Thursday, July 5 at 9PM: Johnny Guitar USA 1952 d. Nicholas Ray with Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge and Scott Brady. Colour. 110 m
“The height of cool in Hollywood is Nicholas Ray. He’s the one director of the classic era who belonged to the counterculture before there was one, and whose rage at hypocrisy and tenderness for youthful passion (at any age) were matched by the ironies and sarcasms of the perpetual outsider….It’s a commonplace that Johnny Guitar is a proto-feminist masterwork. It’s also a love story of a quietly operatic intensity, plus, simply, a Western classic, with its depiction of criminal rapacity and political corruption in league together.” [Richard Brody]
See Also: Big Jim McLain (Ludwig, 1952), High Noon (Zinneman, 1952), Rebel Without A Cause (Ray, 1955)