Nicholas Ray’s CinemaScope detour into outlaw Americana is yet another sincere artistic effort muffled by studio interference. Ray sought to examine a legend in terms of folklore and celebrity. Fox just wanted a cheap remake of its 1939 hit and undermined the director all the way. It’s a potentially great film marred by clumsy reshoots and re-edits.
The True Story of Jesse James
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date November 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Hope Lange, Agnes Moorehead, Alan Hale Jr., Alan Baxter, John Carradine, Rachel Stephens, Barney Phillips, Biff Elliot, Frank Overton, Barry Atwater, Marian Seldes, Chubby Johnson, Frank Gorshin, Carl Thayler, John Doucette, Ken Clark, Anthony Ray, Gene Roth, Sumner Williams, Carleton Young.
Cinematography: Joe MacDonald
Original Music: Leigh Harline
Written by Walter Newman, based on an earlier screenplay by Nunnally Johnson
Produced by Herbert B. Swope Jr....
The True Story of Jesse James
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date November 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Hope Lange, Agnes Moorehead, Alan Hale Jr., Alan Baxter, John Carradine, Rachel Stephens, Barney Phillips, Biff Elliot, Frank Overton, Barry Atwater, Marian Seldes, Chubby Johnson, Frank Gorshin, Carl Thayler, John Doucette, Ken Clark, Anthony Ray, Gene Roth, Sumner Williams, Carleton Young.
Cinematography: Joe MacDonald
Original Music: Leigh Harline
Written by Walter Newman, based on an earlier screenplay by Nunnally Johnson
Produced by Herbert B. Swope Jr....
- 12/22/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Anthony “Tony” Ray, the actor-producer son of Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray, died June 29 in Saco, Maine, following a long illness, his family has announced. Ray, who lived in Saco for the last 10 years, was 80.
A graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse and a member of the Actor’s Studio, Ray was on the producing teams of such 1970s hits as The Rose, An Unmarried Woman, Harry and Tonto, and Freebie and the Bean. He was an assistant director throughout the 1960s and into the ’70s on TV series The Iron Horse and Bewitched, films Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Cactus Flower, and, according to his family, Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and John Huston’s The Misfits, among other credits.
Ray, who often went by the name Tony Ray, also worked as an actor, his credits starting in 1957 with Men In War and an uncredited appearance in...
A graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse and a member of the Actor’s Studio, Ray was on the producing teams of such 1970s hits as The Rose, An Unmarried Woman, Harry and Tonto, and Freebie and the Bean. He was an assistant director throughout the 1960s and into the ’70s on TV series The Iron Horse and Bewitched, films Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Cactus Flower, and, according to his family, Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and John Huston’s The Misfits, among other credits.
Ray, who often went by the name Tony Ray, also worked as an actor, his credits starting in 1957 with Men In War and an uncredited appearance in...
- 7/20/2018
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
The original Quinn the Eskimo (no kidding) is another life-loving rough portrait from Anthony Quinn, in Nicholas Ray’s rather successful final spin as a writer-director. Despite some technical awkwardness, Ray’s sensitivity to outsider souls finds full expression. Humans don’t get any more ‘outside’ than Inuk, a primitive unequipped to deal with the modern world.
The Savage Innocents
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen (Super Technirama 70) / 110 min. / Street Date June 27, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98
Starring: Anthony Quinn, Yoko Tani, Carlo Giustini, Peter O’Toole, Marie Yang, Marco Guglielmi, Anthony Chinn, Francis De Wolff.
Cinematography: Peter Hennessey, Aldo Tonti
Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma, Ralph Kemplen
Original Music: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino
Written by Nicholas Ray, adapted by Franco Solinas, Baccio Bandini, Hans Ruesch from his novel
Produced by Maleno Malenotti
Directed by Nicholas Ray
It’s arguable that Nicholas Ray’s career began to fall apart as...
The Savage Innocents
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen (Super Technirama 70) / 110 min. / Street Date June 27, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98
Starring: Anthony Quinn, Yoko Tani, Carlo Giustini, Peter O’Toole, Marie Yang, Marco Guglielmi, Anthony Chinn, Francis De Wolff.
Cinematography: Peter Hennessey, Aldo Tonti
Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma, Ralph Kemplen
Original Music: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino
Written by Nicholas Ray, adapted by Franco Solinas, Baccio Bandini, Hans Ruesch from his novel
Produced by Maleno Malenotti
Directed by Nicholas Ray
It’s arguable that Nicholas Ray’s career began to fall apart as...
- 6/27/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Robert Wagner as a social climbing psycho killer? I knew it! 'Mr. CinemaScope Smile' grins only once or twice in this movie, and then only to fool an unsuspecting woman. A great cast brings tension to Ira Levin's outrageous tale of murder. Joanne Woodward has a powerful role, but my heartthrob this time out is lovely Virginia Leith. A Kiss Before Dying Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date May 3, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward, Mary Astor, George Macready, Robert Quarry. Cinematography Lucien Ballard Art Direction Addison Hehr Film Editor George A. Gittens Original Music Lionel Newman Written by Lawrence Roman from a novel by Ira Levin Produced by Robert L. Jacks Directed by Gerd Oswald
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
It's a safe bet that a huge chunk of Americans now identify Robert Wagner as the father of Anthony Dinozzo on TV's NCIS.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
It's a safe bet that a huge chunk of Americans now identify Robert Wagner as the father of Anthony Dinozzo on TV's NCIS.
- 5/7/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
That scarlet woman Ingrid is back from exile, and hypocritical Hollywood is not complaining -- Anatole Litvak and Arthur Laurents make an intriguing romantic-psychological mystery of a bogus Romanoff Duchess who surfaces in 1928 Paris to claim the crown fortune. Good roles for Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes as well. It's a strange intersection of scandal, history and swindlers that may have found the real item... and maybe not. Anastasia Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 105 min. / Ship Date March 15, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, Helen Hayes, Akim Tamiroff, Martita Hunt, Felix Aylmer, Sacha Pitoeff, Ivan Desny, Natalie Schafer, Karel Stepanek Cinematography Jack Hildyard Art Direction Andrej Andrejew, Bill Andrews Film Editor Bert Bates Original Music Alfred Newman Written by Arthur Laurents from a play by Marcelle Maurette Produced by Buddy Adler Directed by Anatole Litvak
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The cleverly written and...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The cleverly written and...
- 3/29/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Rebel Without A Cause
Written by Stewart Stern and Irving Shulman
Directed by Nicholas Ray
USA, 1955
That Rebel Without a Cause was such a success upon its initial 1955 release, and that it still stands as a hugely influential classic of American cinema, is not just a result of James Dean’s most iconic performance, nor is it simply the outcome of director Nicholas Ray’s talents. Why this film is truly a triumph has more to do with how superbly it encapsulates the artistic inclinations of these two particular artists. This is the film Dean and Ray were destined to make. And this was the time to make it.
Ray had been focusing on the outcasts, the rebels, and the loners since his first feature, They Live By Night. This emphasis would continue through In a Lonely Place and Johnny Guitar, before Rebel Without a Cause, and Bigger Than Life,...
Written by Stewart Stern and Irving Shulman
Directed by Nicholas Ray
USA, 1955
That Rebel Without a Cause was such a success upon its initial 1955 release, and that it still stands as a hugely influential classic of American cinema, is not just a result of James Dean’s most iconic performance, nor is it simply the outcome of director Nicholas Ray’s talents. Why this film is truly a triumph has more to do with how superbly it encapsulates the artistic inclinations of these two particular artists. This is the film Dean and Ray were destined to make. And this was the time to make it.
Ray had been focusing on the outcasts, the rebels, and the loners since his first feature, They Live By Night. This emphasis would continue through In a Lonely Place and Johnny Guitar, before Rebel Without a Cause, and Bigger Than Life,...
- 11/8/2013
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
"I felt the past closing around me like a fog, filling me with a nameless fear..."
A cinema tragedy: the phrase can probably best be exemplified by the fact that Charles Laughton directed only one film, and that film is so great that one can only wonder at what we've been deprived of.
Another actor, Martin Gabel, a character thesp with a bulbous head and a genuine talent for playing creeps, likewise directed one film only: the blacklist put paid to his career. The level of tragedy is harder to assess, since Gabel's only movie as director is very good, but not a masterpiece on the level of Night of the Hunter. But The Lost Moment (1947) is mysterious, romantic, atmospheric and altogether intriguing; and if Gabel were set to build on this starting point and improve still further, we may well have been deprived of a truly major cinematic talent.
A cinema tragedy: the phrase can probably best be exemplified by the fact that Charles Laughton directed only one film, and that film is so great that one can only wonder at what we've been deprived of.
Another actor, Martin Gabel, a character thesp with a bulbous head and a genuine talent for playing creeps, likewise directed one film only: the blacklist put paid to his career. The level of tragedy is harder to assess, since Gabel's only movie as director is very good, but not a masterpiece on the level of Night of the Hunter. But The Lost Moment (1947) is mysterious, romantic, atmospheric and altogether intriguing; and if Gabel were set to build on this starting point and improve still further, we may well have been deprived of a truly major cinematic talent.
- 11/21/2012
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Okay, new rule: If you're a filmmaker about to shoot yourself a western, and you've gone to all the trouble of scouting locations, assembling a game cast, shelling out for the costumes, and have then gone and rented a digital camera to shoot it on - and you're name isn't Michael Mann - then stop what you're doing and down tools immediately, because you're undermining all your own efforts and fundamentally wasting your time. To be fair, there aren't many genres that the crisp, polished sheen of Dv will just out-and-out ruin, but the western is certainly one of them.
It's perhaps somewhat indicative of writer/director Fred Olen Ray, who has spent his career flitting back-and-forth between candy coated family films the likes of Invisible Dad, and softcore porn the likes of Genie in a String Bikini. While titles such as those might occupy different ends of the video store,...
It's perhaps somewhat indicative of writer/director Fred Olen Ray, who has spent his career flitting back-and-forth between candy coated family films the likes of Invisible Dad, and softcore porn the likes of Genie in a String Bikini. While titles such as those might occupy different ends of the video store,...
- 5/19/2010
- by Neil Pedley
- JustPressPlay.net
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