Framing Pictures, a free monthly event held at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle, is an opportunity for cinephiles, students, and the general public to discuss cinema with several of Seattle’s prominent film critics.

My first experience of Framing Pictures was the February event, at which the proposed topic of discussion was the filmography of director Nicholas Ray; although the critics in attendance, Robert Horton (Everett Herald), Richard T. Jamison (Queen Anne News) and Bruce Reid (The Stranger) expressed a willingness to divert discussion to any film-related tangent of interest to attendees. I admit I felt the panel wanted for a little gender and ethnic diversity, but Kathleen Murphy, although listed on the NWF calendar, was not present.

The evening opened with a screening of a clip from LIGHTNING OVER WATER, co-directed by Ray and Wim Wenders. The ensuing conversation referenced many of Ray’s films, both popular and lesser known works of a director that Bruce Reid described as “all exposed nerves” and “legendary for a scary intimacy with his actors.” Particular attention was paid to BIGGER THAN LIFE, and Ray’s ability to, as one audience member put it, “psychologically insinuate the split screen,” using an upstairs, downstairs and connecting stairwell. Jamison noted that Ray used widescreen, then most popular for displaying panoramic scenery, to show and give depth and breadth to interiors. Ray’s personal life was skirted, touched on only in regard to its impact on his films, and anyone interested in the more colourful or lurid aspects thereof would do well to seek out a biography.

I didn’t learn any facts about Ray that I wouldn’t have found browsing Wikipedia, but the conversation was sprinkled with observations steeped in years of viewing Ray’s work from multiple perspectives, and towards the end of the night the audience warmed to comment more freely. I came away with an interest in revisiting several of Ray’s films, armed with fresh insight and stimulated by the energy of the discussion.

The most complete print of Nicholas Ray’s student-sourced film WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN is screening at NWF’s theater through the 16th of February. Next month’s Framing Pictures discussion is as yet un-corralled onto any particular course, although as Horton said at the end of the evening, “Who knows, maybe someone will die?”