Editing Nicholas Ray (section)

== Directing techniques ==
Ray's directorial style and preoccupations evident in his films have led critics to consider him an [[auteur]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Rosenbaum|first=Jonathan|date=July 2002|title=Ray, Nicholas|url=https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/raynick/|journal=Senses of Cinema|volume=21}}</ref> Further, Ray is considered a central figure in the development of auteur theory itself.  He was often singled out by [[Cahiers du Cinéma|Cahiers du cinéma]] critics who coined the term to designate exemplars (alongside such major figures as [[Alfred Hitchcock]] and [[Howard Hawks]]) of film directors who worked in Hollywood, and whose work had a recognizable and distinctive stamp seen to transcend the standardized industrial system in which they were produced.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Cahiers du Cinéma, The 1950s | editor= Jim Hillier |url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674090613 | series=Harvard Film Studies | date= 1986 | publisher=Harvard University Press | isbn=9780674090613 }}{{page needed | date=November 2023}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lane|first=Anthony|date=March 24, 2003|title=Only the Lonely|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/24/only-the-lonely|journal=New Yorker|volume=79}}</ref> Still, critic [[Andrew Sarris]], among the first to popularize auteurism in the United States, placed Ray below his "Pantheon," and in his second-rung category "The Far Side of Paradise," in his 1968 assessment of sound-era American directors: "Nicholas Ray is not the greatest director who ever lived; nor is he a Hollywood hack. The Truth lies somewhere in between."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Sarris|first=Andrew|title=The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968|publisher=E. P. Dutton|year=1968|isbn=0-525-47227-4|location=New York|pages=107}}</ref>

=== Acting ===
Like many US theatre practitioners of the 1930s, Ray was strongly influenced by the theories and practices of early-twentieth century Russian dramatists, and the system of actor training that evolved into "[[Method acting]]." Late in life, he told students, "My first orientation to the theatre was more toward [[Vsevolod Meyerhold|Meyerholdt]], then [[Yevgeny Vakhtangov|Vakhtangov]], than [[Konstantin Stanislavski|Stanislavsky]]," citing Vakhtangov's notion of "agitation from the essence"<ref>{{Cite book|last=Vakhtangov|first=Evgeny|title=Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method|publisher=Crown|year=1955|editor-last=Cole|editor-first=Toby|location=New York|pages=146|chapter=Preparing for the Role}}</ref> as being "a principal guideline for me in my directing career."<ref>Ray, ''I Was Interrupted'', p. 3.</ref> On a few occasions, he was able to work with actors who were so trained, notably James Dean, but as a director working in the Hollywood studio system, most of his performers were trained classically, on stage, or in the studios themselves. Some found Ray agreeable as a director, while others resisted his methods. On ''Born To Be Bad'', for example, Ray started rehearsals with a [[Read-through|table read]], then customary in a stage production but less so for a film, and star Joan Fontaine found the exercise discomfiting, tainting her relationship with the director, whom she thought "not right for this kind of picture." On the same film, [[Joan Leslie]] appreciated Ray's hands-on direction, even though they differed in their interpretation of a scene.<ref>McGilligan, pp. 176–77.</ref> Their co-star, the [[Max Reinhardt|Reinhardt]]-trained Robert Ryan, remembered favourably his second Ray project, ''On Dangerous Ground'': "He directs very little.... Right from the start of our collaboration, he offered me a very few suggestions. ... He never told me what to do. He was never specific about anything at all."<ref>Eisenschitz, p. 156.</ref>

=== Themes and stories ===
Most of Ray's films take place in the United States, and biographer Bernard Eisenschitz stresses the distinctively American themes that run through his motion pictures, and Ray's life. His early work alongside Alan Lomax, as a WPA folklorist and then in radio, and his acquaintance with musicians including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger and [[Josh White]], informed his approach to American society in his films, and the interest in [[ethnography]] evident in his films.<ref>Deutsch and Shaw, "Citizen Nick," pp. 109–21.</ref> Ray frequently made films characterized by their examination of outsider figures, and most of his movies implicitly or explicitly critique conformity.<ref name=":0" /> With examples including ''They Live By Night'' and ''Rebel Without a Cause'', he has been cited for his sympathetic treatment of contemporary youth, but other films of his adeptly deal with the crises of more experienced and older characters, among them ''In A Lonely Place'', ''The Lusty Men'', ''Johnny Guitar'' and ''Bigger Than Life''. The stories and themes explored in his films stood out in their time for being non-conformist and sympathetic to or even encouraging of instability and the adoption of then-questionable morals. His work has been singled out for the unique way in which it "define[s] the peculiar anxieties and contradictions of America in the '50s."<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=Rafferty|first=Terrence|date=2014|title=The Strange Case of Nicholas Ray|url=https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1403-Summer-2014/Classics-Ray.aspx|access-date=September 22, 2021|website=www.dga.org|language=en}}</ref>

=== Visual style ===
While he started working in Hollywood on film noir and other black-and-white pictures, in the standard [[Academy ratio]], Ray later became better known for his vivid use of color and widescreen. His films have also been noted for their stylized ''mise en scène'' with carefully choreographed blocking and composition that often emphasizes architecture.<ref name=":0" /> Ray himself credited his affection for widescreen formats to Frank Lloyd Wright:  "I like the horizontal line, and the horizontal was essential for Wright."<ref>Bitsch, Charles (1958), "Entretien avec Nicholas Ray." ''Cahiers du cinéma'', 89 (November); trans. as "Interview with Nicholas Ray," in ''Cahiers du cinéma: The 1950s'', ed. Hillier, p. 121.</ref>  As [[V. F. Perkins]] observes, however, many of Ray's compositions "are deliberately, sometimes startlingly, unbalanced to give an effect of displacement," further noting his use of "static masses with bold lines ... which intrude into the frame and at the same time disrupt and unify his compositions."<ref>Perkins, V. F. (1960).  "Nicholas Ray," ''Oxford Opinion'', 40, June 14, in ''V. F. Perkins on Movies: Collected Shorter Film Criticism'', ed. Douglas Pye.  Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. p. 89.</ref>  Bernard Eisenschitz also links Wright to Ray's desire to "destroy the rectangular frame" (as the filmmaker said, adding, "I couldn't stand the formality of it"), through the multiple-image techniques he used in ''We Can't Go Home Again''.<ref>Eisenschitz, p. 433.</ref>  He had envisioned using split-screen techniques as early as ''Rebel Without a Cause'',<ref>Eisenschitz, p. 239.</ref> and proposed, unsuccessfully, that ''The True Story of Jesse James'' be "stylized in every respect, all of it shot on the stage, including the horses, the chases, everything, and do it in areas of light."<ref>Eisenschitz, p. 284.</ref>

Ray uses color boldly — [[Jonathan Rosenbaum]], for example, has referred to the "vibrant color-coding" of ''Johnny Guitar'',<ref>Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2016).  "''Johnny Guitar'': The First Existential Western,"</ref> and the "delirious color" of ''Party Girl''<ref>Rosenbaum, Jonathan (1988). "''Party Girl''," ''Chicago Reader'', February 1; reprinted at https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2021/09/party-girl-2/.  Retrieved September 30, 2021.</ref>—but meaningfully, determined by the circumstances of the film's story and its characters.  As V. F. Perkins points out, he uses colors "for their emotional effect," but more characteristically "for the extent to which they blend or clash with background."  The reds that Cyd Charisse wears in ''Party Girl'', for instance, "have an autonomous emotional value," but also have impact measured against the "somber browns of a courtroom" or against "the darker red of a sofa on which she sleeps."<ref>Perkins, V. F. (1963). "The Cinema of Nicholas Ray," ''Movie'', 11 (July/August), in ''V. F. Perkins on Movies''. pp. 167–68.</ref>  Ray himself used the latter example to discuss the varying meaning of color, referring to the red-on-red of James Dean's jacket on a red couch, in ''Rebel Without a Cause'', as "smoldering danger," while the same arrangement of Charisse's gown and sofa "was an entirely different value" (which he did not specify).  In ''Party Girl'', he says, green was "sinister and jealous," while in ''Bigger Than Life'' it was "life, grass, and hospital walls," and, referring to the use of color in ''Johnny Guitar'', he cites the costuming of the posse in stark black and white.<ref>Ray, ''I Was Interrupted'', pp. 57–58.</ref>  Implicitly their dress befits the situation—they have come directly from a funeral—but also situates them in stark contrast to Joan Crawford's Vienna, the character they are persecuting, who changes her wardrobe, in a wide range of vivid colors, from one scene to the next.

About Ray's editing style, V. F. Perkins describes it as "dislocated ... [reflecting] the dislocated lives which many of his characters live," citing as a characteristic feature the use of camera movements that are in process at the start of the shot and not yet at rest at the end.  Frequently, as well, Ray cuts abruptly, and disruptively, from the main action of a scene to the response, in close-up, of "a character who is, to all appearances, only peripherally involved."<ref>Perkins, "The Cinema of Nicholas Ray," in ''V. F. Perkins on Movies'', p. 167.</ref> Another distinctive trait is the frequent use of dissolves for scene transitions, "more than most Hollywood directors of his time," as [[Terrence Rafferty]] points out, inferring from this, "perhaps an indication of his general preference for fluidity over hard, nailed-down meanings."<ref name=":1" />  Ray himself cited comic strips as instructive, when he started in pictures, as providing examples that deviated from the most conventional Hollywood editing.<ref>Ray, ''I Was Interrupted'', pp. 40–41.</ref>  He also remembered that when shooting his first film, the editor (Sherman Todd) encouraged him to "shoot double reverses" (that is, to violate the [[180-degree rule]]), which he did, strategically, in several sequences of ''They Live By Night'', ''In A Lonely Place'', and other of his Hollywood films.<ref>Krohn, "The Class," p. 257.</ref>

=== Genre ===
Ray distinguished himself by working in nearly every conventionalised Hollywood genre, infusing them with distinctive stylistic and thematic approaches: [[Crime film]]s, within the film noir cycle:  ''They Live By Night'', ''In A Lonely Place'', and ''On Dangerous Ground''; the [[social problem film]] ''Knock On Any Door''; [[Western (genre)|Westerns]]: ''Run For Cover'', ''Johnny Guitar'', and ''The True Story of Jesse James''; [[Woman's film|Women's pictures]]:  ''A Woman's Secret'' and ''Born To Be Bad''; [[War film|World War II dramas]]:  ''Flying Leathernecks'' and ''Bitter Victory''; the family [[melodrama]]:  ''Rebel Without A Cause'' and ''Bigger Than Life'': [[Epic film|Epic spectacles]]:  ''King of Kings'' and ''55 Days at Peking''.  Yet he also applied himself to films that fell between genres, such as the gangster film, punctuated by dance numbers but not quite a [[Musical film|musical]], ''Party Girl'', and others of more marginalised categories—the rodeo film ''The Lusty Men'', the ethnographic dramas ''Hot Blood'' and ''The Savage Innocents''—or which even predicted more significant, later concerns, such as the ecologically themed drama ''Wind Across the Everglades''.