Blu-ray Review: Johnny Guitar - Film Review

Johnny Guitar

United States: 1954Original title: Johnny GuitarDirector: Nicholas RayScreenplay: Philip YordanActors: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Paul FixPublisher: Sidonis CalystaDuration: 1h50Genre: WesternCinema release date: February 11, 1955DVD/BR release date: December 2, 2021

The film

[4/5]

Johnny Guitar is a western by Nicholas Ray released in 1954, which did not necessarily convince everyone when it was released seventy years ago, but is today almost unanimously considered one of the greatest conductors of work of the genre. It must be said that nowadays, we tend to read above all in the film its disguised criticism of McCarthyism, even if it means ignoring its funny formal appearance. Because after having seen dozens of different color film processes over the years (Technicolor, Agfacolor, Magnacolor, Trucolor…), the contemporary film buff no longer really pays attention to the colors of the western, and this aspect finally passes a little falling behind in our appreciation of the genre.

Except that in the case of Johnny Guitar , it seems difficult to put aside the bright colors, neon / cartoonesque limit, which give Nicholas Ray's film a grotesque side, colorful like Baz Luhrmann, all the more ridiculous that the film regularly pours into the melodrama. Most moviegoers keep in the back of their minds that the evolution of color film processes happened quite slowly, that the colors of yesterday were not those of today. In addition, one also sometimes imagines that there is a certain "drift" of the colors over the years, which is attributed to I don't know what principle of aging of the film, as if this or that chromatic rendering of today was not necessarily the one that was obtained at the time.

It is not so. We cannot brush aside this aspect of Nicholas Ray's film out of hand by putting its originality solely on the account of its production period. The garish colors of Johnny Guitare were already as they were in 1954, and the saturation of colors was a formal element on which Nicholas Ray deliberately played. Joan Crawford's lips were already wearing a much too red lipstick. His yellow shirt already had this almost fluorescent tone. The whites were already bright enough to make all the eyes and teeth stand out like beacons in the night, which already tended to accentuate the blue of the eyes of all the characters very clearly. The time lag cannot make us forget that this extremely particular treatment of colors was sought after by Nicholas Ray, who then offered us a B series whose form willingly flirted with the experimental, like, for example, a film such as Les Tears of the Black Tiger (2002), which clearly paid homage to him.

And the fact of pouring his characters dressed as clowns into the most syrupy melody inevitably brings a distance, necessary for Nicholas Ray in order to underline the multiple levels of reading of his work. The spectator of the time could not be fooled, and it is therefore not surprising that the filmmakers of the New Wave adored Johnny Guitare when the film was released in France in 1955. : playing with the codes of the western and cinema in general, the film is always on the tightrope between the sublime and the grotesque, developing an almost surreal atmosphere. A filmmaker such as Jean-Luc Godard would draw enormous inspiration from this great upheaval of the classic rules in his first color films: he would also play a lot on the deliberately outrageous side of colors in films such as Pierrot le fou or Le contempt .

And to add yet another layer to the "ridiculous" and atypical side of his western, Nicholas Ray completely devirilizes his male characters: the Johnny Guitar of the title (Sterling Hayden) is a crybaby, and the cast is dominated by two very strong, embodied by Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, who use men as mere puppets. These two strong women question a certain "gender machismo", which still largely defines the western today. All these radical changes allow Nicholas Ray to invest the western as an experimental playground, far removed from any sense of authenticity, but creating and maintaining throughout its duration a unique atmosphere. Bizarre, baroque, kitsch, but also curiously fascinating and endearing – in other words definitely unique.

The Blu-ray

[4/5]

Unpublished in High-Definition format, Johnny Guitare was eagerly awaited on Blu-ray by western lovers, and the master proposed by Sidonis Calysta, even if it probably did not benefit from the 4K restoration announced on the cover, is quite satisfactory: the film is offered in 1.37 format and encoded in 1080p, and the image generally displays an increased level of detail, while respecting the original film grain. The sharpness is good, the explosive colors and the sharp contrasts accentuate the overall impression of depth: it's very nice work. The audio mix is ​​offered in original DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 , in VF and in VO: in both cases, the acoustic presentation is clear and crisp, there is nothing to complain about, it's quite satisfying.

On the supplement side, the publisher first of all offers us an unpublished 80-page booklet written by Patrick Brion, and largely illustrated with photos. He will come back to Nicholas Ray's intentions as well as the context of the filming of the film. On the cake itself, we will start with an introduction by Martin Scorsese (3 minutes), who will come back to the particularities of the film and its reception in the United States and Europe. We will then continue with a presentation of the film by Patrick Brion (22 minutes), who will summarize in video what he wrote in the booklet. We also take this opportunity to wish a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Patrick Brion , who is celebrating his 80th birthday today. There will also be a presentation of the film by Jean-François Giré (20 minutes), who will draw a parallel between the character of Vienna (Joan Crawford) in Johnny Guitare and that of McBain (Frank Wolff) in Once upon a time in l'Ouest , before dwelling at some length on the qualities of the film as well as on the acting of Mercedes McCambridge. Finally, we will end with an interview with Bertrand Tavernier about Johnny Guitare (37 minutes), originally produced by Olivier Père for the Arte channel. He will come back to the authorship of the script, the relationship between Joan Crawford / Nicholas Ray, as well as the shooting, the dialogues of the film or the Trucolor process. Finally, we will end with a clip of Peggy Lee singing the song from the film, of an absolutely atrocious quality (surely taken from Youtube) as well as with the traditional trailers .