Review of Johnny Guitar (1954) by Josè M — 17 Nov 2010

4 Stars out of 4.

GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME.

A stage coach is robbed, its owner killed at the beginning of Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar. The plunderers, wearing masks, run off into the oblivion of the Western desert. What a terrible occurrence. We are to assume this is a revenge story, about bringing justice to those who were unjust to one. Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause), the master of irony, tells us no; this is about the ones being avenged, but wrongly so. They did not do anything. We think. Clearly, Johnny Guitar is a film about questioning our sympathies.

Westerns commit to stereotypes - you have the feral Apaches, the drunken cowboys, and promiscuous dames. You find none of that here. No Indians, some of the cowboys do not touch the stuff (Vienna: "you don't drink, you don't smoke, you're mean to horses - what do you like, Mr. Lonergan?), and the women are filled with aggression, ambition, and strong yet less conspicuous notions for desire.

Vienna (Joan Crawford, of whom some critics were coarse over and claimed she had to leave the saddle) own a saloon just outside an Arizona cattle town. The men around here are stricken by her coldness and ruggedness. One cowboy comments: "I've never seen a women act more like a man before." Howard Hawks much? Well, not exactly.

Ray emphasizes romance over realism in Johnny Guitar. Rebel Without A Cause felt overly sentimental at time, which negated the film since it was dealing with emotionally distorted characters. Johnny Guitar fits the romanticism quite right. Like Rio Bravo, this is not a hang around movie, where the relationships form naturally and 'realistically.' Johnny Guitar (which came before Rio Bravo's 1959 release) is laden with a sorrowful energy; it puts us in the shoes of the alienated not the persecutors. Looks like the tables have been turned on John Wayne.

When Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden, talking as if into a baritone) enters the scene, his passiveness is infectious. He's the degrading Western hero who carries a guitar not a gun. His talk is sensitive but firm. On the contrary, Vienna is assertive and is never afraid to blow a head off. She's surrounded by other more-passive-than-they-think cowboys: The Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) whose only seen doing the waltz, Turkey Ralston (Ben Cooper) the young duck, and Bart Lonergan (Ernest Borgnine) the too-tough-for-his-own-good hustler.

These are classic villain characters: ruthless, empowering, and cocky. But we are to see them as good, or good because so many perceive them as the opposite. A town posse, run by the brazen Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge). We hate for her sneering look and ridiculously capricious judgments. They claim Vienna, Johnny Guitar, the Dancin' Kid and his gang were responsible for the stage coach robbery. So hang them? Well, yes - these are threatened people intimidated by more ambitious ones. They claim they want the 'truth' but that can only be seen at face value. We do not know anything so the truth is not a possibility.

Like Rebel Without A Cause, Ray is referring to the McCarthy witch hunts. Differently, these are adults attacking adults - out of spite not authority or because they can. This is a great film about fading egos falling out of the Western sensation. Even Vienna cannot overcome her love for Johnny Guitar.

Johnny: Tell me you'd a-died if I hadn't come back.

Vienna: [without feeling] I woulda died if you hadn't come back.

Johnny: Tell me you still love me like I love you.

Vienna: [without feeling] I still love you like you love me.

Johnny: [bitterly] Thanks. Thanks a lot.

You see the brilliance? Such a scene delivered with guilty love but ridden under sarcasm and disbelief. It makes no sense for such a hard-nosed femme (fetale?) to succumb to the grace of love. But she does. And she needs to be a little bitter about it. She is not in a traditional Western anymore. People are vulnerable.

If Johnny Guitar isn't entertaining to you, the I suppose only Michael Bay can do that for you. I take joy in listening to Ray's characters (even in his lesser, still adequate works like Bigger Than Life). They blanket themselves in irony. Why? Because just stating their emotions is impossible for the conditions they are put in. When Johnny Guitar admits passionately he's had dreams, he snaps his head to Vienna and asserts that they are "bad dreams!" When another character confirms there is a funeral, another replies "that's still not a holiday!" This is hilarious, not because Philip Yordan's script is well-timed, but that it crafts the characters in proportion to the film's transgressive attitude: ironic for the sake of showing a changed context.

Johnny Guitar, on the surface, is goofy. All the characters resemble cowboys we've never seen before. All the heroes come off as villains and vice-versa. We appreciate Johnny Guitar for his peaceful-easy feelings, who only demands a duel when someone endangers another. He's selfless. Not an Eastwood.

And there's scene after scene of brilliance. The moment when Turkey is hung by the neck, Vienna is set to die after. Emma stops, tries to reiterate why Vienna is being punished, but she lists the reasons in gruelling uncertainty. John McIvers (Ward Bond) says he cannot "she's a woman!" That leaves a difficult choice, ultimately resolved out of pure luck. Looks like Vienna was wrong when she told Johnny Guitar "it must be great comfort to be a man.".

So by the end of the film, Ray creates a gap between the characters - symbolically. Like how the Planetarium divided Plato from the constabulary, a waterfall separates Johnny Guitar, Vienna, and the other alienated from the posse. Both kind of self-implode on each other in a climax that might run on a little too long for some.

Johnny Guitar is one of the best Westerns I have seen. But it is barely a Western. It is concerned with characters who are isolated for reasons we're never sure of and more so, what proof can be told about them. Vienna is just a saloon owner, fulfilled by her successes. Johnny Guitar was happy with his guitar but by the end, has nothing around his back. He's just a man. Ray's just a director, who both admit they are strangers here themselves.