Nicholas Ray’s devastating romance noir, “In A Lonely Place,” with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame screens tonight at New York’s Film Forum and kicks-off an excellent Nick Ray retrospective that includes a bunch of films not available on DVD including the awesome Cinemascope triumph, “Bigger Than Life,” starring a tremendously cracked out James Mason and “Johnny Guitar” with Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden (who we all must love and adore for his multiple Stanley Kubrick film appearances alone).
Grahame was married to Nick Ray at the time of ‘Lonely Place’ — a haunting film about a fleeting and disintergrating relationship; a screenwriter wrongly accused of a murder crumbles under the weight of his fragility and insecurities — and they separated and became divorced not long after. Eight years later she then married Ray’s son, Tony and allegedly the director found him in bed with him at the age of 13! Weird, right?
Dude had a crazy life and director Phillip Kaufman wanted to make a film called “Interrupted,” based on his how-to-make movies book, I Was Interrupted. That project was announced in Variety in 2006 and we have no idea what happened to it (anyone? We’d love to see it come to life one day). If you live in New York, consider yourself even a quarter of a cinephile and have never seen this film, you have zero, zero excuse and should feel embarrassed if you do not attend. We hope there’s not that many new screenings next week, cause we’re gonna be at Film Forum 24-7 when the festival kicks off in full-swing starting July 24. Yeah, “Rebel Without A Cause,” was a, blecch, game-changer and it was good and all, but Ray goes much, much deeper.
This appreciation piece is edited by Matt Zoller Seitz (dude, Wes Anderson is not god, sorry) with words and narration by Kim Morgan, adapted from a Sunset Gun post (and found over at Hollywood Elsewhere).