SYNOPSIS
Joan Crawford (Mildred Pierce) plays Vienna, a saloon owner with a sordid past. Persecuted by the townspeople, Vienna must protect her life and her property when a lynch mob led by her sexually repressed rival, Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge; All The King’s Men), attempts to frame her for a string of robberies she did not commit. Enter Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden; Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb ), a guitar-strumming ex-gunfighter who has a history with Vienna.
Mis-understood by US audiences upon release, the film was embraced by European cineastes and is now regarded as one of the greatest western pictures of all time. An intensely stylised masterpiece from director Nicholas Ray, Johnny Guitar makes its UK debut on Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series.
SPECIAL FEATURES
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
New audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin
New introduction by critic Geoff Andrew, author of The Films of Nicholas Ray: The Poet of NightfallNew video piece by Tony Rayns
Never is a Long Time – A new video essay by David Cairns
New interview with Susan Ray
Archival introduction to Johnny Guitar by Martin Scorsese
Trailer
A 28-page collector’s booklet featuring an essay by author Howard Hughes, and an archival interview with director Nicholas Ray
