July 2022 - Johnny Guitar
Howdy!
We hope this newsletter finds you enjoying summer and excited for our July Cinema Club screening.

It's high time Cinema Club screens another Western, but we wanted to show something slightly off the well trodden path. This Monday we will be showing the highly stylized camp classic Johnny Guitar directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, and Mercedes McCambridge. There are still seats available so please join us if you aren't already registered. We'd love to see you.

Reminder: Cinema Club meets in the Aspen Drive Library Meeting Room in Vernon Hills. Discussion to follow. Masks optional.

Here's a few articles to skim beforehand.
We don't often share negative reviews of the movie we are showing. But Johnny Guitar is an instance of a movie that did not receive a warm welcome in its day, but has experienced a resurgence of contemporary appreciation. What did the critics miss? Or were they right all along? It will be interesting to discuss this on Monday.

"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."
This article provides a great summary of Johnny Guitar's legacy and even goes a little into Joan Crawford's life. Though the movie is called Johnny Guitar, it is definitely Crawford's movie. At the time, making a Western that centered on a woman's story was unique in its own right. Beyond that, the thematic interplay of agency, independence, and wealth among the female characters is noteworthy.

"Johnny Guitar shows women who are complex, driven, smart, and even ruinous. Feminist stories aren’t about putting women on a pedestal – they’re about women as they are: good, bad, lovely, horrific."
Johnny Guitar's credited screenwriter Philip Yordan, was actually a pseudonym for Bed Maddow, who ended up on Hollywood's infamous blacklist. This among other reasons is why many read the narrative of Johnny Guitar as an angry commentary on the damaging impact of McCarthyism.

"It’s the urgent, visceral depiction of entrapment that’s truly compelling, the way it manages to humanize the drama and politics of McCarthyism while transforming it into something almost surreal."
Next Movie: The Last Picture Show
August 15, 2022
Aspen Drive Library Meeting Room

1971 | Rated R | 1h 58min
In 1951, a group of high schoolers come of age in a bleak, isolated, atrophied North Texas town that is slowly dying, both culturally and economically.

REMINDER: You must register for each Cinema Club screening. Receiving this newsletter is not an indication you are registered for next month's showing.