The first thing to say about the legacy of Nicholas Ray—the subject of an article by Patricia Cohen in today’s Times—is that, even in the absence on home video of some of his crucial movies, including “Johnny Guitar” and “The Lusty Men,” those that are around, such as “Bigger Than Life,” “In a Lonely Place,” “Bitter Victory,” “They Live by Night,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” and “Party Girl,” should suffice to assure that the legacy is recognized as one of the key artistic achievements in the history of cinema. The performances alone—James Dean’s in “Rebel,” Humphrey Bogart’s in “In a Lonely Place,” and, above all, Sterling Hayden’s turn in “Johnny Guitar” (perhaps the single coolest performance in all Hollywood history, the closest thing in movies to what Miles Davis was doing in jazz at exactly that moment) prove Ray to have been a director of a uniquely vulnerable and sensitive artistic temperament...
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