors, in one of her best, but sadly most overlooked, performances.  We also get Robert Ryan and Mel Ferrer, who are always fun to have around, but this is Fontaine's picture, and with it she runs away, and she does so with beautifully flying colours.

Well, that is it for my look at the ten best films of the man known as cinema itself, Mr. Nicholas Ray.  I suppose one could go on and bring films like Hot Blood or Party Girl, or even The Flying Leathernecks into the equation, but I suppose one should leave it at that.  To end on a quote from my number one pick, and I think this somehow strangely sums up the cinema of Nicholas Ray rather well, "There's only two things in this world that a real man needs: a cup of coffee and a good smoke."

1967: It Was a Very Good Year

The following is my contribution to The Movie Waffler's The Year I Made Contact Blogathon, wherein we the contributors discuss the cinematic year of our birth.  As I just turned forty-five last week, that would make this contribution about the cinematic year of 1967, and me being me (ie: an obsessive list monger) I have decided to give you my ten favourite films of this very same year.  So, without further ado, here are my choices for the ten best films of 1967.

1. Bonnie and Clyde - One of the first films I ever saw (I was just sixteen in a high school film class at the time) that made me think perhaps that this thing called cinema had more to it than what one saw on the shiny surface.  Brilliant and subversive (and unbeknownst to my still uneducated mind at the time, one of the most important films that would revolutionize American cinema) there was something about this film that got me all quivery inside.  Perhaps it was Faye Dunaway and her sexy, brazen comehitherness, perhaps it was Warren Beatty and his rebellious anti-hero image, perhaps it was the violence that was like none I had seen at the time - whatever the case, the film has haunted me from the beginning as much as it still does today.  Not only the best film of 1967 but one of the greatest films of any year.

2. Playtime - Ever since seeing M. Hulot's Holiday, Jacques Tati's lovable bumbling M. Hulot has always held a soft spot in my cinematic heart.  With each subsequent adventure, Tati places his intrepid hero and alter-ego into an ever-increasing modernist nightmare of dangerous gadgets and disgruntled gadflies. The pinnacle of this almost dystopian comic effect (played out in the most giddy undystopian way of course) is the film Playtime.  Hulot, let loose on a modern society way ahead of his own old-fashioned comprehension, is a hoot, as they say, to watch.  And the gags - the ones that have come to verily define Tati's hapless alter-ego over the course of half a dozen films - are as sharp-witted as any dialogue anyone would attempt in such a film.  And it all comes off as a genius-level screwball comedy of pantomime.

3. Week-end - This was actually the first Godard I had ever seen (yes, even before Breathless) and I was immediately taken in by the Nouvelle Vague auteur's use of colour as well as his way of using the camera to as full effect as possible - and then taking it further.  Many consider this to be the director's final film of his so-called early days (I mean if you are going to call it a New Wave, it has to end sometime lest it become an Old Wave again) and thus it is a dividing point between Godard's early ultra-cinematic pieces and his later more essayaic pieces.  It is this more visually cinematic earlier period which I like the best and Week-end was a great introduction to it indeed.  Brash, bold and without reservations, Week-end is Godard at his visual apex.

4. The Graduate - A cinematic sign of its deeply disenfranchised times, Mike Nichols paean to teenage disillusionment, and the film that made stars out of both Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross (one's stardom has held up a bit better), is a deadpan comedic look at the youth in America not only at this quite turbulent time, but I believe the youth of all generations that have come after it.   Tossed off as a hipster movie by many critics, the film does go a lot deeper than this criticism makes you think, and its long term influence (many teens and young adults still see it as if were speaking to them personally) is what makes a classic a classic.  Plus, how can you beat that soundtrack.

5. Belle de Jour - Sexy, stunning and scary as hell.  These adjectives can be used to describe either star Catherine Deneuve, the film itself or in a strange kinda way, the entire oeuvre of director Luis Buñuel.   The story of a young wife who takes up the art of prostitution one day, Belle de Jour is more than meets the eye.  Taking on, as Buñuel is apt to do, the morality of society, pitting the bourgeois against the proletariat but never in the way one would expect a semi-surrealist, anarchist auteur to do, the film has been hailed as both a brilliant masterpiece and panned as a pretentious bore.  Why can't it be both in a way?  Probably a bit beyond my rather naive grasp when I first saw the film (around eighteen but still quite innocent in mind) it has however grown deeply into my psyche.  And then you have Deneuve - ooh la la indeed.

6. Point Blank - Let's face it, Lee Marvin was the very epitome of cool in his day and that assessment is no different in John Boorman's gangster exercise in cool cinema, Point Blank (incidentally the first film to be shot on location on Alcatraz after the prison's 1963 closing).  Marvin is tough as nails and love interest Angie Dickinson has never looked better.  Throw in Keenan Wynn and a wonderful turn from Carroll O'Conner (the man could do more than Archie Bunker ya know) and Point Blank just gets cooler and cooler and tougher and tougher.  How tough was Marvin you ask - so tough that when he and John Vernon were practicing a fight scene, Marvin hit Vernon so hard that Vernon fell to the floor crying.  'nuff said.

7. Two For the Road - The best of Stanley Donan's solo directorial work (Singin' in the Rain, co-directed with Gene Kelly, being the best overall) this quite acerbic non-linear tale of a marriage both coming together and falling apart is a revelation of dark comedy blended with giddy tragedy.  Shooting back and forth from present to past to future to past again and back (a trait that could be quite disorienting to a casual moviegoer), this way-ahead-of-its-time motion picture stars George Segal and Audrey Hepburn in what may be both actor's best performance.  Hepburn, usually more fairy tale-esque in her acting, opens up a whole new side of her ability here and proves to the world (or at least the handful of people who have seen this woefully forgotten film) that yes Virginia, she can act.

8. Mouchette - Along with Au hasard Balthazar the year before, this is Robert Bresson at his sentimental best.  A jarring and dangerous film (as is per usual with a filmmaker such as Bresson) about the tragic life of a young girl, Mouchette still manages to reach out from such pyschosexual depths with an undercurrent of strangely esoteric humanism.  I first saw this film (having seen just three Bresson's prior) after seeing it referenced in Bertolucci's The Dreamers and this drama of faith helped to solidify my already growing worship of the French auteur.  Someone once said that to not get Bresson is to not get cinema, and they may very well be true - even in what is probably one of the director's least cinematic films (and no, I do not mean that as an insult).

9. The Fearless Vampire Killers - This Roman Polanski comedy-thriller's full title, a la Dr. Strangelove, is The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck - how can one go wrong with that.  Sardonic, with more than a touch of that classic Polanski humour (and featuring the director's wife Sharon Tate in one of her final roles before that brutal night in the summer of 1969), this film is a multilayered romp of devilish delights.  Starring the elfin director himself in one of the title roles (years before any tabloid headlines would creep their way into his world) this may be one of the unscariest vampire movies ever made, but still it has a comic sense of dread that is palpable throughout its strangely partially-pantomimed two hours spent inside what seems like a beautiful yet quite macabre snow globe.

10. Wait Until Dark - I first saw this film in a film class I took in my senior year of high school.  Dissecting the film piece by piece in class (I had never done such a thing before) one could see the many layers that were going on in Terence Young's superb psychological thriller.  Still to this day, when I am watching the film and I see the demented Alan Arkin tormenting the seemingly helpless blind damsel-in-distress Audrey Hepburn, I feel a twinge of fear for the poor girl trapped in the dark,, I can feel her terror as this brutal and unknown force terrorizes her, even though I know full well she's going to wind up the victor when the end credits roll - and I know too that Arkin will get his much-deserved comeuppance as well. 

Special Mention: Wavelength - Experimental filmmaking icon Michael Snow's Wavelength consists of one shot (basically) that lasts for 45 minutes.  As time goes on, the camera edges, ever-so-slowly from one end of what appears to be a mostly empty warehouse to a picture hanging on its far wall.  Seriously, that is it.  Sure, the colour will fluctuate and every once and a while someone will walk into and out of the shot, but basically that is all it is.  I saw this film at MoMa a few years back and was oddly riveted to the screen for the entirety of the aforementioned 45 minutes.  I could hear people grumble in the background behind me (I of course was front and center) and I heard several get up and leave in what I must assume is frustration, but my eyes stayed glued to that strangely mesmerizing screen.  Granted, this is not a film I will likely revisit on many occasions, which is why it does not make the list, but it is still a fascinating experimental work that needs to be made mention of. 

A Few Runners-Up (in no particular order) - Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort; Miklós Jancsó's The Red and the White; John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye; Jean-Piere Melville's Le Samourai; D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back; Glauber Rocha's Terra em Transe; Luchino Visconti's The Stranger; Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood; Vigot Sjoman's infamous I Am Curious (Yellow) and Mark Robson's Valley of the Dolls (yeah, that's right).

The Dangerous Beauty of Nick Ray - Part 2

The following is Part 2 of my humble contribution to Cinema Viewfinder's Nicholas Ray Blogathon.  Part 1 can be seen HERE.  And please take heed for there is bound to be a spoiler or two hidden away somewhere in the following post (in case you are wary of such things).  Ye have been warned.

When Nick Ray's fourth wife, Susan Ray, nee Schwartz, first came to work for the director at the tender (and quite naive) age of just eighteen (Ray was 56 at the time), she described the experience as thus: "Nick's place was all movement, a dense buzz of people with jobs to do.  The living room was the work room with couch, projector, and amassed on the floor, orderly piles of batteries, recorders, cases, lamps, gels, spools, reels, and tins around which feet stepped and heads met to talk.  Eyeing the scene with the majesty of a sunning reptile, a black camera poised on a tripod.  And groggy but perfectly easy in eyepatch and leopard-spotted bikini, there was Nick.  He prowled through the room, mumbling directions through a French cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth.  I could not hear the words, but his voice rumbled up from some startling depth like the purr from the belly of a great cat."  With a Hunter S. Thompson-like approach (yeah, I know Ray came first) Nicholas Ray was, is and always will be cinema.  Welcome to The Dangerous Beauty of Nick Ray - Part 2.  Let us continue.

After making what this critic (and huge Nick Ray fan) calls not only one of the greatest westerns ever made, but one of the best films ever made with Johnny Guitar, Ray would take another stab at the genre with the James Cagney vehicle Run For Cover.  Usually forgotten when the topic of great westerns comes around, Run For Cover is actually a rather enjoyable film, and even though it doesn't have the audacious bravura of Johnny Guitar, it is a terse western with the capability of random acts of explosive action.  Of course a lot of this has to do with Cagney (in a part that is well-suited for his unique talents) being Cagney.  The film also stars John Derek in his second film with Ray.  However, no matter how good Run For Cover was (it is one of those "fun" westerns, the kind you do not need to invest much thought into but which is slyly intelligent) it will never go down as the best Nicholas Ray film of 1955, for this is the year the director would make and release the iconic classic of teen rebellion, Rebel Without A Cause.

Released just shy of a month after the tragic death of its star, James Dean of course, Rebel Without A Cause easily acts as the very epitome of the teen angst movie that came into vogue in the 1950's.  With its vivid use of colour and swirling camera angles, not to mention one of the greatest performances to ever be put onto film, as well as its risque look at family and teen life at the time, Rebel stands as an historical marker in the era of cinema.  A groundbreaking work (and this is a description not just given out by me), Rebel took a hard look at the moral decay of society and this more than frightened a lot of the American populace.  Dean has come to symbolize the character of troubled youth (his final words before his fateful crash were "they see us.") and because of his early death (Dean was just 25 and had only three feature films to his credit - only one of which the late actor ever got to see) has become an iconic figure on the level of Marilyn and Elvis.  This should never hide the fact though (and it often does), that James Dean was a great actor.

Born of the Actor's Studio and an early proponent of the Method (others such as Rod Steiger, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and even Marilyn herself were also of this school) Dean was often "let loose" by Ray and allowed to improvise on camera (the entire opening of Rebel is an improvisation by Dean).  This of course could become very old very quickly for Dean's fellow thespians, but any complaints the other actors had were shrugged off by Ray.  Upon seeing the finished product (Ray's sixth masterpiece by the way) one has no doubt that Ray was right to allow Dean such freedoms.  Now one certainly cannot predict what would have become of Dean if he had lived and gone on acting - I like to think he would have had a Brando-esque career - but judged upon just his three films alone (East of Eden, Rebel and Giant) and the performances each director (Kazan, Ray and Stevens respectively) got out of Dean, one knows his place in cinematic history is indeed assured.

But Dean wasn't alone up there on Ray's CinemaScope screen.  Costars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo need a bit of mention as well.  Sal Mineo, who was stabbed to death at 37, played Plato, the younger boy who for lack of a better term, falls in love with Dean's Jim Stark character.  Becoming like a son (in many ways) to Jim and Judy (Wood's character) the interactions can be seen just as much father-son as wouldbe lovers.  Many critics have read the film as such, and considering both Dean and Ray were rumoured to be bisexual, and Mineo actually did come out of the closet in the 1960's, this probably is as fair an assessment as any other.  And then there is Natalie Wood.  One of the great unsung actresses of her day (Harvard has unfairly named their worst actress award that they give out each year, the Natalie Wood), and who also died rather young (at 43 and under mysterious circumstances), almost did not get the part.  Thought of as too "clean" for the role, Ray was not going to hire her until she got into a car accident after a night of drinking (she was just sixteen at the time) and overheard her doctor calling her a "Goddamned juvenile delinquent" - Natalie would reply, "Did you hear that Nick?  I'm a Goddamned juvenile delinquent.  Now do I get the part?"  She did (as well as a brief affair with her director) and the rest as they say, is history.

Next up for Ray would be the silly yet quite fun quasi-musical romp Hot Blood.  The film stars Jane Russell as a conniving Gypsy woman who, along with her father and brother, plans on agreeing to marry a young Gypsy big wig only to run off with the cash that has been paid her as is tradition (or at least they say it is tradition).  The problem is Russell's vagabond marriage thief decides she is tired of running and goes through with the marriage (to the shocked face of her new husband who had earlier found out and agreed to go along in order to be free of his older brother's familial control).  A succulent film in every way, Hot Blood may not be a masterpiece, but it is surely up there in the Ray oeuvre.

Ray's next film however would be a masterpiece (the director's seventh and sadly final masterpiece).  Bigger Than Life, starring the bigger than life James Mason as a relatively well-adjusted professor who upon receiving the then experimental drug Cortisone for his frequent blackouts, becoming a controlling megalomaniac, tormenting all those around him, the film is a psychological Grand Guignol of cinema.  Using heavy shadows and low angles to make Mason even more ominous than the already quite intimidating actor is, Ray turned this story, based on a New Yorker article about the new drug, into a spectacle of raw, anxious, overwhelming beauty.  A dangerous beauty that Nick Ray did oh so well.  Now Bigger Than Life is more than just a Nicholas Ray film - it is a James Mason film.  Only three times in Ray's oeuvre do we see a performance that manages to outshine even Ray's mastery of the medium.  First there was Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar, then there was James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, and now there is James Mason in Bigger Than Life.

Now I did say that Bigger Than Life would be Ray's final masterpiece, but that should by no means infer that the audacious auteur ceased making great films - for he still had a few left in him by the end of 1956.  The first of these so-called "latter day" works was actually a film Ray had filmed prior to Bigger Than Life (just after completion of Rebel actually).  It was his third western (fourth if one were to count The Lusty Men) and it was called, and rather boldly one might add, The True Story of Jesse James.  Speculative forces claim that if James Dean had not died, Ray would have cast him as the iconic outlaw - a wild child role that would have been perfect for Dean.  Ray had tried to cast Elvis Presley in the role (just after he finished filming his debut film, Love Me Tender) but eventually the role went to Robert Wagner, who ate up the role - well as much as Robert Wagner can eat up a role.

Next up for Ray would be Bitter Victory, a war film starring Richard Burton and Curd Jurgens.  Caught in a CinemaScope desert battleground - seeming visually to be more dreamlike and surreal than anything else Ray had done - these two officers, one married to the other one's lover, must fight not just the enemy but the morality of their own selves.  Probably Ray's most introspective work, it gets the job done even if at times it feels a bit full of itself.  Ray would follow up his psychological war film with a strange little ditty called Wind Across the Everglades.  Shot on location and set at the turn of last century, it is the story of a young buck nature conservationist (played by Christopher Plummer in only his second picture and his first leading role) who must fight the Heart of Darkness-like gang of bird poachers hidden away in their swampy hideaway.  Led by the rough and tumble Cottonmouth, played with giddy delight by Burl Ives (and yes, Burl Ives can be rough and tumble) and featuring among others, Peter Falk in his film debut and circus clown Emmett Kelly (not playing a clown).  The film is a fun film to watch, even if it isn't quite up to Ray's usual standards.  In the end though, Ray was fired by the studio and was unable to finish his film.

Moving on, Ray made Party Girl with Cyd Charisse, Robert Taylor, Lee J. Cobb and John Ireland.  The story is really just standard stuff - party girl Charisse is tired of the life and falls for mob lawyer Taylor who in turn decides he is tired of the life as well and decides to get out, only mob boss Cobb and gangster Ireland have different plans - but Ray was able to twist and turn the film into something a bit more special.  Charisse's performance, though cliche'd, is highlighted by two dance numbers (how can you have Cyd Charisse in a movie and not have her dance?).  Taylor, whose character is loosely based on Dixie Davis, real life mob lawyer to Dutch Schultz, fares better, but it is Cobb and his wild beast performance that steals the show (well, except for when Charisse's legs are involved).  A beautiful picture, one of Ray's best-looking works.

Next up would be The Savage Innocents, a much-maligned film about an Inuk the Eskimo and his search for a better life for his new wife and soon-to-be born son.  The casting of Mexican actor Anthony Quinn as Inuk, though racist in a way (though more in casting than in performance), was not so out-of-the ordinary back in 1960.  After all, this was just four years after the world watched in horror as John Wayne "played" Genghis Khan - and anyway, Quinn played everyone from Italians to Spaniards to Zorba the Freakin' Greek.  If one is to be honest though, one would have to say they love this film.  Beautifully shot (even within the shots that are obvious soundstage work) and quite enjoyable throughout (we also get to see a young Peter O'Toole who asked his name be taken off due to his voice being dubbed without his permission).  If one were to name his guilty pleasure movies (though I feel no guilt) one would have to put The Savage Innocents on said list.  The film does have at least one other fan, as Bob Dylan, after seeing the film, wrote "Quinn the Eskimo".

Ray's next project would be, of all things, a Biblical epic.  King of Kings, the story of Jesus Christ as played by the mesmerizing eyes of Jeffrey Hunter (though I will always remember him as Captain Christopher Pike on the original Star Trek - yeah, I am one of those people), is a sprawling historical motion picture, unlike anything Ray had done before, and though panned initially, has received a cult following of sorts.  Featuring a young Rip Torn as the infamous Judas Iscariot and Ray pal Robert Ryan as John the Baptist, the film easily blends Biblical tales of miracles and inspiration with a more personal story of faith and belief - and Salome's dance ain't half bad either.  An interesting film history anecdote about King of Kings is the fact that it is the first big-budget, major studio sound film in English to actually show the face of Christ.  Of course with the face of Jeffrey Hunter being shown, his youthful looks (though he was 33 at the time) led people to begin referring to the film as I Was A Teenage Jesus.  However you want to look at it, it is a good, though not great film.

Then would come 1963 and 55 Days at Peking, with Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and David Niven.  55 Days at Peking is easily Ray's least interesting film and the closest the director ever came to making a bad motion picture (more mediocre then bad actually).  Ray was a tortured individual at the time of the production, somewhat akin to the Dean persona he helped to create for Rebel. Paid a very high salary by producer Samuel Bronston to direct the film, Ray had an inkling that taking on the project would mean the end of him and that he would never direct another film again. The premonition proved correct when Ray collapsed on the set, half-way through the shooting. Unable to resume working (the film was finished by Andrew Marton and Guy Green), he never received another directorial assignment.

This doesn't mean Ray stopped being a part of cinema though.  The director would eventually take a job teaching at Harpur College of Arts and Sciences (a job he got through Dennis Hopper) and while there help produce an experimental film with his students called We Can't Go Home Again.  Shortly before the great director's death in 1979 (due to lung cancer) he would collaborate on Lightning Over Water with Wim Wenders.  As Godard said, Nicholas Ray is cinema, and even though he could, as the aforementioned experimental student film attests to, never go home again, his films will live on as an integral part of that very same cinema.  Nicholas Ray is indeed Cinema - with a capital C.

More pieces on Nick Ray can be found at the following links: Johnny Guitar / Bigger Than Life / The Lusty Men

The Sultry, Sophisticated Suburban Affairs of Kirk Douglas & Kim Novak in Strangers When We Meet

In those days of burgeoning openness, when the Hollywood studio system and its all-too-strict production code were beginning to break apart and crumble before our very filmgoing eyes, the American movie industry began to loosen its belt so to speak and start making more sophisticated, sexually speaking, fare.  With a frank boldness to sexuality that had not been seen in Hollywood since the Pre-Code era (and era that abruptly ended in 1934 with the enforcement of the up-til-then neglected Hays Code) many filmmakers began to test the boundaries of what they could get away with.  Billy Wilder was one of the most bold of these directors, making films such as Some Like it Hot, The Apartment and Kiss Me Stupid, all of which took a more mature look at the sex habits of America than almost any other films around.  While Wilder, along with director's such as Sidney Lumet, Otto Preminger and of course Douglas Sirk, the master of the melodrama, were cracking the code, smaller films and filmmakers were also reaping the rewards of a freer filmmaking community.  One of these lesser-known qualities was Richard Quine and his sexy 1960 melodrama Strangers When We Meet.

Strangers When We Meet is the story of a married architect (Kirk Douglas in one of his best, if highly unknown roles) who begins an affair with the beautiful married housewife down the lane (Kim Novak being, well...she's Kim Novak, what else need be said).  Taking on mature themes in a very matter-of-fact manner for the time, Quine's extramarital lovers seem all the more real because of this loosening of the proverbial censorship noose.  Douglas, usually playing characters who are tightly wound, ready-to-explode types, here plays the cool, calm pursuer while Novak is the questioning, uptight, albeit often willing one, afraid to commit to an affair even though deep inside she wants to be the taken woman (a character trait that becomes even more intense when she lets loose with a secret from her possibly sordid past).

Variety had originally said of the film, "It is a rather pointless, slow-moving story, but it has been brought to the screen with such skill that it charms the spectator into an attitude of relaxed enjoyment, much the same effect as that produced by a casual daydream fantasy."  This is obviously quite the back-handed (semi)compliment but the metaphor of casual daydream fantasy works as the perfect descriptive.  Quine's melancholy camera and his use of colour and the way he subtly manipulates the widescreen image plays out like a fantasy.  One shot in particular, near the end of the film, as we see Douglas and Novak haloed by the sunset (a very metaphor-fueled sunset of course), makes this idea of casual daydream fantasy a visual reality.  Whether one still considers it rather pointless is a matter of taste.  Poor taste perhaps, but a matter of taste nonetheless (he said with snarky glee).

Actually the film is quite the soap opera, and one must surely be a fan of the melodrama in order to fully appreciate its kitschy charm and rather sordid, sophisticated themes.  Lucky for me I am one of those aforementioned fans of the melodrama genre, so it works out just fine.  The thing that really kicks it in gear though, other than Quine's way around the camera (the director is usually far from the auteur but here he works well) is the acting of the principal players.  Douglas, in probably one of his five best performances (and probably his most understated) is the classic yet contemporary leading man and plays it with his usual cockeyed charm (a charm that often comes off as cheesy in many roles - making the actor just as often seem less than what he really is).  Then there is Kim Novak (who was engaged to the director at the time of filming and would act the prima donna on set) - the epitome of cold-hearted heartthrob.  That woman you want but know it will never end well (just ask Scottie in Vertigo - but perhaps that is more his doing than hers).

Novak's original persona in cinema was that of a good girl but as her career moved on she grew into a deeper, chillier character - but even when she played a vixen, which I suppose she sort of does here (or at least a reluctant vixen), it was one of a seemingly clean demeanor.  Sultry but with a persona of apparent innocence.  Critic Stanley Kauffmann called this way of carrying herself and her character as an "unvaried strangulated hush" - that is certainly enough to get bored architect Kirk Douglas' blood a-boiling.  And speaking of blood boiling, this is not just the Kirk & Kim show.   There are stellar performances by beautiful, sensitive Barbara Rush as Douglas' dutiful wife, comic Ernie Kovacs as a hot-headed, womanizing novelist client of Douglas, and Walter Matthau as a prim and proper neighbour who eventually becomes entangled in the film's ever-deceptive web.  In the end, it is all a sultry, sophisticated suburban affair.

Welcome to Mr. Roman Polanski's Giddily Demented World of Sex and Fangs: The Fearless Vampire Killers

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #18: Roman Polanski.

In reality, or at least in the reality of cinema (which let's face it, is the only reality we truly care about here), they really aren't all the fearless after all.  More like inept but lucky, but then The Inept but Lucky Vampire Killers isn't that great of a title.  And speaking of titles (as I wander off into an aside that will probably happen with a bit of frequency throughout the next few paragraphs) how is this for a title - The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck.  Actually director Roman Polanski was very displeased with the title and subtitle given his film by the studio (his original title was Dance of the Vampires), but its irreverent nature does fit with the style of the movie itself. But enough of the title - let's get to the sex!

Actually the sex, or at least the sexuality comes from Polanski's then wife, the drop dead gorgeous Sharon Tate.  But before we get to the lovely and tragic Miss Tate, perhaps a little background on the film.  Coming on the heels of Repulsion and Cul-de-sac, Polanski was able to procure a large budget for his film and it shows in the lavish costumes and set design of the film.  This would also be the director's first film shot in colour and in the widescreen aspect of 2.35:1.  With its snow-covered, fairy-tale landscapes and textured, Chagall-esque moonlit-winter-blue color scheme, the film is a visual wonder - almost as if one had somehow fallen deep into the interior of a giant snow globe.  Well, a snow globe with vampires of course.  It is this magical looking world that makes the film work on much more than just the farce the studio was marketing it as.

The films stars the director himself as the younger of the titular duo (the elder being played by stage actor Jack MacGowran) who has come to this small remote mountain village in search of...well, you guessed it, vampires.  After checking in to the village inn and getting the proverbial cold shoulder from the villagers when inquiring about any strange behaviour, the innkeeper's beautiful daughter (the aforementioned Miss Tate) is abducted by a vampire, and the hunt is on.  Of course our somewhat bumbling yet intrepid hero Alfred (Polanski) has fallen head over heels for the lovely Sarah (Tate) and he breaches the vampire's castle to get her back.  Meanwhile, Sarah, who may be a lot prettier than she is smart, plays the purring tease as the stakes of their situation grow higher and higher.  And yes, the stake comment was a very much intended pun.

Anyway, without much further ado (other than a few chase scenes through the castle, the vampire's fanged son's futile attempt at seducing the bewildered Alfred and a buttload of visiting vampires) we come to the final set piece of the film - the dance of the vampires (remember that title?).  This finale plays, in a way, like the finale in An American in Paris and showcases an elegant yet giddily terrifying danse macabre minuet.  It is the gorgeous set piece that finishes an already quite visually succulent work of cinematic art.  It is here that Alfred, Sarah and the Professor (MacGowran) must attempt their escape from the dread that awaits them.  Add to this a great trick ending (though one surely sees such a trick coming, it is still a fun trick) and you have Roman Polanski's horror-comedy treat, The Fearless Vampire Killers (no subtitle, no matter how fun, is needed).

With elements of Kafka throughout, and Polanski's unique sense of humour (after a Jewish character is turned into a vampire someone comes at them with a cross and he laughs, saying"Oy vey, have you got the wrong vampire.") The Fearless Vampire Killers is a great blend of pantomime, dark humour, self-referential moments (the MGM's iconic Leo has been transformed into a greenish fanged ghoul) and Hammer-style horror.  His cinematographer, Douglas Slocombe, was quoted by Ivan Butler in his book, The Cinema of Roman Polanski, as saying, "I think he (Roman) put more of himself into Dance of the Vampires than into another film. It brought to light the fairy-tale interest that he has. One was conscious all along when making the picture of a Central European background to the story. Very few of the crew could see anything in it - they thought it old-fashioned nonsense. But I could see this background....I have a French background myself, and could sense the Central European atmosphere that surrounds it. The figure of Alfred is very much like Roman himself - a slight figure, young and a little defenseless - a touch of Kafka. It is very much a personal statement of his own humour. He used to chuckle all the way through."

And then there is Sharon Tate.  Miss Tate gives the film an alluring sex appeal not just with her looks, which were to die for, but with the way she would slink about like an innocent cat ready to pounce.  But it would be just a few years away when tragedy would strike.  More specifically on the night of August 9, 1969.  This would be the night that an eight-month pregnant Sharon Tate, along with her guests, were brutally slaughtered by the Manson Family.  After this, Polanski's films would turn dark (the first film the director made after the murders is considered to be the bloodiest Macbeth ever put on film) and even though he would go on to make one the best films ever, 1974's Chinatown, the rest of career has been all hit or miss.  His own personal life would eventually unravel with an arrest for rape and a guilty verdict in absentia as the director flees back to Europe, but then this is not the time nor the place to discuss such devisive tabloid tales, so let us finish by saying that even with the studio's attempt at turning the film into a kooky farce, The Fearless Vampire Killers remains to this day one of Polanski's best and most colourful cinematic works.

Upon Turning 44 Today, My Top 10 List for the Year of My Birth

Yes true believers, your humble narrator is 44 today.  Born in the so-called Summer of Love (conceived in the Winter of Our Discontent) this seems to be as good a time as any to talk about the films of that long ago year and give the readers my choices for the ten best films of said year.  Actually any time is a good time to concoct a movie list - the birthday celebration just gives it a bit more legitimacy.   So without further ado, here are my choices for the ten best films of 1967.

1. Bonnie and Clyde

One of the first films I ever saw (probably around sixteen in a high school film class) that made me think perhaps that this thing called cinema had more to it than what one saw on the shiny surface.  Brilliant and subversive (and unbeknownst to my still uneducated mind at the time, one of the most important films that would revolutionize American cinema) there was something about this film that got me all quivery inside.  Perhaps it was Faye Dunaway and her sexy, brazen comehitherness, perhaps it was Warren Beatty and his rebellious anti-hero image, perhaps it was the violence that was like none I had seen at the time - whatever the case, the film has haunted me from the beginning as much as it still does today.  Not only the best film of 1967 but one of the ten greatest films ever made.

2. Playtime

Ever since seeing M. Hulot's Holiday, Jacques Tati's bumbling yet dapper Mr. Hulot has always been a favourite character of mine.  With each subsequent adventure, Tati places his intrepid hero and alter-ego into a more and more modernist nightmares of dangerous gadgets and disgruntled gadflies.  The pinnacle of this almost dystopian comic effect (in the most fun and giddy un-dystopian way of course) is the film Playtime.  Hulot let loose on a modern society way ahead of his own old fashioned comprehension is a hoot to watch as they say.  And the gags - the ones that have come to define Tati's bumbling alter-ego over the course of half a dozen films, are as sharp-witted as any dialogue anyone would attempt in such a film.  I suppose it all ends up being a screwball comedy of pantomime.  Genius.

3. The Graduate

A cinematic sign of its deeply disenfranchised times, Mike Nichols paean to teenage disillusionment, and the film that made stars out of both Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross (one's stardom has held up a bit better), is a deadpan comedic look at the youth in America not only at this quite turbulent time, but I believe the youth of all generations that have come after it.  Sort of the grandaddy of Mumblecore in a way (but don't hold that against it) The Graduate has passed the test of time and is still loved by the even more disillusioned (and quite a bit more jaded and quite  a bit less innocent) youth of this post-9/11 world we live in now.  Plus how can you beat that soundtrack?

4. Week-end

This was actually the first Godard I had ever seen (yes, even before Breathless) and I was immediately taken in by the Nouvelle Vague auteur's use of colour as well as his way of using the camera to as full effect as possible - and then taking it further.  Many consider this to be the director's final film of his so-called early days (I mean if you are going to call it a New Wave, it has to end sometime lest it become an Old Wave again) and thus it is a dividing point between Godard's early ultra-cinematic pieces and his later more essayaic pieces.  It is this more visually cinematic earlier period which I like the best and Week-end was a great introduction to it indeed.  Brash, bold and without reservations, Week-end is Godard at his visual apex.

5. Belle de Jour

Sexy, stunning and scary as hell.  These adjectives can be used to describe either star Catherine Deneuve, the film itself or in a strange kinda way, the entire oeuvre of director Luis Bunuel.   The story of a young wife who takes up the art of prostitution one day, Belle de Jour is more than meets the eye.  Taking on, as Bunuel is apt to do, the morality of society, pitting the bourgeois against the proletariat but never in the way one would expect a semi-surrealist, anarchist auteur to do, the film has been hailed as both a brilliant masterpiece and panned as a pretentious bore.  Why can't it be both in a way?  Probably a bit beyond my rather naive grasp when I first saw the film (around eighteen but still quite innocent in mind) it has however grown deeply into my psyche.  And then you have Deneuve - ooh la la indeed.

6. Point Blank

Let's face it, Lee Marvin was the epitome of cool in his day and that assessment is no different in John Boorman's gangster exercise in cool cinema, Point Blank (incidentally the first film to be shot on location on Alcatraz after the prison's 1963 closing).  Marvin is tough as nails and love interest Angie Dickinson has never looked better.  Throw in Keenan Wynn and a wonderful turn from Carroll O'Conner (the man could do more than Archie Bunker ya know) and Point Blank just gets cooler and cooler and tougher and tougher.  How tough was Marvin you ask - so tough that when he and John Vernon were practicing a fight scene, Marvin hit Vernon so hard that Vernon fell to the floor crying.  'nuff said.

7. Wait Until Dark

I first saw this film in a film class I took in my senior year of high school.  Dissecting the film piece by piece in class (I had never done such a thing before) one could see the many layers that were going on in Terence Young's superb psychological thriller.  Still to this day, when I am watching the film and I see the demented Alan Arkin tormenting the seemingly helpless blind damsel-in-distress Audrey Hepburn, I feel a twinge of fear for the poor girl trapped in the dark,, I can feel her terror as this brutal and unknown force terrorizes her, even though I know full well she's going to wind up the victor in the end - and Arkin will get his much-deserved comeuppance.

8. Terra em Transe

This brilliantly subversive film was one of the highlights of the Cinema Novo, or Brazilian New Wave of the 1960's.  Directed by one of the movement's brightest talents, Glauber Rocha, the film is a look at the political and social turmoil going on in the hypothetical Latin-American country of Eldorado (which of course could stand in for just about any country in that part of the world at that time in history).  Rocha's unique sense of filmic timing and the way his camera's eye roves and weaves and delves into every nook and cranny of screen space, along with his obvious political bent and skills as a social satirist make for a movie that works as a blend of rousing satiric adventure and sardonic art film.

9. Mouchette

Along with Au hasard Balthazar the year before, this is Robert Bresson at his sentimental best.  A jarring and dangerous film (as is per usual with a filmmaker such as Bresson) about the tragic life of a young girl, Mouchette still manages to reach out from such pyschosexual depths with an undercurrent of strangely esoteric humanism.  I first saw this film (having seen just three Bresson's prior) after seeing it referenced in Bertolucci's The Dreamers and this drama of faith helped to solidify my already growing worship of the French auteur.  Someone once said that to not get Bresson is to not get cinema, and they may very well be true - even in what is probably one of the director's least cinematic films (and no, I do not mean that as an insult).

10. The Fearless Vampire Killers

This Roman Polanski comedy-thriller's full title, a la Dr. Strangelove, is The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck - how can one go wrong with that.  Sardonic, with more than a touch of that classic Polanski humour (and featuring the director's wife Sharon Tate in one of her final roles before that brutal night in the summer of 1969), this film is a multi-layered romp of devilish delights.  Starring the elfin director himself in one of the title roles (years before any tabloid headlines would creep their way into his world) this may be one of the un-scariest vampire movies ever made, but still it has a comic sense of dread that is palpable throughout its strangely partially-pantomimed two hours.

Special Mention: Wavelength

Experimental filmmaking icon Michael Snow's Wavelength consists of one shot (basically) that lasts for 45 minutes.  As time goes on, the camera edges, ever-so-slowly from one end of what appears to be a mostly empty warehouse to a picture hanging on its far wall.  Seriously, that is it.  Sure, the colour will fluctuate and every once and a while someone will walk into and out of the shot, but basically that is all it is.  I saw this film at MoMa a few years back and was oddly riveted to the screen for the entirety of the aforementioned 45 minutes.  I could hear people grumble in the background behind me (I of course was front and center) and several get up and leave in what I must assume is frustration, but my eyes stayed glued to that strangely mesmerizing screen.  Granted, this is not a film I will likely revisit on many occasions, which is why it does not make the list, but it is still a fascinating experimental work that needs to be made mention of.

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A few films that did not make the list but can serve as runners-up (in no particular order) are: Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort; John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye; Melville's Le Samourai; Pennebaker's Don't Look Back; Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood and Vigot Sjoman's infamous I Am Curious (Yellow).

And then, as is always the case, there are those films that I have yet to see, but that could realistically take a crack at the top ten.  They are (again in no particular order of preference): Cool Hand Luke; Two for the Road; Ulysses; War and Peace; The Stranger (Visconti) and A Countess From Hong Kong.

Roger Corman's Fancifully Macabre Shakespeare/Poe Amalgam Known as The Tower of London

The following is my contribution to Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear's Roger Corman Blogathon.  There may be spoilers ahead, for those who care about such things.

When one thinks Roger Corman one thinks invariably about the hundreds of cheaply-manufactured B-movies the man directed and produced.  Sure, he is responsible for much of the transformation from the old studio era Hollywood into the more director-driven Hollywood of the seventies and early eighties (before it was sadly killed off by the age of the blockbuster!) and for giving first breaks to such future directorial luminaries as Coppola, Scorsese and Bogdanovich - and should be applauded for such - but still, when the name Roger Corman comes up (for those who have even heard of the man - and sadly there are many who have not) the visions of sea monsters and deformed ghouls and insectoid women spring immediately to mind.

Is this fair?  Is it accurate?  Is it inevitable?  One can probably answer yes on all three counts, but by no means should this be looked upon as something to be ashamed of.  Even being the film snob I most likely am (at least toward some things) I have had numerous hours of fun watching some really hokey B-movies.  From those early Warners gangster movies to the tentacle-writhing works of the infamous Ed Wood to the macabre messes of Corman's oeuvre to the dark and sinister films of Bava and the Giallo movement of the seventies to the Grindhouse so loved by one of my own idols Quentin Tarantino.  Perhaps these films will never make any respectable Top 10 Lists (then again, perhaps some will) but many of them are great fun indeed.

The funny, and quite ironic thing about Corman's 1962 film Tower of London is, even though it is assuredly of B-movie stock, it is a very well made film indeed.  Being a remake of the Rowland V. Lee directed 1939 film of the same name which starred Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff (and of which Corman has usurped footage of to add to his film's final battle scenes), Corman's updated version leans, of course, more heavily on the macabre parts of the story.  The film stars the always enjoyable, and always giddily chilling Vincent Price as the evil-minded Richard, Duke of Glouchester and eventual King Richard III.  This is an inspired bit of casting due to the fact that Price had a supporting role in the original 1939 version.  It is also inspired because who other than Price could pull off such a crazed kooky role as this.

Inspired in its storyline by Shakespeare's Richard III but also inspired by the style of the Poe adaptations Vincent Price was already part of (and would do more of again), Corman's film is a giddy macabre delight.  Done on the lowest of budget's of course, Corman gives us one of his richest, most visually textured and most psychologically layered films.  Reaching above the B-label, Tower of London is a frightfully good yarn.  Perhaps stiff at times (some of the actors are downright wooden) it is Price and his unique ability to give any production a sense of creepy dread while maintaining the most steadfast of respectable acting.  Only Boris Karloff was able to do this as successfully as Price in this genre.

Fun to watch (some Corman directed movies are far from a good time had by all) Tower of London is the story of a dying king, his gallant brother who he bequeaths guardianship of his children to (including the one who would be king) and his other brother, the hump-backed bitter Richard.  In Price's Richard we are shown a man who has been tormented his whole life, made to feel inferior to his brothers and even shunned by his own mother.  It is one of Price's juicier roles and one of his better performances.  Corman uses Prices already famed sense of actorly dread to make his film all the more ghoulish.  Perhaps the scenes with the ghosts are rather cheap looking, but the black and white cinematography helps make these work.  This may not be what most call great cinema (though Corman has made a handful of films as director that could be called such) but it certainly is what most should call fun cinema.

But above all the great Vincent Price, acting as hammy as anything he has ever done (and chewing enough scenery to fill the biggest of bellies) makes it all work as well as it does - and it does work surprisingly well.  Done straight, this film may seem more tired, but done in that infamous Vincent Price manner, the film is a delightfully gleeful B-movie horror schlock thingee well worth one's most precious time.

The Sadly Neglected Beauty of Keisuke Kinoshita's River Fuefuki

If you think classic era Japanese filmmakers such as Kenji Mizoguchi or Mikio Naruse are underrated masters that (until recently) have never gotten the respect (outside of their home country) often reserved for Kurosawa and Ozu, then the fateful, undeserved obscurity of compatriot Keisuke Kinoshita will blow off your proverbial socks.  Directing 42 films in the first 23 years of his career (before slowing down to a Terrence Malick-like pace for the remainder), Kinoshita was not only an amazingly prolific filmmaker, but also a creative artist that can easily stand toe to toe with any of the aforementioned classic Japanese Cinema masters.  A creative artist - an auteur if you will - who should be more well known in the West.

With each successive film of Kinoshita's that I see (and I just discovered him this past month thanks to Film Forum's Japanese Divas series) I fall more and more in cinematic love with him, and I think that The River Fuefuki (Fuefukigawa in transliterated Japanese) is the be all and end all of that love - the artistic climax if you will.  Made in 1960, just two years after The Ballad of Narayama (along with Twenty-Four Eyes, probably the director's best known work), The River Fuefuki is the epic story of one family and the turmoil of the lives throughout seventy-plus years of war and torment in what was known as the Sengoku Period (or Period of Warring States).  Seeing each generation succumb to the siren call of war (there are no less than a dozen and a half of battles throughout the story) while the elders lament what could have been, the film plays as great, almost Shakespearean tragedy.  Of course Kinoshita has I am sure, more Japanese classics in mind, but since I am not very familiar with these, allow me to compare it to the tales of Shakespeare's histories.

What really makes The River Fuefuki pop though is not the story - though the way it is told and those portraying these parts are all very riveting in their own right.  What really makes the film stand out is Kinoshita's filming technique.  Sort of comparable to one of Kurosawa's Jideigeki films, if it were made by the likes of a Dario Argento or even a Godard.  Always one to experiment with new visions, Kinoshita is easily the most stylized director of all the Japanese Masters, and is at least just as visually innovative if not more so (though in a more classically elegant way) than any of the New Wavers that came after him.  This kind of stylization in filmmaking may not be for everyone's tastes (the likes of other super stylists like Seijun Suzuki or Nobuhiki Obayashi or even their American blood brother Quentin Tarantino are surely an acquired taste to say the least - a taste I happen to quite enjoy) but Kinoshita was still extremely popular, both critically and financially, in his time.  It is still sad to think how completely unknown he is today in world cinema.

But it is this super stylization that makes Kinoshita's films work as well as they do - and in turn makes me fall deeper and deeper in love with the auteur's oeuvre with each new viewing.  His work with the bright garish primary colours of Carmen Comes Home (made in Fujicolor in 1951, it was Japan's first colour film), his manic, tilting camera in the sequel, Carmen's Pure Love, his use of mood-changing hues in The Ballad of Narayama, the back-and-forth bifractured storytelling of The Tragedy of Japan.  These things are what make Kinoshita such an alluring filmmaker - and in The River Fuefuki, it is no different.  Shot in crisp black and white, Kinoshita swathes the canvas with swooshes of colour (better seen than described - just take a look at the stills that still do not do this film the justice it deserves on the big screen).  The director's use of colour and his way of freezing shots in mid-battle and his use of ghostly imagery make him possibly my favourite director of the moment - a position held by Andrei Tarkovsky, Nicholas Ray, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch and William Wellman when I first discovered them.  Seriously, I sat there in the theater and was completely mesmerized by Kinoshita's visuals while being emotionally jarred by what was going on in and around them.

Perhaps a Kinoshita retrospective will come about soon (any potential organizers please note that I am always open to lending a helping hand) and these films, just like the rediscovery of Naruse a few years ago, will finally get the respect and adoration they deserve.  Kinoshita certainly deserves the accolades that Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and (more recently) Naruse have gotten from the West.  Incidentally, in 1943, with Kinoshita's debut film, The Blossoming Port, the director was awarded the New Director Award - in the same year another director, Akira Kurosawa also made his debut.  I am not trying to dismiss the accomplishments of Kurosawa (he is and will always be one of my all-time favourite directors), I am just trying to put out there the fact that perhaps we need to re-introduce the great, but mostly unheralded (outside of Japan) career of Keisuke Kinoshita.  Just watch any of his myriad of films (so many different genres, so many different styles), especially The River Fuefuki, and you will surely agree with me.  If not, who wants to know you anyway.