How well do you really know old Arty? It all began with the Welsh: The The Annales Cabriae (inside) and parts of the Welsh oral tradition (later collected into
the Mabinogion) give a very different picture of the popular King Arthur than contemporary readers are familiar with: no Lancelot, three or four different Guens, no love triangles or Holy Grails. A look at the vast scope of the Arthurian legend.
[more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe
on Dec 19, 2011 -
30 comments
The poet of nightfall Twentyfive years ago,
film director
Nicholas Ray died in New York. Like
Jacques Tati and
Samuel Fuller, Ray
did a lot of living before he ever
got around to filmmaking: he was of part of
Frank Lloyd Wright's
Taliesin Fellowship, a devotee of southern
folk music, an avant-garde theatre director. He had made
Rebel Without a Cause and survived
James Dean, and the title of the film seemed to dramatise his terrible, self-destructive battles with Hollywood. His films (
They Live By Night,
In a Lonely Place,
On Dangerous Ground,
Johnny Guitar,
The Savage Innocents,
King of Kings) were in love with
imprisoned life, but the dark edge of mourning was always there, too. He was idolised by the young
Cahiers du
Cinema critics who would become the directors of the New Wave.
François Truffaut once noted: "There are no Ray films that do not have a scene at the
close of day; he is the poet of nightfall, and of course everything is permitted in Hollywood except poetry." Contrasting Ray and Howard Hawks, he added: "But anyone who rejects either should never go to the movies again, never see any more films".
Jean-Luc Godard offered another sweeping panegyric: "There was theatre (
Griffith), poetry (
Murnau), painting (
Rossellini), dance (
Eisenstein), music (
Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And
cinema is Nicholas Ray. These days,
lucky Chicagoans can admire one of Ray's greatest works,
Bitter Victory -- the film about the dangerous games men play with macho self-images...
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on Jun 18, 2004 -
16 comments
