Mega Silents: Joan Crawford Double Bill
As part of the BFI's Too Much Melodrama season, South West Silents and Film Noir UK are proud to present this very special double bill celebrating the Melodrama Queen of the 1940s, Joan Crawford (1904-1977). This event will consist of classic melodrama and film noir Mildred Pierce (1945) directed byMichael Curtiz and Nicholas Ray's melodrama, noir and western, Johnny Guitar (1954).
Mildred Pierce (1945): Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz. Joan Crawford’s iconic performance as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford’s career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar.
But as Mildred pulls herself up by her bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a successful restaurant chain, the ingratitude of her materialistic firstborn (a diabolical Ann Blyth) becomes a venomous serpent’s tooth, setting in motion an endless cycle of desperate overtures and heartless recriminations. Recasting James M. Cain’s rich psychological novel as a murder mystery, this bitter cocktail of blind parental love and all-American ambition is both unremittingly hard-boiled and sumptuously emotional.
Johnny Guitar (1954): 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 the great director Nicholas Ray.
We highly recommend booking tickets early to avoid disappointment!
Our thanks to Park Circus.
South West Silents is a not-for-profit organisation. With support of the BFI Film Audience Network, awarding funds from the National Lottery in order to bring this project to more audiences across the UK. This screening is part of the BFI's Too Much Melodrama Season.