Nicholas Ray was one of American's most distinctive film directors. Works like They Live by Night, In a Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar and Bigger Than Life reveal the physic ills of the 1950s more than any other films of that period. Ray's brooding pessimism and rebellious individualism reached their peak in most famous film, Rebel without a Cause. Originally published in France, this award-winning biography definitively captures one of cinema's greatest talents, and tells the story in such a way that Ray's life parallels the crises, upheavals and triumphs in American society in the twentieth century.