The 2011 Venice Film Festival will honor “Rebel Without a Cause” director Nicholas Ray with a day dedicated to his work, including the world premiere of a new version of his cult 1976 picture, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” on September 4.
Photo: Nicholas Ray
The Lido announced the tribute, which also includes a new documentary and a panel discussion, on Sunday — the centennial of the Hollywood maverick’s birth.
“We Can’t Go Home Again,” Ray’s final work, will be presented by his widow, Susan Ray, and director-actor James Franco, whose Sal Mineo biopic “Sal” is unspooling in the Venice Horizons section.
Restoration and reconstruction of the experimental pic was supervised by Susan Ray and the Nicholas Ray Foundation, with assistance from the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Film Archive and with the support of Gucci, Martin Scorsese’s the Film Foundation, the Cinematheque Francaise and Italy’s RAI Cinema.
It is considered the definitive version, one that’s faithful to the original picture Ray shot with his film students at Harpur College.
Susan Ray’s tribute documentary, “Don’t Expect Too Much,” about the making of the picture, will be shown.
Spanish helmer Victor Erice, author of a book about Ray, U.S. artist-helmer Douglas Gordon and Henry Hopper, whose father, Dennis Hopper, starred in “Rebel Without a Cause,” will be among members of a panel discussion dedicated to Ray’s work.
