Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)

[Petty Bourgeoisie]

During the fifties Republic did use an upgraded 3 strip Trucolor process for several movies including Johnny Guitar. So it is definitely three strip, not two strip.

Thanks for the correction. Good to know. I'm gonna plan on getting this Spanish edition, hoping that in the meantime a R1 announcement might occur. If it doesn't, I'll just go forward with the Spanish Paramount. My assumption being that since it's a Paramount it will be as good as the Kinowelt and (I'm gambling here) maybe a little better.

[Petty Bourgeoisie]

Well, I got my copy of the new Spanish Paramount. The cover looks exactly like the link in the first post. Here are my non-techie observations.

Cons:
This is obviously not a HD transfer and restoration. Still some haziness and softness in the image (similar to the Kinowelt in this regard). No extras at all.

Pros:
COLOR! Clearly (to my eyes at least) they have used a different print than the UK Universal and German Kinowelt, and this makes all the difference. It actually looks like a 1950's three strip extravaganza. Much more pop and saturation than on the previous two DVD's. Vienna's gallon of blood red lipstick almost looks 3D! The color fading in the Universal and Kinowelt becomes all too obvious in comparison with this transfer. No noticable damage to print.

Bottom Line:
Are we talking about transfer improvements which raise it to the level of BFI's recent Bigger Than Life? Unfortunately not. However, this transfer brings Johnny Guitar out of the "servicable" realm (as mentioned earlier in the thread) and takes it to the level of "pretty darn good". I would imagine a R1 by Paramount will be forthcoming, but you never know. What a great movie. Hard-Boiled, Freudian and filled with snappy dialogue. My favorite exchange:

The Dancing Kid to Vienna: "Yep, I've always wanted to shoot me a guitar man." Vienna's response (filled with contempt): "Well now there's a lofty ambition!" I also love her "angry faces and evil minds" speech to the townfolk after gently playing the piano.

[oh yeah]

Finally watched this, also my first Ray film. What an introduction, and what a film. I feel comfortable saying this is one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Crawford here gave one of the most magnetic performances in the cinema -- her eyes alone are like steely blue lasers that may as well fire real bullets at each person she strikes their gaze at. The use of Trucolor, in this relatively low-budget flick, is simply astonishing -- even more eye-popping than many lavish Technicolor films, yet with an alien beauty to it that's unlike anything I've seen before. I like the way Scorsese put it in his introduction: this really is more of an "operatic" film running on pure cinema, just colors and shapes and sound and movement, than it is the plot-driven Western most audiences expect. It's most apt to say that film just takes the Western genre, the iconography of it and the narrative tropes, and uses it to create a sinister, dreamlike, romantic, ominous tone-poem that abstracts such conventions to the point that they don't matter anymore -- they've been overtaken by the hypnotic clicking sound of the roulette wheel, or a shimmering yellow shirt, or a black mass of enemy gunslingers flanked in perfect formation. More than anything else, color drives the film, yet it's also an incredibly verbal film with the kind of cynical-smart witticisms that recall noirs like Out of the Past. But it's hard for me to put into words the enchanting, intoxicating effect Johnny Guitar had on me, except to say that -- to paraphrase a line from The Wolf of Wall Street -- watching it was like mainlining pure cinema. One thing I know is that I can completely see why this film drives so many cinephiles so bonkers. It's certainly going to be on my brain for a long, long time. I can't wait to continue my Ray quest and see everything this man ever made.