Nicholas Ray
Director · 1911 – 1979 · Galesville, Wisconsin, USA
Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle; 7 August 1911 – 16 June 1979) was an American film director best known for the films Rebel Without a Cause and Johnny Guitar. Described by the Harvard Film Archive as "Hollywood's last romantic" and "one of postwar American cinema’s supremely gifted and ultimately tragic filmmakers," Ray was considered an iconoclastic auteur director who often clashed with the Hollywood studio system of the time, but would prove highly influential to future generations of filmmakers. His best-known work is the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean. He is appreciated for many narrative features produced between 1947 and 1963, including They Live By Night (1948), In A Lonely Place (1950), Johnny Guitar (1954), Bigger Than Life (1956), and King of Kings (1961), as well as an experimental work produced throughout the 1970s titled We Can't Go Home Again, which was unfinished at the time of Ray's death. During his lifetime, Ray was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Rebel Without a Cause, twice for the Golden Lion, for Bigger Than Life (1956) and Bitter Victory (1957), and a Palme d'Or for The Savage Innocents (1960). Three of his films were ranked by Cahiers du Cinéma in their Annual Top 10 Lists. Ray's compositions within the CinemaScope frame and use of color are particularly well regarded and he was an important influence on the French New Wave, with Jean-Luc Godard famously writing in a review of Bitter Victory, "... there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray."
Movies16
Movie7.3MusicDramaUpon receiving his draft notice and leaving his family ranch in Oklahoma, Claude heads to New York and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to boot camp.
Hair
1979 · 775 votes
Movie7.5DramaAfter moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.
Rebel Without a Cause
1955 · 1.8K votes
Movie6.9HistoryWarDiplomats, soldiers and other representatives of a dozen nations fend off the siege of the International Compound in Peking during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. The disparate interests unite for survival despite competing factions, overwhelming odds, delayed relief and tacit support of the Boxers by the Empress of China and her generals.
55 Days at Peking
1963 · 192 votes
Movie7.1DramaThrillerTom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
Movie7.5DramaIn Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy's scandalous succession of "husbands"; the removal of the one tree visible from their tenement; and young Francie's desire to transfer to a better school...if irresponsible Papa can get his act together.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
1945 · 110 votes
Movie7.5DocumentaryStacy Keach narrates this documentary that chronicles the abbreviated life and career of iconic brooding bad boy James Dean, from his obscure early days working in television to his rise to stardom in films such as Rebel Without a Cause. Clips from Dean's movies are intermingled with candid interviews with the star's friends and Hollywood colleagues, including Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dennis Hopper.
James Dean: The First American Teenager
1975 · 2 votes
MovieDocumentaryFilms to Die For
2025
Movie7.0DocumentaryA look at the legacy of icon actor James Dean on the 40th anniversary of his tragic death. The special follows his life and career, with obvious attention to the three big films that made him a legend; and interviews with the people who knew him.
James Dean: A Portrait
1995 · 1 votes
Movie6.7DocumentaryA portrait of legendary filmmaker Nicholas Ray while he is working as a film professor at a college in upstate New York.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself
1975 · 6 votes
Movie6.6DocumentaryDirector 'Nicholas Ray' is eager to complete a final film before his imminent death from cancer. Wim Wenders is working on his own film Hammett (1983) in Hollywood, but flies to New York to help Ray realize his final wish. Ray's original intent is to make a fiction film about a dying painter who sails to China to find a cure for his disease. He and Wenders discuss this idea, but it is obviously unrealistic given Ray's state of health.
Lightning Over Water
1980 · 33 votes
Movie6.1DramaNicholas Ray plays himself, acting as mentor, friend, and artistic inspiration to his students at Binghamton. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation.
We Can't Go Home Again
1973 · 23 votes
MovieDocumentaryGerman TV documentary about John Wayne from 1977.
Movie6.0DocumentaryDocumentary about director/artist Nicholas Ray and his time as a University professor
Don't Expect Too Much
2011 · 5 votes
Movie8.5Working with Virgil’s four-part poem “Georgics” and Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos “The Four Seasons” as models, Gottheim arranged his painterly compositions into four distinct sections, each edited according to its own exacting pattern. The seasonal flux thus informs both the form and content of the image, with the basic elements of trees, sky, hills and the occasional crisscrossing clothesline filmed in every imaginable light.
Horizons
1973 · 6 votes
Movie2.0DocumentaryJeanette Dyrkjær, better known as Jeanette Starion, was a sought after nude and porn model in the 1980s. Her career took her to the United States, where she won the Million Pet of the Year Pageant and millions of dollars. But she ended up in the porn industry. The story of Jeanette Dyrkjær is the story of the girl who became famous, hit the wall and fell to the absolute rock bottom.
- MovieDocumentary