Director: Nicholas Ray
Writers: Philip Yordan, Ray Chanslor, Ben Maddow, Nicholas Ray
Photography: Harry Stradling Sr.
Music: Victor Young, Peggy Lee
Editor: Richard L. Van Enger
Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Ernest Borgnine, Ward Bond, John Carradine, Scott Brady, Ben Cooper, Royal Dano
Johnny Guitar may look easy enough to classify as genre—duh, Western—but director and cowriter Nicholas Ray’s approach transports it to some other realm that is partly overheated Sirk romance, partly psychotherapy study, and only partly Western. It has chaps and horses, yes, but also operatic psychology. It is set out West, in mining and ranching territory, and formally involves the tensions between ranchers and the coming of the railroad. Vienna (Joan Crawford) is a fashionable single woman of a certain age who has set up a casino to take advantage of the railroad when it comes, catering to the farmers and the others it will bring en masse. Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) believes she is speaking for the town when she says, “You heard her tell how they're gonna run the railroad through here, bringin' thousands of new people from the east. Farmers! Dirt farmers! Squatters! They'll push us out. Is that what you're waitin' for?”
But this is not a typical Western story of ranchers and farmers and the railroad. The primary conflict is between these two women, Vienna and Emma, who are similarly attracted to bad boy men. Vienna has a thing for Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) who comes blowing into town like a tumbleweed with his guitar slung over his back and carrying no guns. When he plays his instrument, which is not often, it’s a bunch of flamenco-like fancy fretwork. Emma for her part has a crush on the so-called Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady as if cut from cardboard), whose gang is working a silver mine but they’re rough types. Everyone, including Emma, thinks they’re out abroad on the countryside robbing people. With layered psychological complexity, Vienna and Emma hate each other for what they see in the other of themselves, or some such. It’s kind of a doppelganger story.
Johnny Guitar may look easy enough to classify as genre—duh, Western—but director and cowriter Nicholas Ray’s approach transports it to some other realm that is partly overheated Sirk romance, partly psychotherapy study, and only partly Western. It has chaps and horses, yes, but also operatic psychology. It is set out West, in mining and ranching territory, and formally involves the tensions between ranchers and the coming of the railroad. Vienna (Joan Crawford) is a fashionable single woman of a certain age who has set up a casino to take advantage of the railroad when it comes, catering to the farmers and the others it will bring en masse. Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) believes she is speaking for the town when she says, “You heard her tell how they're gonna run the railroad through here, bringin' thousands of new people from the east. Farmers! Dirt farmers! Squatters! They'll push us out. Is that what you're waitin' for?”
But this is not a typical Western story of ranchers and farmers and the railroad. The primary conflict is between these two women, Vienna and Emma, who are similarly attracted to bad boy men. Vienna has a thing for Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) who comes blowing into town like a tumbleweed with his guitar slung over his back and carrying no guns. When he plays his instrument, which is not often, it’s a bunch of flamenco-like fancy fretwork. Emma for her part has a crush on the so-called Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady as if cut from cardboard), whose gang is working a silver mine but they’re rough types. Everyone, including Emma, thinks they’re out abroad on the countryside robbing people. With layered psychological complexity, Vienna and Emma hate each other for what they see in the other of themselves, or some such. It’s kind of a doppelganger story.
At this point I guess I’m still figuring out where I am on one of Hollywood’s enigma figures, Nicholas Ray. He may be most famous now for Rebel Without a Cause, which also comes at us with a lot of psychological portent not to mention James Dean. Ray also got one of Humphrey Bogart’s most unusual performances out of him for In a Lonely Place. I prefer Ray’s quieter noir-style pieces in On Dangerous Ground and They Live by Night. But Johnny Guitar comes between the quasi-histrionics of Lonely Place and Rebel, and it’s more naturally of a piece with them.
By 1954 Ray was well able to attract some of the best players in Hollywood. It shows in Johnny Guitar, starting with steely clothes-horse Crawford in the leading role, seen wearing at least three extremely smart outfits across the length of the picture. Sterling Hayden was a 6-foot-5 man-mountain who had successfully established himself as an action type and also did well by a John Huston picture, The Asphalt Jungle (later he would perform for Stanley Kubrick in The Killing and Dr. Strangelove). The Dancin’ Kid’s gang includes Royal Dano and Ernest Borgnine, which reminded me of an observation I ran across somewhere that Borgnine managed to land himself in the most monumental postwar Westerns: Bad Day at Black Rock, The Bounty Hunter, Vera Cruz, The Wild Bunch, so on so forth, although to me he will always be McHale.
But is Johnny Guitar truly a monumental Western? I know the suddenly controversial Martin Scorsese often brings it up in his discussions of Westerns and postwar cinema, for example his 1995 Personal Journey miniseries documentary. I think Scorsese is more focused on the look and feel of Johnny Guitar, the colorful trappings of the 19th-century Western frontier and a distinctly 1950s color palette, vivid and garish. It bursts with enough emotional intensity to burn down an entire casino.
My nagging and more general sense is that the central conflict and the very premise of Johnny Guitar are screaming to be more informed by actual women above and beyond the costume and makeup departments. Ray’s instincts here feel promising enough. Take the ultra-masculine trappings of the Western and turn them upside down with an examination of the woman’s experience therein. But the view here is narrow and occluded. Vienna and Emma are extraordinarily privileged women for that time and place, nearly unbelievably so. The irrational emotion on display is more an approximation of 1950s psychoanalytic probes and breakthroughs. Vienna is an intriguing figure as a woman on her own in the West, making it on her own terms. Emma is intriguing too but one big missing piece is where her molten hatred of Vienna comes from. It feels much more desperate than any threat to livelihood or even moral objection. I’m not even sure it feels real, though McCambridge’s performance is intense, high-strung, and memorable.
So Johnny Guitar ends up for me feeling more like a movie I should be impressed with than a movie I actually am impressed with. I’ve seen it a few times now. Not sure it’s ever going to get better.
By 1954 Ray was well able to attract some of the best players in Hollywood. It shows in Johnny Guitar, starting with steely clothes-horse Crawford in the leading role, seen wearing at least three extremely smart outfits across the length of the picture. Sterling Hayden was a 6-foot-5 man-mountain who had successfully established himself as an action type and also did well by a John Huston picture, The Asphalt Jungle (later he would perform for Stanley Kubrick in The Killing and Dr. Strangelove). The Dancin’ Kid’s gang includes Royal Dano and Ernest Borgnine, which reminded me of an observation I ran across somewhere that Borgnine managed to land himself in the most monumental postwar Westerns: Bad Day at Black Rock, The Bounty Hunter, Vera Cruz, The Wild Bunch, so on so forth, although to me he will always be McHale.
But is Johnny Guitar truly a monumental Western? I know the suddenly controversial Martin Scorsese often brings it up in his discussions of Westerns and postwar cinema, for example his 1995 Personal Journey miniseries documentary. I think Scorsese is more focused on the look and feel of Johnny Guitar, the colorful trappings of the 19th-century Western frontier and a distinctly 1950s color palette, vivid and garish. It bursts with enough emotional intensity to burn down an entire casino.
My nagging and more general sense is that the central conflict and the very premise of Johnny Guitar are screaming to be more informed by actual women above and beyond the costume and makeup departments. Ray’s instincts here feel promising enough. Take the ultra-masculine trappings of the Western and turn them upside down with an examination of the woman’s experience therein. But the view here is narrow and occluded. Vienna and Emma are extraordinarily privileged women for that time and place, nearly unbelievably so. The irrational emotion on display is more an approximation of 1950s psychoanalytic probes and breakthroughs. Vienna is an intriguing figure as a woman on her own in the West, making it on her own terms. Emma is intriguing too but one big missing piece is where her molten hatred of Vienna comes from. It feels much more desperate than any threat to livelihood or even moral objection. I’m not even sure it feels real, though McCambridge’s performance is intense, high-strung, and memorable.
So Johnny Guitar ends up for me feeling more like a movie I should be impressed with than a movie I actually am impressed with. I’ve seen it a few times now. Not sure it’s ever going to get better.
Bigger Than Life is another Ray film I like, one that doesn't seem to get a lot of attention.
ReplyDeleteForgot about that one -- I like it too.
ReplyDeleteI remember Borgnine first, foremost, as McHale too; after school re-runs, late-'60s, early-'70s. But that might be why I've been surprised by how good he is as the smart, if hair-trigger, sleazy mercenary western outlaw type in supporting roles.
ReplyDeleteMy memory about Scorcese from Personal Journey is he has a thing for Westerns that look like '30s stage musicals: JG, Duel in the Sun, Rio Bravo, etc.
I need to give this another shot; post-Me Too, if you will. I couldn't get past the garish artifice when I saw it in the '80s.
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