About WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN
The most complete, newly restored version of Nicholas Ray’s experimental masterpiece, made with his students at the State University of New York at Binghamton, WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN embodies Ray’s approach to filmmaking as a communal way of life. The film records Ray’s groundbreaking use of multiple image as a way of telling more than one story simultaneously, and of colorization as a way to heighten emotional expression. He called it a “journalistic” film, one that shares the anthropologists’ aim of recording the “history, progress, manners, morals, and mores of everyday life,” at a critical moment in American history. Ray plays himself in the film, serving as mentor, friend, and reference point around whom the students’ stories constellate.
About DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH
Did Nick Ray leave Hollywood, or did Hollywood leave him? What was he up to when he returned to the States after a decade in Europe? What was his intention with WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, that experimental film he made with a bunch of college students? What was he doing with so many images on the screen all at once? How did he do it? Why was the film never finished? Did he lose his way, his talent, his sanity, his common sense? DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH, a full-length documentary helmed by Ray’s wife Susan, investigates these questions and the relationship forged by Ray between his life and his art. Drawing on the director’s archive of never-before-seen film, video, and stills, Susan finds answers to our questions about Nick Ray in Nick Ray’s own words and images. And we learn from interviews with members of the original crew of WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, directors Jim Jarmusch and Victor Erice, and others, how this man lived, saw, learned, and taught, how he fought and danced with his demons, how he loved.
Did Nick Ray leave Hollywood, or did Hollywood leave him? What was he up to when he returned to the States after a decade in Europe? What was his intention with WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, that experimental film he made with a bunch of college students? What was he doing with so many images on the screen all at once? How did he do it? Why was the film never finished? Did he lose his way, his talent, his sanity, his common sense? DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH, a full-length documentary helmed by Ray’s wife Susan, investigates these questions and the relationship forged by Ray between his life and his art. Drawing on the director’s archive of never-before-seen film, video, and stills, Susan finds answers to our questions about Nick Ray in Nick Ray’s own words and images. And we learn from interviews with members of the original crew of WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, directors Jim Jarmusch and Victor Erice, and others, how this man lived, saw, learned, and taught, how he fought and danced with his demons, how he loved.
