Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Johnny Guitar (1954)

by Tony Dayoub

To say that Johnny Guitar is simply a Western is to ignore its quite substantial and not overly implicit meaning. Indeed much of what is going on in Nicholas Ray's film is happening underneath its shallow—and by this, I don't mean banal—surface. But to read Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of May 28, 1954, one would expect this film to be just another horse opera, and a rather weak one at that.

...Joan Crawford plays essentially the role that Van Heflin played in Shane...The only big difference in the character, as plainly rewritten for her, is that now it falls in love with the ex-gunfighter, whom Sterling Hayden here plays.

But this condescension to Miss Crawford and her technically recognized sex does nothing more for the picture than give it some academic aspects of romance. No more femininity comes from her than from the rugged Mr. Heflin in Shane. For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades.

Ouch, I think I cut myself with one of Crowther's metaphorical shavers.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: On Dangerous Ground (1952)

by Tony Dayoub

Of all of Nicholas Ray's films, On Dangerous Ground may be the most difficult one for me to objectively get a handle on. It's my favorite of his films because of the duality of Robert Ryan's performance as Jim Wilson, a cop at wit's end with regard to the infectious nature of the corruption and violence he faces on the streets every day. On one hand, a virtuous true believer in the law, and on the other, an enforcer so efficient he will flout the rules to get his man, the short-tempered Wilson can be seen as a natural extension of Bogart's Dix Steele at the end of Ray's last film, In a Lonely Place (though released afterwards, Ground was filmed before Flying Leathernecks). In Ground, Wilson begins at the point where we left Steele in the previous film: an outsider aware of his capacity for violence, unable or unwilling to control his behavior, and resigned to the fact that he should stay away from the rest of polite society. However, reminders like an errant comment from a flirtatious counter-girl at the drugstore, scoffing at the idea of going out with a cop, still sting Wilson.