Quick observation: countless documentaries, especially about artists, end-up being talking head documentaries which can provide intriguing insights into the artist but have no cinematic value. If these were turned into written interviews the effect would be exactly the same.
"There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray."
- Jean Luc Godard
If Nick Ray is cinema, a documentary about him certainly should have cinematic value (the opposite of talking head docs). This documentary manages to maintain purely cinematic; and perhaps one of the greatest films of all-time. A blend of reality and fiction (or simplystaged reality) that would be possible in no other medium.
Brilliant cutting between (raw, documentary) video [pictured above] and (highly aestheticized) 35mm film [pictured below] in a shot/reaction-shot.
An incredible look into the artistic process and the mind of a mad genius.
"Would you kill somebody for a great shot?" One of the last distinguishable quotes said in the epilogue by one of the students right before the end credits.
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