We Can't Go Home Again

I studied film at SUNY Binghamton and worked with director Nicholas Ray on "We Can't Go Home Again" in 1971-72 as both cinematographer and editor, as well as crew. See my IMDb record at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2117029/.

I shot lots of B&W stills on and off set and you can find selections on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mg-irc/sets/72057594135692080/. Two of my photos of Nick were featured in the book "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause" by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel published 10/05. Those two photos and a few others can be seen on the Amazon site at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743260821/. Enjoy!

More than a decade after directing his last feature film, "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) director Nicholas Ray (as Nicholas "Nick" Ray) accepts a job teaching for the State University of New York at Binghamton. Believing his students will learn about film by filming, Mr. Ray and the class set about making a documentary-styled feature. They move in together, off-campus. Ray tapes the students and they tape Ray. They begin tentatively, wondering about each other and sharing random thoughts. The era's rebellious youth and tendency toward protest forms background static...

Ray sometimes wears a black eye-patch. A full frontal nude female walking into your eye view from atop a stairway is a memorable image. Tom Farrell shaves his beard in anguish. The main story involves suicidal tendencies. "We Can't Go home Again" is best when mixing two to five related images in split screen, but too often isolates only a fourth of the screen. Nobody explains much about filmmaking. Most of this will appeal to those who participated; it is a student film, after all. My take is that Ray is looking back on the startling 1960s and trying to see where he fit in, but couldn't...

**** We Can't Go Home Again (1976) Nicholas Ray ~ Nicholas Ray, Tom Farrell, Ned Weisman, Danny Fisher

Nicholas Ray cut two different versions of this film over the course of almost a decade, and unfortunately only the earlier cut, considered the inferior one, survives. Nonetheless, this is a mind-boggling film made with his students at SUNY Binghamton, a film which challenges most cinematic conventions of narrative (and technique) without coming off as merely "an experiment". The final "shooting" of the film alone is worthy of an essay: instead of optically printing and collaging the material, which was shot on various formats (35mm, 16mm, video), Ray and his dedicated crew actually rented a soundstage, set up a series of different projectors, and literally _performed_ the film live on a screen surrounded by an intermittently changing photographic "frame". The result completely prefigures the emergence of "film performance" artists in the decades to follow and surely makes WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN the only feature film by a major director to be constructed in such a fashion.

Furthermore, as a time capsule of late-1960s/early-1970s politics, sexual dynamics and freedom from convention, it's essential. Partially improvised and partially scripted, it can come off as a glorious mess at times, shot through with madness, but the overall effect is devastating. A very real-life electricity informs nearly every sequence; it's almost painful at times. WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN would be the final statement of a brilliant, neglected director, but more importantly, it's one of the most audacious features to be made by a director of films such as REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. A masterpiece.

There is a controversy about "experimental films." Well, Some sustain that this film isn't, but I have to make my point. This is an experimental film, and is by far only an experimental film, no less, no more.

It searches to be deep, but rarely succeed in be understandable. Maybe, it's just a chance to find another form to show a story, but the story was so poor, so dumb, that this new narrative lose all his chance to convince. Some people find sense in this film, but I believe that they commit a common mistake: to take the unreasonable and stupid for complexity and deepfulness. Well, you may remember the Anderson tale, the The Emperator's new suit. Don't be misguide by the theories of some people. This looks like a documentary, and is fine, but it has a 70 games of colors and filters, but the plot... well, there isn't.. the story.. well, it's just dumb... and the theme... well, it's like everything and nothing, like the Emperator's new suit.

After years as a mainstream director, Nicholas Ray (of "Rebel without a Cause" fame) went to the State University of New York at Binghamton and got the students to collaborate on an experimental film with him. "We Can't Go Home Again" is somewhere between a narrative film and a documentary, with a lot of discussion about the student movements of the late '60s and early '70s.

It's hard to decide what to say about the movie. Without a doubt, it's unlike any movie that you've ever seen. Ray makes himself look all ragged throughout much of it. The movie is probably the sort of thing that will be of interest to film buffs but no one else. I also recommend the 2011 documentary "Don't Expect Much", about its production.

I noticed that in the credits, the Special Thanks section included the recently deceased Peter Bogdanovich.