Johnny Guitare

Johnny Guitar is a gender drama with obsessive personalities flirting with dementia: the character played by Mercedes McCambridge is unmistakably the main baddie, but Joan Crawford's character is not completely pleasant, grimacing as she does through much of the movie. Vienna's own sexually linked psychological fixation influences her in correspondingly curious digressions; she dresses thoroughly in white in a climactic scene where she must confront McCambridge, who dresses in black for most of the film. The men dramatically defer to the powerful determination and identities of these two women. Sterling Hayden as the eponymous hero is something less of a hero on account of Crawford's compulsion. The fact that he plays a guitar and travels without a gun gives a hint to the devalorizing of the Western hero boilerplate inferred by the title. He's a subordinate character, given to hesitation. He's mainly a bystander: His catchphrase is "I'm a stranger here myself," which can also characterize Nicholas Ray here himself.

The other male principals also take a subordinate role to the women; none of the posse, not even McIvers, its suggested chief, can bring himself to refuse McCambridge's Emma, even when lives depend on it. The Dancin' Kid makes several crucial choices, including the robbing of a bank, based on whether or not Vienna will go on reciprocating his sentiments rather than leaving him for Johnny. Johnny and the Kid are both atypically tender cowboys in contrast with the icons of the time, together with the basis that each has a creative craft that's part of his name, and that both in most cases allow the female characters to make the choices and are inclined to comply with them.

Scorsese has talked about the great theme-smugglers of the studio era who snuck subversive elements past the scrutiny of the censors. This is definitely true and admirable, but sometimes I'm baffled at what must've been functional retardation on the part of Hayes' puritan committee. This 1954 Freudian Western is one of the record out-of-the-blue phenomenons of the studio system, a film so insubordinate it's a miracle it ever got made. But despite its genre, this is a gentle, thin-skinned film, Ray's tenderest avowal of his outsider theme.

As with Ray's In a Lonely Place, On Dangerous Ground and Bitter Victory, characters come across truths that they don't want to admit to themselves or others, and sometimes this information is obvious to those around them first. He uses innuendo as a way to deal with plot developments that can't be externalized, or those that haven't come to pass yet. The characters are rounded out through teasing, accusation, high emotion.

Ray, known for his dramatic use of architecture, was keen on the meanings of the horizontal line, which serves a western particularly well. The first and second halves of the film have different visual styles. But both sections feature extensive panning. The second half features brilliant landscape photography, as Ray's camera pans over snow-covered mountain roads and trails. These sections are unusual in that they don't feature wilderness areas. Instead, these scenes always have human habitations in them: roads, farmhouses, paths, and other human constructions. They can be described as rural, or as tourist areas: the sort of remote but inhabited location one might go to on vacation. Such locales rarely pop up in movies. Westerns, which feature vast landscapes, tend to have wilderness areas without modern buildings. And contemporary films rarely go to such poverty stricken tourist spots, preferring resort and wilderness areas with more glamour.

However, no matter what intellectual appreciation movie buffs and film scholars and critics have for it, it's impossible to deny its utterly ham-fisted acting and soapy plot strands, all approaching out-and-out kitsch. I've seen a good deal of westerns with more understated, salt-of-the-earth acting that brought me closer to the grit inherent to its environment. This is the diametric opposite of being one of them. Did any of them have whiplash after a certain amount of takes? Why such intense about-faces and comic-book demeanor? Was Douglas Sirk on set? After awhile, I gave up on the performances. Their imaginations don't seem engaged. They pretend self-consciously. They're stiff, tightly wound. They never let go. And though Crawford is never uninteresting or by any means bad in any film in which I see her, I feel she should've been told as much as necessary that acting is not a competition, that everything must be done for the good of the film or everybody else is put at risk. But she's not the only one who showboats here; everybody does. Despite a cast of performers that tend to intrigue me, the two females, Hayden, Ernest Borgnine, I could only rely on Ray's building of tension through montage and his marshaling of the plot to keep me engaged. Nevertheless, Johnny Guitar is a certain kind of film that has upheld its rank by repositioning itself every decade since its release.

Johnny Guitar is a great western that's emotional, thrilling and subversive, skillfully subverting some of the conventions of a western. Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden both give incredible performances and have strong chemistry. Scott Brady is great but unfortunately Mercedes McCambridge's one dimensional character is annoying. Nicholas Ray's direction is great, its extremely well paced and well filmed. The music by Victor Young and Peggy Lee is fantastic.

I'm not a big fan of Westerns. I just find a sameness to them that I can't get over. I had read that this was interesting. It was. First of all, the two protagonists are women. Joan Crawford, hanging on to her saloon, waiting for the arrival of the railroad, and Mercedes McCambridge, looking absolutely possessed, getting every man in town to follow her to the point of hanging people. Then there's Sterling Hayden, Jack Ripper from Dr. Strangelove, a puzzling character of great complexity, the gunfighter who can't stay out of the business. Add a few character actors and a relentless effort to ignite a fire and keep progress away, and you've got a really engaging film. It's obvious this was made with a higher budget, good camera work and some excellent settings. I'm sure someone has addressed all the symbols in the movie. Green dresses (envy), white dresses (purity), red dresses (time to kick butt). There are lots of scenes framed for effect as well. I recommend this film.

Hard to know what to say about this florid concoction except that it's truly one of a kind. Taken as a western, it's plain god-awful. Taken as parody of a western, it's sharp as a doorknob. Taken as an experiment in Technicolor, I can think of cheaper ways. To me, the movie is best taken as a collection of insider indulgence. How else to explain Crawford's Park Avenue get-up, or her desert island casino, or McCambridge's manly fierceness, or a bookish bank-robber, or a showdown for toughest woman of Lesbos.

Now, scholars can play around with symbolism all they want. But first, the subject has to be interesting enough to play with. Seems to me there are worthier movie subjects than this one for analysis. Sure, I've read how the story's really a color-coded allegory of McCarthyism, with the black-clad posse as HUAC and the bank robbers as commies. After all, the Dancin' Kid is left-handed and the gang does stick together and they do rob banks. Probably this is as good a subtext reading as any, that is, if you're looking for some such. Me, I just take it as a slice of Hollywood weirdness with Crawford playing dress-up and in charge, with the estimable Nick Ray trailing somewhere behind.

Weird and hysterical Western with Freudian touches , dreamlike emotionalism and magnificent dialogue in which is blended domination, humiliation and a deadly confrontation ; resulting to be a fascinating and melodramatic film .The ex-prostitute Vienna (Joan Crawford) , a Gambling Saloon keeper, has built a saloon outside of town, and she wishes to make her own way once the railroad is put through, but the villagers want her run out of town and some of them hanged . Meanwhile the stagecoach is attacked and four men , Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and his hoodlums( Brian Cooper, Ernest Borgnine, Royal Dano) come to the saloon . Righteous Vienna stands strong against them, and is aided by the appearance of a gun-toting old flame of hers, Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), who is not what he seems. As Vienna can't drive Guitar out of her head . Meantime the officials (Frank Ferguson , War Bond) pursue the group led by Dancin' Kid and besiege their booth and occurs a lynch mobs . At the ending takes place a long-expected shootout between the two-fisted enemies averted by a woman's insistence.

Love and hate are woven into two protagonists , the fallen angel Joan Crawford and the spinster landowner Mercedes McCambridge ; both of them share a mythical confrontation . Exceptional performances by all casting as top-notch Joan Crawford as gutsy matriarch squabbling over two men , Sterling Hayden as pacifist saddle-tramp who turns a psychopathic temper taking up his pistols and Mercedes McCambridge as nasty and vengeful harpy . Sensational plethora of secondaries as John Carradine , Paul Fix , Rys Williams , among others. Colorful cinematography with a symbolist use in Trucolor by Harry Stradling. Classic and immortal musical score by Victor Young , including unforgettable songs by Peggy Lee . This hypnotic Western with symbolism rampant is marvelously directed by Nicholas Ray , author of various master pieces and hits as Rebel without cause , 55 days at Pekin and many others . Rating : Very good , exceptional and indispensable seeing . Two thumbs up