Lightning Over Water is a penetrating and touching film of the last days of cult American director Nicholas Ray, most well-known for Rebel Without a Cause.

.”I knew that he wanted to work, to die working”, Wim Wenders says in the movie. And through his work with Wenders and the crew, Ray transformed his dying into an act of collaboration and a work of art.

Dying slowly of terminal cancer, Ray chose not to institutionalize himself in a hospice and fade away in an old people’s home but stayed in his modest New York City loft, surrounded by his closest friends — a sharp and poignant contrast to the comparative luxury of his Hollywood years.

The film is lovingly assembled by Wenders, whose reverence of Ray is evident in every frame of his own work. Ray reflects on a lifetime of accomplishments, failures and compromises, and reminisces about Joan Crawford, James Dean and the many other Hollywood stars that appeared in his films.

‘The film follows the progress of death, for once really at work, in 35 mm and on video,
in an inside/outside organic continuity. Wenders, and us with him, get used to the idea of death – that neither he who makes a movie nor he who looks at it are immortal.

The central issue of the contract between Wim and Nick is the act of love from the young director to his cursed father/master – an identification that is also an exorcism.’

EXTRAS:
-commentary by WIm Wenders
– Nicholas Ray: Especially For Pierre (38 min lecture by Ray)

1.17GB | 1:30:00 | 672 x 384 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/227F7572C9CB836/Lightning_Over_Water_(Ray_&_Wenders,_1980)-CiNeMANiAC.avi
https://nitro.download/view/B754B1E9E928EB7/Nicholas_Ray_-_Especially_For_Pierre-CiNeMANiAC.avi

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Nicholas Ray & Wim Wenders – Lightning Over Water [+ Extras] (1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Robert Altman’s brilliantly freewheeling satire on the country and western music industry made little impression on the American box office in 1975. This was the year, remember, when a giant shark in Jaws inaugurated the modern blockbuster era. But three decades on, Nashville feels like one of the outstanding accomplishments of ‘New Hollywood’. 24 characters – including singers, musicians, agents, publicists, journalists, and assorted wannabees and hangers-on – converge on the capital of Tennessee, as a confused nation prepares to celebrate its bicentenary.

Beginning with an ad for itself, Nashville unfolds during a music festival in the city, which is also hosting a political rally organised by the populist Hal Phillip Walker’s Replacement Party. (The candidate remains unseen throughout, his sinister message broadcast through loudspeaker vans.) The task for fixers such as Triplette (Michael Murphy) and Delbert (Ned Beatty) is to persuade the avowedly non-political singing stars such as Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) and Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakekly) to agree to play at their rally.

Re-watching Nashville, one notices how blithely Altman tears up the filmmaking rule book. He doesn’t adhere to a specific genre or plot, the overlapping dialogue of his cast is often diminished by the multilayered soundtrack, and there’s no conventional explanation for the film’s climactic assassination. In this sprawling mosaic of American society, we’re given impressionistic glimpses of individual lives; moments of intimacy within the babble of everyday existence.

Not only did Altman’s exceptional improvise much of their dialogue, but they also got to write many of their own songs from the perspective of their characters. The likes of 200 Years, For The Sake Of The Children and It Don’t Worry Me encapsulate the sentimentality and the comforting appeal of country music. There’s an awareness here of how less powerful individuals are exploited within everyday relationships (not least the tragic figure of Gwen Welles’s Sueleen, forced to strip during a benefit evening), and how hard it is to verbally communicate one’s real feelings. But Nashville also looks forward to our contemporary obsession with celebrities and to politics itself becoming a form of show business. Unmissable.

2.74GB | 2h 40mn | 1024×432 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D3F19FF9B499881/Robert_Altman_-_(1975)_Nashville.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Robert Altman – Nashville (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.