Johnny Guitar. (PG.)
Directed by Nicholas Ray. 1954.
Starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, John Carradine and Ernest Borgnine. Out on Limited Edition Blu-ray from Eureka! Masters of Cinema, September 20th. 105 mins.
Johnny Guitar - that western with women in. Joan Crawford Isn't Johnny Guitar. Or even Mrs Guitar. Sterling Hayden is Johnny Guitar and has designs on making Crawford's Vienna his Mrs Guitar. Out to stop that is the Dancin' Kid (Brady) - he doesn't dance and ain't a kid. Against them all is posse-happy poison dwarf Emma Small (McCambridge) who is determined to see Vienna hanging from the end of the noose. Small by name and by nature, she is driven by her repressed envy at this scarlet – among her many garish outfits – lady who has built a little casino in the desert and is waiting for the railroad to come and make her rich.
Words to use when reviewing Johnny Guitar: Freudian, McCarthyism (allegory thereof), operatic, feminist, over the top, camp. Martin Scorsese in his little introduction to the restoration brings up the idea of it being operatic in the sense that every emotion and gesture is pushed to the extreme. I think you really get this in the first and third acts. The first takes place entirely in Crawford's business establishment, a humble little place called Vienna's, where roulette wheels whirl in vain anticipation of customers. Over thirty-odd minutes all the main characters turn up to say their piece and set out their stall. What's notable is that in this film nobody can speak to anyone for more than a minute without a threat of violence. The Dancin' Kind goes from telling the newcomer Guitar that he kind of likes the cut of his gib to threatening to put a bullet in him in the space of about 20 seconds. As we watch present-day America appearing to tear itself apart, in Guitar there is the strong suggestion that they've been doing that right from the beginning.
Someone in the many, very informative and entertaining commentaries, describes this as a western like no other. I can't agree but it has its quirks. In the last third there's the scene where Crawford, dressed in bridal white, is playing the piano when the posse turns up at her place. Her place has been build against a cliff face so the wall behind her is flame red granite, a stark contrast to Crawford's outfit. (Seriously, who wears white to their own lynching? At times you sympathize with McCambridge's desire to bring her down a peg or two.)
The McCarthyism comes from a plot about the masses being whipped into a fury by an instigator generating fear at outsiders. Small says that when the railroad arrives the town will be overrun with smallholders and labourers. The plot certainly has a powerful sense of how quickly and how far, events can spin out of control.
Most commentators place a Freudian interpretation on it and it isn't much of a push to suggest that McCambridge's harridan fury is the resentment of a woman who isn't getting any but has convinced herself that she doesn't want any anyway and can't accept that any other woman does. Aside from that, a phallic interpretation is placed on the gunplay with much talk about people with little guns making outsized claims. But gunfighting as a metaphor for sexual prowess doesn't stand up: what use is a man who's quick on the draw?
I think the feminist reading is surely the most flawed, as this film effective drives a surrey and horses through the notion that Hollywood holds men and women to different standards of beauty and that women are a civilising force. At one point, Borgnine says that he's known plenty of women and they've all been trouble and the two here aren't going to change his mind any. Vienna is squeamish about Guitar killing people with his gun but she gets off on men brawling, particularly if it's over her.
Other than Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? I think this is the only time I've seen Crawford in a movie. I'm more familiar with Jessica Lange's performance as Crawford in Feud. And watching her here you have to wonder how she ever became a star. There has been a line drawn that in the movies all females have to be beautiful and young while male stars age with impunity and are usually interesting looking. It isn't true now and it has never been. I'd argue that over its hundred and twenty-odd years the average male Hollywood movie star would be more classically good looking than the female. Crawford was never a hottie and here, in her late forties, she is constantly chasing the sympathetic light or flattering angle. Yet, the film assures us that two strapping, younger, hunks of manhood would be so smitten as to risk their lives for her.
Meanwhile, McCambridge (who would later voice the demon in The Exorcist) is one of the nastiest characters in any western. Generally, Western baddies are calmly sadistic but she is thoroughly flustered throughout, in constant rage for vengeance. She is that eternal figure of womanhood, the one who throughout the ages has always been standing outside a nightclub on a Saturday night, witnessing a punch up and screeching, "Go on Wayne, ****ing hit him!"
Limited Edition Hardbound Slipcase [3000 copies]
Directed by Nicholas Ray. 1954.
Starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, John Carradine and Ernest Borgnine. Out on Limited Edition Blu-ray from Eureka! Masters of Cinema, September 20th. 105 mins.
Johnny Guitar - that western with women in. Joan Crawford Isn't Johnny Guitar. Or even Mrs Guitar. Sterling Hayden is Johnny Guitar and has designs on making Crawford's Vienna his Mrs Guitar. Out to stop that is the Dancin' Kid (Brady) - he doesn't dance and ain't a kid. Against them all is posse-happy poison dwarf Emma Small (McCambridge) who is determined to see Vienna hanging from the end of the noose. Small by name and by nature, she is driven by her repressed envy at this scarlet – among her many garish outfits – lady who has built a little casino in the desert and is waiting for the railroad to come and make her rich.
Words to use when reviewing Johnny Guitar: Freudian, McCarthyism (allegory thereof), operatic, feminist, over the top, camp. Martin Scorsese in his little introduction to the restoration brings up the idea of it being operatic in the sense that every emotion and gesture is pushed to the extreme. I think you really get this in the first and third acts. The first takes place entirely in Crawford's business establishment, a humble little place called Vienna's, where roulette wheels whirl in vain anticipation of customers. Over thirty-odd minutes all the main characters turn up to say their piece and set out their stall. What's notable is that in this film nobody can speak to anyone for more than a minute without a threat of violence. The Dancin' Kind goes from telling the newcomer Guitar that he kind of likes the cut of his gib to threatening to put a bullet in him in the space of about 20 seconds. As we watch present-day America appearing to tear itself apart, in Guitar there is the strong suggestion that they've been doing that right from the beginning.
Someone in the many, very informative and entertaining commentaries, describes this as a western like no other. I can't agree but it has its quirks. In the last third there's the scene where Crawford, dressed in bridal white, is playing the piano when the posse turns up at her place. Her place has been build against a cliff face so the wall behind her is flame red granite, a stark contrast to Crawford's outfit. (Seriously, who wears white to their own lynching? At times you sympathize with McCambridge's desire to bring her down a peg or two.)
The McCarthyism comes from a plot about the masses being whipped into a fury by an instigator generating fear at outsiders. Small says that when the railroad arrives the town will be overrun with smallholders and labourers. The plot certainly has a powerful sense of how quickly and how far, events can spin out of control.
Most commentators place a Freudian interpretation on it and it isn't much of a push to suggest that McCambridge's harridan fury is the resentment of a woman who isn't getting any but has convinced herself that she doesn't want any anyway and can't accept that any other woman does. Aside from that, a phallic interpretation is placed on the gunplay with much talk about people with little guns making outsized claims. But gunfighting as a metaphor for sexual prowess doesn't stand up: what use is a man who's quick on the draw?
I think the feminist reading is surely the most flawed, as this film effective drives a surrey and horses through the notion that Hollywood holds men and women to different standards of beauty and that women are a civilising force. At one point, Borgnine says that he's known plenty of women and they've all been trouble and the two here aren't going to change his mind any. Vienna is squeamish about Guitar killing people with his gun but she gets off on men brawling, particularly if it's over her.
Other than Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? I think this is the only time I've seen Crawford in a movie. I'm more familiar with Jessica Lange's performance as Crawford in Feud. And watching her here you have to wonder how she ever became a star. There has been a line drawn that in the movies all females have to be beautiful and young while male stars age with impunity and are usually interesting looking. It isn't true now and it has never been. I'd argue that over its hundred and twenty-odd years the average male Hollywood movie star would be more classically good looking than the female. Crawford was never a hottie and here, in her late forties, she is constantly chasing the sympathetic light or flattering angle. Yet, the film assures us that two strapping, younger, hunks of manhood would be so smitten as to risk their lives for her.
Meanwhile, McCambridge (who would later voice the demon in The Exorcist) is one of the nastiest characters in any western. Generally, Western baddies are calmly sadistic but she is thoroughly flustered throughout, in constant rage for vengeance. She is that eternal figure of womanhood, the one who throughout the ages has always been standing outside a nightclub on a Saturday night, witnessing a punch up and screeching, "Go on Wayne, ****ing hit him!"
Limited Edition Hardbound Slipcase [3000 copies]
- 1080p presentation on Blu-ray from a 4K restoration of the original film elements, framed in the film’s originally intended aspect ratio of 1.66:1
- Brand new audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin
- Brand new introduction by critic Geoff Andrew, author of The Films of Nicholas Ray: The Poet of Nightfall
- Brand new video piece by Tony Rayns
- Brand new video essay by David Cairns
- Brand new interview with Susan Ray
- Archival introduction to Johnny Guitar by Martin Scorsese
- Trailer
- A LIMITED EDITION 60-page collector’s book featuring new essays on the making of Johnny Guitar and on female gunslingers in the western genre, both by western expert Howard Hughes; an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum; and archival writing and ephemera [3000 copies]
