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Johnny Guitar (1954)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Director: Nicholas Ray
Writers: Philip Yordan (screenplay), Roy Chanslor (novel)
Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge
Genre: Western
Writers: Philip Yordan (screenplay), Roy Chanslor (novel)
Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge
Genre: Western
Johnny Guitar is currently rated at 7.7 on IMDB, a very high rating indeed. Usually only the best made films reach such dizzying heights and yet somehow Nicolas Ray's oddball film has done just that. But why?
When Joan Crawford is in the right role, she slays it. She's effective in the movie as a polished but tough as nails, savvy business woman who may or may not have slept her way to valuable insider information that enabled her to buy up worthless land in the middle of nowhere. She knows that the railroad is coming through the area, making her land very valuable. 'Vienna' (Joan Crawford) finds herself being singled out by a rival woman who hates her guts and rallies the marshal and town's folk to harass her and her friends. Accusing them of all sorts of wrong doings.
The entire film is based on ambiguity and an unusual juxtaposition of characters with 'tough guy' women slinging guns and 'pretty boy' men who dance and play the guitar as the women battle for supremacy. All this is done in a western version of a morality-concept play with enough flair to lift the pulp material to an artistic level that I'm sure no other director would have conceived of. It might be hard for the typical pop corn eating movie fan to get this experimental type of western, but the French New Wave directors like Truffaut got it...and I suspect it was their admiration of the film that has lifted Johnny Guitar from it's initial box office failure to the darling of hard core movie buffs.
Reportedly Johnny Guitar's script is an analogy of the black listing that was going on in Hollywood in the 1950s. We see the town's folks led by a virulent rancher named 'Emma Small', played to perfect by Mercedes McCambridge. She heads up lesser willed town folks into a posse of followers, who go along with her just because she's an outright loudmouth and bully with clout. The towns folks attempt to drive the 'outsider' Vienna and her 'outsider' friends out of town, and do even worse to them. All of this of course was what was actually happening with McCarthyism and black listing in Hollywood.
Johnny Guitar is like a western opera with lines that are spoken not so much for the movie's sake, but more as a message to the audiences of the time.
When Joan Crawford is in the right role, she slays it. She's effective in the movie as a polished but tough as nails, savvy business woman who may or may not have slept her way to valuable insider information that enabled her to buy up worthless land in the middle of nowhere. She knows that the railroad is coming through the area, making her land very valuable. 'Vienna' (Joan Crawford) finds herself being singled out by a rival woman who hates her guts and rallies the marshal and town's folk to harass her and her friends. Accusing them of all sorts of wrong doings.
The entire film is based on ambiguity and an unusual juxtaposition of characters with 'tough guy' women slinging guns and 'pretty boy' men who dance and play the guitar as the women battle for supremacy. All this is done in a western version of a morality-concept play with enough flair to lift the pulp material to an artistic level that I'm sure no other director would have conceived of. It might be hard for the typical pop corn eating movie fan to get this experimental type of western, but the French New Wave directors like Truffaut got it...and I suspect it was their admiration of the film that has lifted Johnny Guitar from it's initial box office failure to the darling of hard core movie buffs.
Reportedly Johnny Guitar's script is an analogy of the black listing that was going on in Hollywood in the 1950s. We see the town's folks led by a virulent rancher named 'Emma Small', played to perfect by Mercedes McCambridge. She heads up lesser willed town folks into a posse of followers, who go along with her just because she's an outright loudmouth and bully with clout. The towns folks attempt to drive the 'outsider' Vienna and her 'outsider' friends out of town, and do even worse to them. All of this of course was what was actually happening with McCarthyism and black listing in Hollywood.
Johnny Guitar is like a western opera with lines that are spoken not so much for the movie's sake, but more as a message to the audiences of the time.