Monday 13 June 2011

Johnny Guitar

1954 - Nicholas Ray
Ray's slighter calmer framing and cutting is 'made up for' by wildly saturated blocks of primary colours, and an almost expressionist, static acting style.
The use of red /power for Vienna, contrasted to the church clothes of the mob, throws hundreds of allusions of sexual power into the McCarthyist/ red menace mix. Notice that the colour scheme is washed out and overexposed on the high angle outdoor (out of Vienna's) shots.
Ray is again more willing to show violence, more explicit and more aggressive. This film seethes with repressed and unrepressed tensions.
Also note the males running around, looking desperate, with almost comical reaction shots sometimes put on them. This film is most obviously subversive and powerful for the dominance, the ordering around and narrative centrality, of its female characters.
Thinking about Nicholas Ray's alternate lifestyles; here we are on the side of those against the law, of these trying to live differently in an alternate community ('won't you just leave us alone?'). But even the Band Of Outsiders is itself a complicated group with competing dynamics. Demarcations, as in life, aren't always too clear.

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