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Nicholas Ray Patrick McGilligan

Nicholas Ray By Patrick McGilligan

Nicholas Ray by Patrick McGilligan


Condition - Very Good
Out of stock

Summary

The visionary filmmaker Nicholas Ray spent his lifetime creating films that were dark, emotionally charged, and haunted by social misfits and bruised young people consumed by private anguish. This title presents portrait of Nicholas Ray - a man whose troubled life was punctuated by moments of creative genius.

Nicholas Ray Summary

Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director by Patrick McGilligan

The cinema is Nicholas Ray. (Jean-Luc Godard). The visionary filmmaker Nicholas Ray spent his lifetime creating films that were dark, emotionally charged, and haunted by social misfits and bruised young people consumed by private anguish. Notoriously self-destructive, even in his youth, Ray empathized with the broken and misunderstood - the alcohol, drugs, and rage that ate away at his core translated into characters with unrivaled depth on-screen. Beloved by critics, peers, and audiences alike, Nicholas Ray created a vision of the modern teenage experience with Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and reinvented the western with Johnny Guitar (1954). Yet, in one of the most dramatic Hollywood stories on record, Ray's meteoric rise to fame was rivaled only by his dramatic fall from grace. Now, in time for the celebration of Ray's 100th birthday, preeminent American film biographer Patrick McGilligan offers the first comprehensive, full-length biography of Nicholas Ray - a man whose troubled life was punctuated by moments of creative genius. Meticulously detailed, yet compulsively readable, Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure delves into Ray's fascinating life story in and out of the spotlight - from his small-town roots in Galesville, Wisconsin, to his four marriages, drug and alcohol addictions, his sexual relationships with actors (including both James Dean and Natalie Wood), and his ultimate banishment from the Hollywood community that helped foster his growth as a director. Thirty-one years after his death, Nicolas Ray's body of work remains as a celebrated testament to the troubled director's struggle to create meaning from an otherwise shattered existence. In this unparalleled look into the dark moments of Ray's history and secrets of his creative process, Patrick McGilligan tells the full captivating story of an American film great.

Nicholas Ray Reviews

[A] portrait of a filmmaker who managed over time to upstage the movies that made him celebrated. -- Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel A clear and balanced portrait of a most complex man. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) [A] fascinating, formidable account of a director whose life was as fraught with complications and melodrama as were his movies...Meticulously researched and gratifying, a biographical page-turner. -- Library Journal (starred review) McGilligan limns the tragic trajectory of Ray's career with insight and compassion. -- Booklist

About Patrick McGilligan

Patrick McGilligan is the author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light; Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast; and George Cukor: A Double Life; and books on the lives of directors Nicholas Ray, Robert Altman, and Oscar Micheaux, and actors James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. He also edited the acclaimed five-volume Backstory series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters and (with Paul Buhle), the definitive Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not far from Kenosha, where Orson Welles was born.

Additional information

CIN0060731389VG
9780060731380
0060731389
Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director by Patrick McGilligan
Used - Very Good
Paperback
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
20120816
576
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Nicholas Ray