Johnny Guitar

 

Director Nicholas Ray

Ray with Joan Crawford

Crawford (left) with Mercedes Cambridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHNNY GUITAR         A                                                                                                             USA  (110 mi)  1954  d: Nicholas Ray

Never seen a woman who was more of a man.  She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I’m not.    —Sam (Robert Osterloh), one of the blackjack dealers

Easily Nicholas Ray’s most subversive film, coming after They Live By Night (1948),  In a Lonely Place (1950), and On Dangerous Ground (1952), doing well at the box office but trashed by the critics, completely misunderstood at the time, refusing to conform to expectations of the male-dominated Western genre, which is typically an amalgamation of racism, sexism, and xenophobia, viewed by Ray as the biggest failure of his career, a continuance of his brooding outsider theme while also an indictment of mob psychology.  Conceived as a blatant response to the Hollywood blacklist and the witch hunt period of McCarthyism, this was a Cold War-era pursuit of men and women who were accused of being communists, most were falsely accused and imprisoned, their livelihoods and careers ruined by men who blatantly pushed the conspiracy theories of the day, yet the film’s reputation has been resuscitated by Martin Scorsese and other film scholars, beloved in Europe, including François Truffaut, who hailed Ray as “the poet of nightfall,” describing this film as “the Beauty and the Beast of Westerns,” listed at #9 for best picture in 1955 from the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Cahiers du Cinema: 1951-2011, with many now praising this as among Ray’s best work.  Based on a 1953 novel by B-picture screenwriter Roy Chanslor, with a script largely credited to Philip Yordan, though blacklisted writer Ben Maddow may have contributed, heavily revised by Ray, it was written for Joan Crawford, who bought the rights for the movie, basically the producer for her own picture, the one calling the shots, often altering the script to suit her, with Crawford at the time an aging film star who grew paranoid about her fading career, constantly making demands that only heightened her insecurity, where there was constant friction on the set between her and her leading man, Sterling Hayden, with Crawford calling him “the biggest pill in Hollywood,” while Hayden exclaimed, “There is not enough money in Hollywood that could lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford.  And I like money.”  Yet within this cauldron of Hollywood combustion and turmoil lies a truly magnificent script, among Hollywood’s greatest poetry, as the dialogue is crisp and fiercely antagonistic, filled with shots and counter shots at one another, where this is the epitome of a town that’s not big enough for the two competing interests, with Joan Crawford as Vienna representing the new world dream of the railroad, hoping to cash in on the future, and Mercedes Cambridge as Emma Small representing the old world of cattle interests, where they don’t believe in fences or anything restricting the far reaches of vast and unlimited lands.  Vienna even has a miniature model of a town in her saloon, destined to become a railroad stop, referenced by Sergio Leone when he created Claudia Cardinale’s character in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968).  Subverting the Western as a male vehicle, Nicolas Ray pits two women against one another, both detesting the other, with the film seething with their outright contempt, becoming an eroticized antagonism, with both distinguishing themselves in the roles, while Hayden as Johnny Guitar serves as the love interest, a role usually reserved for a woman, yet his pretty boy image is mocked by his direct and straightforward approach, standing up to any man, though often from the shadows.  Due to the camp nature of the film, wildly flamboyant with exaggerated stereotypes and operatic melodrama, some may question the feminist intent, but that’s the baffling nature of the film, examining the costs of a woman’s independent action through lurid, violent exaggeration, where Vienna isn’t willing to sacrifice her autonomy for Johnny, and just as surprisingly, he never asks her to.  Described as “a revisionist western, a feminist polemic, a vibrant fairy tale, a subversive cold war parable, maybe even a queer cult classic, ReFramed No. 23: Nicholas Ray's 'Johnny Guitar' (1954),” it has a beloved stature in the gay community (who loved to do Crawford in drag), openly embraced for how it has undermined the sexual roles, leaving audiences confused at the time of its release, with Vienna bitterly reminding Johnny, “A man can lie, steal, and even kill, but as long as he hangs on to his pride, he’s still a man.  All a woman has to do is slip – once, and she’s a ‘tramp!’  Must be a great comfort to you to be a man.”  There are also lesbian undercurrents, with Emma having a delusional fantasy about the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), yet her real interest, it seems, is Vienna, yet the sentiment is not reciprocated, which only leaves her more incensed, subconsciously repressing that interest and wanting her dead if she can’t have her.  It’s a strange alignment of stars, certainly among the most mysterious of all Westerns, yet it has all the standard conventions, a stagecoach holdup, a bank robbery, a hired gun, a posse turned into a lynch mob, a villain’s lair, a barroom brawl, a woman with a past, and a kid trying to prove himself.  Hayden’s tough guy persona is used to brilliant effect, as he doesn’t carry a gun, carrying a guitar on his back instead, introducing himself as a disinterested bystander at one point, “I’m a stranger here myself,” completely confounding the outlaw gang who don’t know where he stands, making the barroom confrontation even more wonderful, as the standoff isn’t with guns but with words, a delightful turn of events, and the rapid-fire dialogue doesn’t disappoint, ever more mythologized over time, endlessly quoted and repeated, including his maxim for living, “When you boil it all down, what does a man really need?  Just a smoke and a cup of coffee,” a line that diffuses armed conflict from escalating. 

The last film shot on Trucolor, a highly saturated two-strip, red and blue process, much of it shot in some stunning outdoor landscapes of Sedona, Arizona by Harry Stradling Sr, while other scenes were filmed near Oak Creek Canyon between Phoenix and Sedona, where the rocks have a reddish tint, yet Crawford refused to subject herself to the desert setting, so all her outdoor close-ups were actually shot in studio, using a double for long shots.  Shot at Republic Pictures, Ray’s first after leaving RKO, a smaller low-budget studio known primarily for B-movies that was a step down from Crawford’s days as the glamorous star at MGM and then Warners, so she let Ray and everyone else on the set know it, making their lives a living hell with temper tantrums and constant demands for more scenes and close-ups, even attempting to sabotage actress Mercedes Cambridge, bullying her on the set while ripping her costumes to shreds, thrown along the side of a highway in a drunken spree.  Ray reportedly vomited several times before arriving to work each day, as the heightened tension working with Crawford was unbearable.  Not like any other cowboy drama, playing havoc with Western conventions while reveling in sexual role-reversals, where in the middle of it all is Victor Young’s enchanting musical score, Ray sets his film shortly after the Civil War, taking place outside a fictitious town of Red Butte, Arizona (identified by the bank), as a stranger wanders into town by the name of Johnny Guitar, but along the way he witnesses a stagecoach robbery from high above a mountain vista, unable to see details, while all around them explosions are going off to make way for the coming railroad.  Entering town is like entering a dream, arriving during a sandstorm, where all you can make out is the name of the saloon, Vienna’s, with a casino inside, yet it is eerily empty, with no customers, yet the barkeep and dealers are all eyeballing the man who walked in out of a storm, discovering Vienna, now the owner, is a former saloon hostess, with short cropped hair, dressed entirely in black boots, pants and shirt, with dark red lipstick, yet carrying a holster, just like a man.  Seen early on having a business meeting with a railroad executive, she more than holds her own, viewed as a domineering force who is defiantly self-reliant, even barking out orders in her low voice to her casino workers, yet this establishment is peculiarly built right into a rock, which accounts for some of the jagged walls.  The leisurely pace of the opening is interrupted by the arrival of an angry mob led by Emma, including John McIvers (Ward Bond), a cattleman mayor, Marshal Williams (Frank Ferguson), and a motley group of men, providing a dead body as evidence, calling out for Vienna to be charged with the murder of her brother in the stagecoach robbery, though no evidence points to her.  Emma claims it was done by the Dancin’ Kid gang, friends of Vienna, claiming she’s harboring a gang of criminals and needs to be run out of town.  Vienna starts out on the top of the stairs, eyeballing the group, calmly proclaiming her innocence, indicating “Down there I sell whiskey and cards.  All you can buy up these stairs is a bullet in the head.  Now which do you want?”  But when Emma makes it personal, making threats, she walks down the stairs, with Emma warning, “I’m going to kill you.”  Vienna answers, “I know.  If I don’t kill you first.”  And therein lies the dramatic theme, radiating a persistent anxiety about change, as the two protagonists are dead set in their intentions, both fiercely independent, yet stubbornly persistent.  Emma’s hysteria is matched by Vienna’s calm restraint, never backing down, but holding her own against heavily stacked odds.  McIvers gives her and her ilk 24-hours to get out of town if they want to avoid trouble, an ultimatum at odds with the Marshal’s law, but he means business, with threats setting the stage for future hostilities.  In the midst of this showdown in the saloon, Johnny distinguishes himself as the only man without a gun, yet his calmness and good humor belies the situation, egged on by Bart (Ernest Borgnine), one of the Kid’s gang, and the two get to tussling, mostly happening offscreen, as the camera stays on Vienna and the Kid, who stand around a blackjack table discussing their feelings, returning to the fight only when it’s over, a forgettable brawl of no consequence whatsoever, with Johnny beating him senseless.  While no one says it out loud, this stranger seems surprisingly at ease, appearing out of nowhere, raising the question, “Who is this guy?”  Johnny and Vienna have a history together, yet broke it off five years ago, with Vienna calling him back as hired protection, yet her underlying motivation is to rekindle that love affair.  She hides her feelings, however, behind the bravado of the brawl, with each dancing around the inevitable, creating a mysterious ballet of emotional standoffishness, yet then instantaneously they apparently reconnect, awakening the next morning with their relationship reassured.  Vienna has some unfinished business, making a withdrawal from the bank to pay off her staff, as she’ll be closing down.  But they’re met by the Kid and his gang, who are there to rob the bank, thinking so long as they’re run out of the premises, they’ll at least have some traveling money.  While the timing couldn’t be more peculiar, the outlaw escape is equally harrowing, as they head into the mountains at the same time as dynamite explosions are closing down the pass, making the crossing impossible, returning to their hideout tucked away from it all, perched atop a mountainous rock, yet completely out of sight behind a waterfall, with the anxious men seething in anger and discontent.

While this is a Joan Crawford picture, Mercedes Cambridge steals the show as a raving psychopath, insanely over-the-top, serving as the town instigator, stirring the men into a frenzy, underscoring the men’s sheepishness, quickly forming a posse headed by McIvers (which mirrors Ward Bond’s anti-communist role in spearheading the McCarthy attacks), but she spurs them on at every turn chasing after the Kid and his gang, banishing Vienna from town, and even worse, instilling the men with a lynch mob hysteria, veering into territory explored by Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and William Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), where ordinary citizens can be bullied into a psychotic rage, completely transformed into a communal bloodlust for killing.  While McIvers is the man in charge, she is the pathological force that actually drives this picture, playing an unforgettable role of pure evil incarnate, getting a maniacal reaction after torching Vienna’s business and burning it down, and while the community may be responsible for carrying out a hanging, she goads them all along the way, pushing them further and further into following their worst instincts, crossing the line into criminality and even murder.  The half-crazed, pathological mania behind her neurotic vengeance is at the heart of the picture, standing for the ruthlessly corrupt power behind the McCarthy hearings, whose rigid standards are driven by a delusionary, Puritanical repression, matching Emma’s own deeply repressed sexual identity, with Vienna explaining that the Kid “makes her feel like a woman, and that frightens her,” instead instilling a poisonous venom over every frame of the film.  Identity fluctuates throughout this picture, as Vienna changes from pants to dresses (butch to femme), Johnny goes from being unarmed to wearing a gun, Johnny has changed his name, while Vienna has changed her profession.  Moreover, the Kid and his gang are charged for a stage holdup they didn’t commit, Vienna is repeatedly charged with masterminding crimes she had nothing to do with, while her sexual role from male to female also fluctuates with the costume she wears.  She is financially independent, owning her own business, and is always in control of her relationships, whether it be with the Kid or Johnny, always choosing the man she wants rather than be chosen by them.  Meeting an angry lynch mob in her saloon after the bank robbery, she’s alone in a cavernous saloon wearing a flowing white dress of innocence, seen calmly playing a sad song on the piano, an astonishing yet remarkably unforeseen image with the interior rocks adding an eerie backdrop, but when the vicious mob overruns her claim of guiltlessness, she’s hauled off for a hanging with her saloon gleefully burned down by Emma.  The lynch mob possesses evil intent, consumed on getting vengeance, browbeating a terrified kid into implicating Vienna (pressuring many well-known actors and directors into naming names is precisely what was so heinous about the McCarthy hearings), promising him immunity, but breaking every promise they make, hanging him anyway while Vienna is gallantly rescued by Johnny with the noose still around her neck, a last second reprieve from the gallows’ rope.  A figure of female power in a traditionally male-dominated West, she maintains her composure even after her business is burned to the ground, viewed as a rugged, tough individual, an equal in every respect to Johnny Guitar, or any other man, switching back into pants afterwards, easily exuding both masculine and feminine traits, but what’s missing is any sense of vulnerability or female mystique, where any romance is more suggestive than real or visibly expressed onscreen.  While Mildred Pierce (1945) breathed new life into Crawford’s flagging career, this film coincided with a downturn in her star status, where the exaggerated fever dream of this film only heightened a prevailing view of her as camp.  Figuring into this public descent was Crawford’s open attack on Marilyn Monroe’s flaunted sexuality, which she likened to a “burlesque show” unsuitable for the screen, claiming her films weren’t doing any business.  The story was a sensation in Hollywood, with most defending Monroe, who would, of course, become a huge box office star, while Crawford was viewed as an over-the-hill actress whose star had faded, openly revealing her jealousy of Monroe’s quick ascent into the Hollywood mainstream.  Even during the filming of this film, the press viciously attacked her, claiming her behavior on the set was unprofessional, accused of bullying Mercedes Cambridge, with Sterling Hayden echoing that thought, so her personal life matches a character that hates all other women, viewing them all as rivals, which greatly accelerates her exaggerated view as camp.  The finale, however, really tops it off, where there is an inevitable shootout between the two female stars, taking place at the outlaw hideout, while the men are reduced to secondary characters who simply watch it all happen, but the film begins and ends with Johnny, elevated to an intoxicating degree with a lover’s kiss in front of a waterfall to Peggy Lee’s wistful and melancholic rendition of the final theme song, Johnny Guitar (Title Song) YouTube (3:11), singing “There was never a man like my Johnny, like the one they call Johnny Guitar,” as if the entire film has been narrated by her.  Out of nowhere, viewers are reminded that the title of the film is in name only, as Crawford is the one wearing the pants and pushing all the buttons.  Described as part fatalism, part romanticism, the cinema of outsiders and loners, and also the cinema of gun fighting women, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum described this as the “first existential western.” 

Martin Scorsese introduces Johnny Guitar (USA, 1954) dir. Nicholas Ray YouTube (3:27)

Rebel Without a Cause

Director Nicholas Ray (right) with James Dean

Ray with Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood, and James Dean

Ray with Natalie Wood and James Dean

Natalie Wood and James Dean

James Dean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE           A                                                                                       USA  (111 mi)  1955  ‘Scope  d:  Nicholas Ray

My idol—a legend, the outcast Hollywood rebel, white hair, black eye-patch, and a head full of subversion and controlled substances.                                                                                         —Jim Jarmusch, one of his former film students, describing Nicholas Ray, Dangerous Talents | Vanity Fair

A searingly emotional work about troubled adolescents whose parents simply don’t understand their sense of abject alienation, displaying the coming-of-age ritual customs and behaviors of troubled teenage conformity and rebelliousness in their rite of passage to adulthood.  James Dean’s most iconic performance, a stand-in for an entire generation of teenagers, unforgettable in his blue jeans, white shirt, and red jacket, remaining the central figure of the film as Jim Stark, a confused middle class loner who’s tired of remaining on the outside, who fights his way inside one of those high school closely-knit, nearly inpenetrable social cliques, even at the risk of losing his life.  Along the way he impresses Natalie Wood as Judy, and is idolized by one of the loneliest characters ever conceived in American cinema, Sal Mineo as perennial outcast Plato, a homoerotic part described by Mineo as “the first gay teenager in films,” with both Wood and Mineo nominated for best supporting Oscars, arguably the first person nominated for playing an LGBTQ character, originally planning an onscreen kiss between Dean and Mineo.  Nominated in the best actor category in both his other films, the Academy criminally neglected Dean’s memorable performance here, a stunning oversight, particularly in view of who else was nominated, including Dean himself for EAST OF EDEN (1955), as it blows them all out of the water, including his other two performances, with this picture turning James Dean into an immortalized star, ingrained into American culture and beyond, held on the same star plateau as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, like a time capsule, forever defined by this role, still revered more than half a century later.  While there is an implicitly conservative message of conformity and adhering to traditional norms of the 1950’s, including that of the suburban, nuclear family which reinforces heterosexual unions, yet their distinctively different three-way friendship is not like any other, remaining in a class by itself, profoundly influential in its yearning for connection, expressed in the repressed sexual desires inherent in their characters.  And therein lies the dramatic staying power of this film, described as the personal favorite of Ray, with towering lead performances for the ages, unique in its sensitive depiction of the formulative teenage years, struggling to find moral integrity in a world surrounded by adult complacency and blatant disinterest, with loving but patronizing parents who haven’t a clue who their own children are, or why they have to associate with bullies and thugs at school, whose parents probably represent a high social standing in the community, yet remain blind to their own children, becoming an indictment of parental responsibility, abdicating their role, providing no moral framework for their children.  Let’s remember, the timing of this film comes on the heels of the red-baiting House Un-American Activities Committee investigations in the era of McCarthyism, when America’s highest institutions of authority were running amok, creating an authoritative void.  Into this world, teenagers enter a strangly personalized realm, beautifully captured in intimate close ups and daring confrontations with one another, never more vulnerable, yet placing themselves at risk physically.  Tragedy befalls many who don’t survive, while another tragedy is that so many others come so close to the same fate.  With emotional bombs going off in every which direction, kids learn how to survive off the tragedies of others.  After obtaining the rights to psychiatrist Dr. Robert M. Lindner’s 1944 novel, Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath, about a disturbed, incarcerated youth whose violent past was revealed under hypnosis, it was intended as a black and white, juvenile delinquency-themed B-movie, something along the likes of Blackboard Jungle (1955) that was released just 6 months earlier, originally intended to star Marlon Brando, but they couldn’t sign him, instead turning this into glorious color on CinemaScope, shot by GONE WITH THE WIND’S Ernest Haller in a work adapted by Stewart Stern and Irving Schulman, nearly discarding the entire novel altogether, while entrusting the project to James Dean, attempting to portray the moral decay of today’s youth, exploring the conflicts between generations, released just a month after Dean’s tragic death in a car accident, which only added to the film’s mystique, remaining the only movie he ever headlined with top billing.  Hailed as the first rock star, emulated by both Elvis Presley and John Lennon, James Dean would become an icon for American youth, providing the rock star template by living fast and dying young, as did co-stars Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood, as she drowned under mysterious circumstances while he was stabbed in an apparent bungled robbery.  Dennis Hopper as Goon, one of the gang, had his part trimmed once Ray discovered Natalie Wood was seeing him, with Ray trying to have him fired, but he was under contract.  Hopper survived into his later years, yet he emulated that flame-out rock star lifestyle his entire life.  Prior to the shoot, the bisexual Nicholas Ray (aged 43) was having an affair with an underaged 16-year old Natalie Wood, becoming lovers just a week after her original screen test, while also having another affair with 16-year old Sal Mineo (The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties), personal obsessions, perhaps, that revealed the borderline edge and depths of his own artistry, which would be viewed today as criminal behavior, no less than Roman Polanski’s crime that sent him into exile in Europe to avoid arrest, yet what are we to make of it now, as the man is long gone, yet his works are immortalized, taking on their own artistic identity, where few hold a candle to this one.  The idea of a troubled teenager identifying as misunderstood youth was just becoming a social reality, emphasized by male anxiety, despair, and isolation, while youth culture would explode just a few years later, with this film opening the floodgates. 

The quintessential juvenile delinquent film from this period, yet never released as a teen film, it’s an adult film that just happens to star teenagers, told from their perspective for a change, and still the best of all the youth movies as a result.  The combustible force of combining Nicholas Ray with James Dean is the most remarkable aspect of the picture, two deeply introverted, damaged souls combining their talents into something highly personalized and uniquely original, yet in a mainstream Hollywood studio setting, where Ray’s poetic expressionism, including his use of light, space, and motion are all uniquely in sync with the emotions of the characters.  Spanning 24-hours in the life of Jim Stark on his first day of high school (filmed at Santa Monica High School), having moved from place to place throughout the years, always running from various troubles, with parents pretending those troubles don’t exist, that they’ll simply disappear in their next destination.  In an unusual opening, Stark is sprawled out on the street dead drunk, eventually hauled into the police juvenile division for plain drunkenness, yet showing unusual delicacy in the matter, interviewed by Inspector Ray Fremick (Edward Platt), the only truly responsible adult figure in the film, displaying social worker skills that were almost non-existent in the police profession following WWII, exclusively female-oriented prior to that, yet Ray’s depiction of the police offering friendly help and guidance to wayward youth is idealized in this film, portraying police as we wish them to be, readily available while helpfully establishing trust, displaying inordinate patience, as opposed to how they are perceived today, routinely targeting minorities, historically fabricating inaccurately self-selving reports, selectively disabling body surveillance cams, with a reputation for being anxiously trigger-happy, with a long line of dead minority victims to show for it (Police shootings database 2015-2021 - The Washington Post).  But this is a Hollywood rendition, blissfully viewing police as a potential cure for juvenile delinquency and all that ails misguided youth, where all you have to do is listen and show them a little understanding, all reflected in the opening montage of three distinctly different troubled youth hauled in for questioning, Stark for drunkenness, frustrated by the endless bickering of his parents, Judy for a curfew violation, craving affection from her father (William Hopper) who is disturbed by her budding sexuality, calling her a “dirty tramp,” even slapping her for kissing him on the mouth (where it would not be hard to read incestuous undertones), while Plato, abandoned by his family since he was an infant, raised by a black domestic housekeeper, was brought in for killing a litter of puppies, unable to offer any explanation, yet clearly he is crying out for help.  Through this revolving door, ushered into interview rooms with glass windows, they can see and interact with the others who have been brought in, each plagued by problems at home, with Plato immediately drawn to Jim, perhaps the only person in the world who has treated him with kindness.  Yet we also see Jim’s dysfunctional parents, who he collectively labels a “zoo,” continually arguing with one another, with the perpetually domineering mother (Ann Doran) and the constantly interfering grandmother (Virginia Brissac) continually browbeating the helpless husband (Jim Backus), who never stands up for himself, or for Jim, even seen at one point wearing an apron around the house, where he has effectively been emasculated, leaving Jim so exasperated that at one point he famously screams “You’re tearing me apart.”  Ray explored similar territory before in the Depression-era film They Live By Night (1948), expounding on familiar themes, like doomed romance, the rhapsodic intimacy of young love, adolescent flights of fantasy, a safe place protected from the outside world, the ineffectual family structure, and having no reliable friends to turn to, where the depths of alienation are so deep that all these kids talk about is just being normal, where all they ever want is to have a chance in this world.  Delinquency and crime, however, were believed to be byproducts of postwar poverty, having a catastrophic effect on the family unit, so it’s curious that this social phenomenon would extend into the privileged lives of the upper middle class, where the family backgrounds remain unknown, with no one ever seen going to work, yet they are apparently prosperous, able to move from place to place, with young teenagers having complete access to cars.  This reflects the domesticated complacency of America in the 50’s, the era of television’s popular Father Knows Best (1954–1960), a paean to conservatism, positioning women in the home as housewives, where prosperity is taken for granted, never having to concern themselves with the actual details of work.

This film has an operatic quality about it, moving from one melodrama to the next, entering the film in full stream, dramatically drawing in the viewers, where it is emotionally unforgiving and relentless, maintaining that pace until the tragic end, with Ray using Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as his inspirational template, calling it “the best play written about juvenile delinquents.”  Using familiar landmark locations in Los Angeles, little time is spent in school, instead extended scenes develop at a field trip taken to the Griffith Park Observatory, finding refuge in a deserted mansion that is the William O. Jenkins House, a former Getty mansion also used in SUNSET BLVD. (1950), then returning at the end to the Griffith Planetarium, where early on students hear an astronomer’s lecture on the order of the universe, with the heavens seen spiraling out of control, exploding in an apocalyptic big bang finale, with planet earth disappearing into the empty blackness of space from whence it came.  Talk about foreboding! That’s just the opening appetizer for a tantalizing knife fight sequence (mirroring Shakespeare’s swordfight) on the outdoor steps, as Jim is taunted by a gang of youths led by Buzz (Corey Allen), with Judy at his side, deflating his car tire with a switchblade before challenging him to a fight.  Jim doesn’t back down, standing up for himself, perhaps surprising Buzz when he swats his knife away, bringing the knife to his throat before calling it off.  As if to save honor, Buzz proposes a chicken run later that evening, with two cars dashing off a cliff edge, where the first to jump out is a chicken.  That event is shown with a ritualistic flair, like a primitive scene of combat, using cars as weapons, driving fast and furiously as they approach a steep cliff overlooking the ocean far below.  In a surprising touch, as Jim and Buzz survey the landscape before the run, standing on the edge of the cliff, there is no animosity, with Buzz indicating under different circumstances he and Jim could become friends, but fate must intervene, holding each one accountable under these precarious conditions, where they have no choice but to face up to it, inviting danger to intercede, all before a Greek chorus of observers who silently witness Buzz sail off the cliff when his shirt gets caught on the door handle, sending him to his ultimate doom.  In what might be the most startling moment of the entire film, Judy transfers allegiances right there on the spot, without hesitation, as if Buzz was just an afterthought, shifting to the closest alpha-male in the vicinity, setting the stage for what follows.  Each has become strangely alienated from their own families, who fail to comprehend the ramifications, thinking only of themselves, while Jim grasps the larger picture, as a kid was killed, refusing to remain silent, knowing that contacting authorities is the right thing to do, even if his family encourages otherwise.  Thwarted in his search for Ray Fremick, who is out on call, Jim runs into the others who retain their animosity against him, believing he will rat them out, searching for a safe refuge.  Plato mentioned he often visits a deserted mansion in the Hollywood hills, inviting Judy to come along, with Plato finding his way there as well, becoming a transformed new family, rejecting everything their own parents stand for, promising to show real authenticity and concern, starting with one another.  Judy is stunned by this immediate transformation, finding it so easy to fall in love for the first time in her life, two outlaws on the run, happily in each other’s arms, with Plato as their adopted son, adoring Jim, wishing he was his own father, given a homoerotic subtext, making this a new-age relationship.  But Jim and Judy go off exploring the mansion, leaving Plato asleep and alone, only to find himself cruelly awakened by the gang searching for revenge, reverting into survival mode, hysterically shooting one of them, even shooting at one of the arriving policemen, utterly lost and alone, finding no way out but to flee the premises, wandering through the brush, finding his way to the safety of the Griffith Observatory, the place where it all began, with Jim and Judy in hot pursuit, with Jim finally settling him down, providing needed friendship and trust, cleverly removing the bullets from the gun before encouraging him to come outside, only to end in tragic circumstances in a useless police killing, a telling sign of decades of more tragedies to become, a tearful, heartrendering finale, with a crane shot pulling away, capturing the Observatory from a distance, where after everyone else has left, the lone man walking towards the building is none other than Nicholas Ray himself.