“Bitter Victory” (1957)
On the release of “Bitter Victory” in France in 1958, a French critic who would soon after move into filmmaking himself, Jean-Luc Godard, wrote “There was theater (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray.” Godard was making a wider point beyond just praising Ray, but it does risk raising the expectations for the film a little high. But as long as you go in not expecting something that completely reinvents the wheel, you’ll find an enormously powerful war film that marked the start of a new period of the filmmaker’s career. 1957’s “The True Story Of Jesse James” had marked the end of the director’s contract with 20th Century Fox, and he headed to Europe for his first film shot there, this French/U.S. co-production which adapted a book by René Hardy (a fascinating, controversial figure, a lauded hero of the French Resistance who was persistently accused of betraying compatriots including Jean Moulin to the Nazis). It sees two officers, uptight, inexperienced-in-combat South African Brand (Curt Jürgens) and street-smart Arabic-speaking Leith (Richard Burton) paired on a commando raid in Libya, their mission put at risk by the revelation that Leith had an affair with Brand’s wife (Ruth Roman) before they were married. If Ray thought that there would be more creative freedom now he was working outside the studio system, he was sadly mistaken: producers cut ten minutes from the film, and the complete version was only restored in the last decade. But now it’s available in uncompromised form, it’s clear more than ever what a powerful piece it is, joining the same years’ “Paths Of Glory” in a new wave of looking at the wars of the first half of the 20th century not through a heroic prism, but as battles fought by complex, sometimes terrible people. And though it’s not immediately formally dazzling in the way that you might expect to cause the above praise from Godard, Ray once again shows his mastery of framing men within a landscape in such a way that it essentially bares their souls.
“The Savage Innocents” (1960)
Familiar Ray themes — masculinity, outsiders and outcasts, survival — get a rather different backdrop with this adaptation of “Top Of The World,” a novel by former racing driver Hans Reusch, set among the Inuit people in Canada. The film’s perhaps best known for inspiring Bob Dylan’s “Quinn The Eskimo (Mighty Quinn),” which the singer recorded for The Basement Tapes sessions but ended up going on to be a hit for Manfred Mann, but it’s worth rediscovering for Ray fans, as a strange, sad and beguiling picture that, if it doesn’t quite rank with his very best, is pretty damn close. Anthony Quinn stars as Inuk, a hunter who goes on the run from the police (including Peter O’Toole in his first screen appearance, though the actor took his name off the film after his lines were dubbed) after accidentally killing a missionary, pitting him against not just the elements but against ‘civilization’ too. It’s a film that would undoubtedly be dismissed by some today as problematic, with Greek star Quinn and Japanese actress Yoko Tani as his wife, and an often stereotypical view of Inuit life (including a sour scene where the pair become afraid of evil spirits). But to dismiss it entirely is simple-minded; Ray’s sympathies are entirely with Inuk, taking a quiet, almost anthropological point of view, with the plot, when it arrives, being entirely secondary to the beautifully observed episodes from a life very different to the ones Americans were living in 1960. Indeed, that’s Ray’s main concern, documenting a way of existing that was already severely under threat, and that he sides so firmly against the ‘civilizing’ Christian and forces of law is one of the things that makes the film so interesting, even if the film’s otherwise politically incorrect in its casting and writing. It’s also arguably Ray’s most purely beautiful film in a career full of beautiful work: Italian cinematographer Aldo Tonti (Visconti’s “Ossessione,” Fellini’s “Nights Of Cabiria”) shoots in glorious Technicolor, Cinemascope 70mm, and Ray frames his images in a way that captures the beauty and terror of the Arctic like few others.
“King Of Kings” (1961)
As the Coens’ “Hail Caesar!” reminded us recently, the Biblical epic was the equivalent of the superhero movie across the 1950s, massive prestige blockbusters that were hugely expensive, studded with stars, were usually wildly successful, and were often quite bad. Ray’s entry in the genre, “King Of Kings” came towards the end of the wave, was only moderately successful as a result, and was dismissed by many critics at the time. But it’s a far, far more interesting film than many of its contemporaries, a sober, mature take on the story of Christ that few but Ray could have made. Produced by epic-specialist Samuel Bronston (who’d go on to make “El Cid” and “The Fall Of The Roman Empire”) for MGM, and reteaming Ray with “Johnny Guitar” writer Phillip Yordan, “King Of Kings” differed from films like “Ben Hur” which often shunted Jesus to the sidelines or shied from showing his face. Instead, it puts him front and center, apparently the first English-language film to do so (and not without controversy: Time Magazine essentially called the film blasphemous), with a grounded, historically-minded 170-minute take on the life of Christ, from Pompey conquering Jerusalem to the Ascension. There are occasional moments of spectacle (the thousands of extras in the Sermon on the Mount sequence are impressive), but Ray is much less interested in those than in the politics of the film, making violent revolutionary Barabbas (Harry Guardino) a key part of proceedings, putting debate at its centre and mostly shuffling miracles and suffering, things that would be key elements of other on-screen Jesus pics, off camera. It differs too in its casting: whereas many Biblical pics would feature legions of A-listers, Ray mostly casts unknowns (Robert Ryan and a then-unknown Rip Torn as Judas being the most recognizable faces), with fresh-faced “The Searchers” actor Jeffrey Hunter as Christ. To some, it’s a little too dry and sombre, but up against its competitors, we’ve always appreciated the film’s thoughtfulness and seriousness of purpose, and its ground-eye view on a familiar story.
Not every Ray film is worth seeking out, but there’s lots of interesting work out there beyond the ten above — we’d point to early pic “A Woman’s Secret,” James Cagney starrer “Run For Cover” and later-period noir “Party Girl” with Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse as particularly interesting. His final film proper, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” made in collaboration with his film students in the 1970s, is fascinating too, and any Ray fans should watch “Lightning Over Water,” the documentary about the helmer’s final days, credited to both Ray and his friend Wim Wenders. Any others you like? Argue their case in the comments.