"Johnny Guitar," a 1954 film by director Nicholas Ray, is at once a social commentary, love story and psychological western. Predating the directing work of Clint Eastwood by 30 years, Ray has made a work laced with irreverence and irresistible, topical satire.
In the film, Johnny (Sterling Hayden) returns to work at a cafe for a woman he abandoned years before. He finds this woman, Vienna (Joan Crawford), self-sufficient, bold and determined.
They struggle, together and apart, against the negative elements that have captured the town in his absence. Vienna is opposed by Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), a power figure bent on destroying everything in the name of protecting the town.
Vienna's struggles to stir a new consciousness in Johnny drive the love story. Bravado aside, the two seem incomplete without each other, and are outsiders in different ways.
In 1973, he praised "Johnny Guitar" as "the first Hollywood western in which women were both protagonist and antagonist." Gender portrayals and interactions are handled in a novel way.
The film also documents Ray's reaction to populist polemics and Puritanism. Making certain films exacted a toll on Ray, and the tensions of the times add to the drama of the film.
Perhaps Ray's involvement in "radical" theater in the 1930s and 1940s provided a frame for commentary in the following decade. "Johnny Guitar" takes advantage of the belief that humor is an excellent antidote to fear.
Even though Ray was fond of stressing visual elements that overpower text, the screenplay is crisp, catchy, and very quotable.
It spawned endless imitations at home and endless review and debate abroad. Ray is an auteur who believed that "the director of a film is a true author of the film," and that he "surveys all the contradictions" between vision and expression.
"Tigrero," which won the International Critic's Award at the Berlin Film Festival, represents the journey of legendary director Samuel Fuller ("Pickup on South Street" and "Shock Corridor") and Jim Jarmusch to the rain forests of Brazil.
In 1954, Fuller went to Brazil to shoot footage for an action adventure with John Wayne and Ava Gardner in the lead roles.
The movie project was canceled, due to the high cost of insuring the actors.
In 1992, Fuller sent Mika Kaurismaki the footage of the Karaja Indians of Brazil, saying he wanted to show the footage to the current Karaja.
Kaurismaki decided to film on a return visit to Brazil and enlisted the aid of Jarmusch.
Kaurismaki attempts to build emotion through the editing and visuals. He has worked in several genres, including comedy, romance and documentary.
He avoids stereotype, and, according to Jarmusch, "doesn't play it safe." That his films deal with outsiders reflects his early years and time as an independent director.
