Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Nicholas Ray
Starring: Joan Crawford, Mercedes McCambridge, Sterling Hayden,
Scott Brady, Ernest Borgnine, Ward Bond, Royal Dano, Ben Cooper
While women were overwhelmingly relegated to supporting figures in the
top-billed westerns of the 1950s, several b-westerns of the era put them
front and centre. Movies like Cattle Queen of Montana and
Forty Guns gave Barbara Stanwyck's career an extension
after she had reached the age at which Hollywood tends to discard its
leading ladies. Arguably the most famous female-fronted western of the
'50s stars another actress of Stanwyck's vintage,
Joan Crawford.
In the Republic production of Nicholas Ray's
Johnny Guitar, it's not Sterling Hayden's eponymous guitar picker who takes
centre stage but rather Crawford's saloon owner, Vienna.
Vienna has spent her life using her feminine charms to get ahead. Early
on, through some not so subtle dialogue, we learn that Vienna seduced a
railroad surveyor to learn that the railroad was set to be built on the
outskirts of Red Butte. With this info she has built a saloon cum
gambling den. Business is slow now, but once that railroad comes
through…
The townsfolk of Red Butte aren't too happy with the idea of drinking,
gambling and carousing in their town. Led by cattle baron Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), they've been looking for an excuse to run Vienna out of town. They
think they've found it when a stagecoach is held up and its driver
killed. Vienna is accused of harbouring the men responsible – The
Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and his gang (Ernest Borgnine, Royal Dano
and Ben Cooper) - because she allows them to drink in her
establishment.
It soon becomes clear that Emma has another motive for getting rid of
Vienna. She's secretly in love with the Dancin' Kid, even if she can't
bring herself to admit it, but he only has eyes for Vienna. She might
even be in love with Vienna too, but she certainly won’t admit
that.
I almost forgot to mention Johnny Guitar himself. Has any titular
western hero ever been so incidental? This is so much the Crawford vs
McCambridge card that poor old Hayden might as well pull up a ringside
seat and enjoy the sparring of his leading not-so-ladies.
Hayden's Johnny - whom we learn is Johnny Logan, a notorious gunslinger
who traded his six-shooter for a six-string several years ago – has a
rivalry of his own. He's in love with Vienna, which puts him in
competition with the Dancin' Kid. Curiously, the rivalry between the two
men here is played out in the same fashion as two supporting female
characters bickering over a handsome leading man in a more conventional
western. While the threat of violence lurks between Vienna and Emma,
Johnny and The Kid mostly just trade bitchy verbal insults. The
climactic duel is not between Johnny and The Kid but between Vienna and
Emma. The men don’t fight over the women in Johnny Guitar. In Ray's film the men are the prize.
Johnny Guitar was fashioned as an allegory for the
McCarthy witch hunt, with Emma and her posse a stand-in for McCarthy and
his goons. Vienna is constantly pressured to hand over the Kid and his
gang, with the threat that she'll be persecuted if she refuses to do so.
Watching Ray's film today, the dynamic between Vienna and Emma plays
more like a representation of America's ongoing culture war. Emma and
her followers are conservatives who view Vienna as representing
everything they view as corrupt. In a clever trick, Ray has them decked
out in funeral outfits for most of the movie, while Vienna wears a lily
white gown, the costumes telling us whom the director views as the hero
and villains of his film.
Rather than making the mistake of trying to fool the audience into
believing they're watching a more expensive western, Ray makes the most
of his meagre budget by containing the action almost exclusively to
Vienna's bar and its immediate surrounds. It's one of the all-time great
movie sets, with a distinctive rock wall at one end like that famous
football stadium in Portugal. I'd love to spend an evening knocking back
shots of rye there myself.
Johnny Guitar could easily be translated to the stage.
Ray uses an unconventionally long opening scene that runs for over 30
minutes to set the scene. Reminiscent of
The Petrified Forest or
The Plough and the Stars, this scene brings all the major players and their various subplots
into one setting. We watch as they (literally, in one case) dance around
one another, laying out their motivations. Johnny Guitar himself is the
first to arrive, but within minutes we realise that if we've come for
his music, we're staying for Vienna and Emma's sparring.
New commentary by critic Geoff Andrew, author of 'The Films of Nicholas
Ray: The Poet of Nightfall'; new video essays by Tony Rayns and David
Cairns; new interview with Susan Ray; trailer; and archival intro by
Martin Scorsese.