Nicholas Ray and the Nifty Fifties

by Richard Brody

I was talking yesterday about the glories that emerged, almost daily, from Hollywood in the nineteen-fifties (which made that decade, for that matter, a richer source of cinematic treasure than the vaunted post-“Bonnie and Clyde” “New Hollywood” of the late sixties and seventies). Well, let’s not bury the lede: tonight, our friends at AltScreen remind us, at 7 and 9:30, Clearview Chelsea will show one of that era’s masterworks, Nicholas Ray’s “Johnny Guitar,” from 1954—a Western that’s pulled to the breaking point on vectors of love, sex, power, and violence, and is one of the most grievous of DVD absences...

CONTINUE READING AT THE NEW YORKER'S BLOG, THE FRONT ROW

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: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 2

by Tony Dayoub

Well, so far the Nicholas Ray Blogathon is quite a success. Lots of readers are stopping by and clicking on the links to read each submission. Many writers I admire are contributing. And I'm reading plenty of interesting work from new writers I hadn't been familiar with (though I'm already behind so please bear with me).

Those looking to contribute, feel free to keep sending links to your work in. No surprise here, I've got a lot of gaps for some of Ray's later work, post-Bigger Than Life.

I know I promised some additional links that had not been personally submitted to me, but this is more exhausting than it looks. Look for those in a later post near the end of the Blogathon.

Here's what I've got today:

Woman Error

by David Cairns

...I leapt at the chance to view and write about the only Ray film I’d never watched at all, the reputedly minor opus known as A WOMAN’S SECRET.

I went in expecting little — programmers like KNOCK ON ANY DOOR, RUN FOR COVER and BORN TO BE BAD are perfectly enjoyable, but don’t let Ray flex his cinematic muscles much — as with the very different Von Sternberg, for whom Ray subbed on MACAO, he didn’t seem to commit fully to films that didn’t excite him. But I enjoyed this one: the titular SECRET is ambiguous, the tone uncertain, the structure wobbly, but all that adds a kind of intrigue and unpredictability to a first viewing. I’d never call this a major film, but it’s pleasingly flaky, and it doesn’t give up its mysteries...

CONTINUE READING AT SHADOWPLAY