Wednesday 15 May 2013

Johnny Guitar [1954]


Nicholas Rays’s famed Western Johnny Guitar was a strange film, particular given the wide range of themes and tones it tackled. It was a curious mix of political allegory, noirish sensibilities, revisionism, old-fashioned melodrama, romance, straight-up action, psychological thrills, Freudian allusions, and gender politics, among possibly others, but it was foremost a sharp jab at the McCarthy witch-hunts. The titular character (played with quiet verve by Sterling Hayden) is a smooth, guitar-strumming stranger who, with quite a swagger, walks into a hotel owned by Vienna (Joan Crawford), in a town that hates outsiders. As it turns out the town folks, led by the vindictive and acid-spewing Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), who harbours a personal grudge against the alpha-female Vienna, who’s always in masculine costumes, wants to drive her out. Also, as it turns out, Johnny is the former fiancé of Vienna and a legendary gunslinger who is trying to shed his former identity. When a group of four led by the Dancing Kid (Scott Brady), who are falsely under the suspicion of staging hold-ups, rob a bank, Emma shrewdly coaxes the compliant community to head straight for Vienna’s because of a host of complex psychological reasons. The elements of melodrama, loud dialogue spewing, love triangle, and hyper-stylization might dampen the muscular spirit of Westerns for some, the fact that so many things were at play here and the subversive subtexts, in themselves, made this a unique work in the genre worth pondering over. The haunting title song by Peggy Lee was another of its memorable facets.








Director: Nicholas Ray
Genre: Western/Revisionist Western/Romance
Language: English
Country: US

2 comments:

Sam Juliano said...

"It was a curious mix of political allegory, noirish sensibilities, revisionism, old-fashioned melodrama, romance, straight-up action, psychological thrills, Freudian allusions, and gender politics, among possibly others, but it was foremost a sharp jab at the McCarthy witch-hunts."

I think you hit the bulls-eye here Shubhajit! There's absolutely so much going on here, and what with the subversive subtexts you note, JOHNNY GUITAR is often referred to as an existential western. Joan Crawford delivers one of her most interesting performances, and Ray's revisionist approach likewise has always elevate this western for those who want to move out of the box. I've always been a fan, and much enjoyed this brilliant assessment.

Shubhajit said...

Thanks a lot Sam. I somehow didn't like Joan Crawford's performance as much as she is appreciated for it, though, I admit, she did displayed noteworthy screen presence in it. And yes, there was simply so much at play in this film!