BD 256 Johnny Guitar

[ChunkyLover]

SPECIAL FEATURES
Limited Edition Hardbound Slipcase [3000 copies]
1080p presentation on Blu-ray from a 4K restoration of the original film elements, framed in the film’s originally intended aspect ratio of 1.66:1
Brand new commentary by critic Geoff Andrew, author of The Films of Nicholas Ray: The Poet of Nightfall, newly recorded for this release
Brand new video piece by Tony Rayns
Brand new video essay by David Cairns
Brand new interview with Susan Ray
Archival introduction to Johnny Guitar by Martin Scorsese
Trailer
A LIMITED EDITION 60-page collector’s book featuring new essays on the making of Johnny Guitar and on female gunslingers in the western genre, both by western expert Howard Hughes; an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum; and archival writing and ephemera [3000 copies]
All extras subject to Change

[black&huge]

I have to ask anyways but is this gonna be region locked?

[Drucker]

Almost certainly. There's an OLIVE release in Region A.

[Maltic]

Andrew did a commentary for the Olive one too, but there was room for improvement, as far as I can remember. Or maybe it's just that this movie never truly clicked for me (I like it and all, but...)

[OldBobbyPeru]

Does anyone know if this is using the same restoration as the Olive edition?

[L.A.]

Just managed to watch Godard’s La Chinoise and JG was actually mentioned. Great scene.

[therewillbeblus]

Just managed to watch Godard’s La Chinoise and JG was actually mentioned. Great scene.

Godard references the film several of his works- Pierrot le fou being my favorite usage. I just revisited La chinoise as well (first with Quandt's strong commentary on the Arrow disc, then by itself), and this scene is particularly interesting because Godard seemed to have the most negative views on Henri's character out of the group of revolutionaries, diagnosing him as the static one, closing his peripheries to necessary political adaptation while the others morph (imperfectly, but at least they engage in challenging complacency as a core value); and yet Henri's wry observation in that clip seems to be a point of identification for Godard! But who knows what he actually felt then vs later, and the man was never above self-critique or moving the goalposts around the grey portrait of the world objectively, so I try to take any concrete position from an interview with a grain of salt, since it could've changed the next year/day.

[Calvin]

An MoC release of this has felt like an inevitability. I'm glad to see it's finally coming. It would have been nice to get João César Monteiro's Passeio com Johnny Guitar as an extra.

Does anyone know if this is using the same restoration as the Olive edition?

I can't imagine there would have been another 4K restoration done, so the answer is almost certainly yes

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

"Brand new audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin" now listed as an extra!

[therewillbeblus]

Cue the auto double dip meter

[Maltic]

If the film doesn't click for me now, it never will

[therewillbeblus]

I similarly never understood the appeal of this one until roughly five years ago when it clicked and became an all-time favorite for a few viewings. I revisited it a year or so ago for the 50s project and found it lost some of its appeal again, but I still think it’s pretty great as a regurgitation of pure emotion. At the very least, Adrian Martin’s commentaries have the power to make me suddenly appreciate films I’ve seen many times and never enjoyed before (Preminger’s Fallen Angels being the most recent example)

[What A Disgrace]

Geoff Andrew's commentary has been reduced to an introduction, as a trade off.

[Cash Flagg]

Cue the auto double dip meter

This will be a six-dip for me

[domino harvey]

I think it'd be a fourth dip for me, which is too many. I'm sticking with my homemade double Olive Bu-ray pack, though I'm sure Martin's commentary will provide value for those who can't resist another bite of the apple

[colinr0380]

This is an amazing western, constantly upending norms all over the place and doing so in such a vibrantly colourfully symbolistic way. It is such a big feeling film for something so intimately, emotionally scaled as well. Probably the biggest upended norm is Sterling Hayden as the title character of the film being bizarrely, but wonderfully, sidelined almost immediately after his first scene inside Vienna's casino. It is as if the film just naturally drifts away from the nice-but-dull lunk to stop and gaze in awe at Vienna instead, ruling imperiously as a self-made woman over her casino, and deigning to offer all these guys jobs working for her as her employees/lackeys. Even the 'romance' with Johnny Guitar is less shown through his eyes but rather more hers, being unable to prevent herself from showing interest in him yet needing to not compromise herself too much to keep the power dynamic working in her favour, like a western reincarnation of Cleopatra.

The main conflict doesn't come from men in particular (who know their place) but from the black clad Puritanical, masculine clothed (compared to white dressed, at least until she changes to match for the final duel, Vienna) figure of Emma played magnificently by Mercedes McCambridge. Her performance is an amazing mix of hyperbolic, hypocritical disgust, jealousy, shivering sexual obsession(?) and pure sadistic delight in destruction of Vienna, as if hating Vienna's use of her feminine wiles and sexuality (and pandering to gambling) in order to get her way, which are the aspects that Emma herself has suppressed to dominate her own band of employee-lackey men into doing her bidding.

In its final section after Emma destroys her saloon, Vienna disappointingly does fall into the 'needing to be saved by a man' mode for a time (the only section beyond the opening scene where Johnny Guitar really does anything important is in his spiriting of Vienna away from the conflagration), but then the film gets amazing again with the final duel scene where the men are again sidelined for the two women to stand off and finish their conflict between each other once and for all.

It is fascinating to consider how this would work in a double bill with There Will Be Blood! It is sort of about the same ideas of ideologically opposed hegemonies embodied in the main characters battling it out for control of the future direction that the new frontier will take.

[Maltic]

Ageing-female-star-centred Westerns were a thing.. Dietrich in Rancho Notorious and Stanwyck in Forty Guns, but I guess the characters still had to either die or get married in the end.

[colinr0380]

Here's the 1999 Moviedrome introduction to the film by Mark Cousins.

[FrauBlucher]

bluray.com

[Cash Flagg]

I have to quickly address a very popular myth about Nicholas Ray's film Johnny Guitar, which is that it is a very smart piece of satire that carefully targeted McCarthyism. The film can work as a satire, but the political overtones that supposedly reveal its true identity quite simply do not exist.

Well, that settles it then!

[ChunkyLover]

bluray.com

I guess the Adrian Martin commentary was dropped? Either that or Svet didn't list it.

[Glowingwabbit]

bluray.com

I guess the Adrian Martin commentary was dropped? Either that or Svet didn't list it.

It still says it on the Eureka website. I've found that blu-ray.com isn't always reliable when it comes to extras. I pre-ordered it so I guess I'll found out when it ships out and arrives.

[A man stayed-put]

In the Screenshots section it shows a menu screen with the Martin commentary as an option, so looks like just a review omission.

[ChunkyLover]

In the Screenshots section it shows a menu screen with the Martin commentary as an option, so looks like just a review omission.

Ah, I hadn't scrolled through the screenshots all the way through.

[tenia]

It's OK, it looks like the person who took them and uploaded them didn't either.