Johnny Guitar (1954)
Directed by Nicholas Ray

Film Review

If it is judged solely by the criteria of what makes a great classic western Johnny Guitar can hardly escape being written off as one of the genre's weaker offerings, a risible accumulation of well-worn clichés stuffed into a narrative that scarcely takes itself seriously for a second.  But, in a similar vein to those gloriously kitsch melodramas that Douglas Sirk was making in Hollywod around this time, and which are now regarded in a far more positive light, what matters about this film is not what is on the colour-saturated surface, but what lies underneath, and what lies underneath is a pretty sour critique of contemporary American society and human nature in general.

Johnny Guitar is arguably Hollywood's most blatant riposte against McCarthyism.  One memorable scene, in which an outlaw is forced to testify (falsely) against an innocent person (the main character, Vienna) would have struck a powerful chord in mid-1950s America, as it directly references the scurrilous mock trials perpetrated by the House Un-American Activities Committee.  The HUAC was particularly hostile to anyone working in Hollywood who had alleged sympathies with the Communist Party, and directors, screenwriters, producers and actors were driven to testify against one another as part of Senator McCarthy's rabid anti-Communist witch hunt.  The film's script is credited to Philip Yordan, but in fact it was written by one of the victims of the HUAC, the blacklisted screenwriter Ben Maddow.

Fifty years on, with the McCarthy era all but a distant memory, the film still has a resonance, although now its political themes have a wider purchase.  In essence, Johnny Guitar is a morality play which pits narrow-minded conservatives against forward-thinking liberals, the latter represented by the dominatrix heroine and her faithful allies.  Those in the former camp, a bunch of weak-willed reactionaries led by a woman pursuing her own personal vendetta, despise outsiders and resemble today's anti-immigration bigots, easily manipulated by a charismatic leader.  If nothing else, the film warns us how easily a supposedly civilised society can be overtaken by hysteria directed against The Other, who becomes the scapegoat for all that is wrong with this society and the symbol of all that we fear and loath.

The French film critic François Truffaut likened the film to a western variation on the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast (with Sterling Hayden presumably being the Beauty), but this perhaps undermines what is the central dynamic of the film, which is not the relationship between Johnny Guitar and the saloon owner Vienna, but rather that between Vienna and her rival Emma Small.  We are told that the two women are rivals in love, with Vienna purportedly having once stolen Emma's beau.  This can hardly account for the extreme nature of the hatred the two women have for one another and we are reminded of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), which shows a similarly poisonously sadistic relationship between two women who are bound together by a grudging mutual dependency.  The fact that Joan Crawford, at her melodramatic best, plays one of the battling females in both films (and the more sympathetic one at that) makes the connection unavoidable, but the real clincher is that Crawford had originally wanted her long-term rival Bette Davis to play the part of Emma, and (as is now widely known) Crawford once had something of a crush on Miss Davis.

As she struts about in leathers and Levis, looking like something out of a lesbian porn movie, Crawford seems to revel in her sexual ambiguity and is easily the most masculine thing in the film.  The male characters, including the titular Johnny, are hardly more than part of the set dressing, and for the most part our attention is monopolised by Crawford and her equally feisty sparring partner, Mercedes McCambridge.  If there was ever any subtlety in the characterisation, this was totally erased long before the cameras were set rolling.  Crawford is once again the hard-done by victim of circumstances, determined not to give in to misfortune and looking like a cross-between Boudica and Joan of Arc.   McCambridge is just an evil Fascistic witch - basically Joseph McCarthy in a wig and black dress.  There is never any doubt as to who is going to triumph in this particular cat fight to the death, but it's fun watching the two vixens fight it out, destroying most of the set and all of the film's narrative credibility along the way.

Nicholas Ray was a versatile filmmaker who directed many great films, including the James Dean vehicle Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Bogart masterpiece In a Lonely Place (1950).  But he never made quite another film like Johnny Guitar, a tacky, low-budget western that, beneath its kitsch exterior, delivers the most blisteringly acerbic portrayal of mid-1950s America.  Colourful to the point of garish, and so camp that it almost makes your eyes water, Johnny Guitar was never going to be taken seriously as a western, which is presumably why most of the critics gave it a decisive thumbs down when it was first released.  Today, it is held in much higher esteem, not only one of Ray's best films but also one of the most incisive and politically courageous films to come out of a Hollywood studio in the 1950s.  And it is wildly entertaining.

Film Synopsis

A lone guitar player named Johnny Guitar arrives at a saloon located on the outskirts of a dusty Arizona cattle town.  The saloon belongs to a headstrong woman, Vienna, who was once a lover of his.  In the five years since they separated, they continue to love one another, but their love is now tempered with bitterness.  Vienna has sold everything a woman has to sell to enable her to buy a plot of land that she gambles will make her wealthy when the railroad company starts laying tracks nearby.  A former gunslinger, Johnny is eager to make a new start, but such hopes appear thwarted when he finds himself caught up in a feud between Vienna and the inhabitants of the nearby town, who are determined to expel her and another ex-partner, The Dancin' Kid.  Vienna's main threat is a rich cattle baron, Emma Small, who has never forgiven her for stealing The Dancin' Kid from her.  Emma gets her chance to have her rival arrested when Vienna becomes unwittingly implicated in a bank robbery.  As the noose tightens around her neck, Vienna refuses to give in, and thanks to Johnny Guitar her resilience is finally rewarded, but only after one final confrontation with her mortal adversary...