Nicholas Ray / 1954 / US / 110 min
On selected release now.
Head movies – Fantasia, 2001, Spirited Away – are so named because they are much improved when you’re out of your head or, at least, they mess with your head. Johnny Guitar is one such.
Vienna (a stern Joan Crawford) runs a saloon on a valuable piece of land that the railway company will pay a fortune for if she can hold on long enough. A gang of bad guys and righteous townspeople want to run trampy Vienna out of town. It’s no accident that one of the cohort is Vienna’s nemesis; sinister spinster Mercedes McCambridge, who bears a demented grudge over the death of her brother. The premises are part saloon, part gambling den, part Batcave; a fact accentuated by the garish acid yellows and sickly greens of the visuals. It’s a fetid, diseased place haunted by a howling wind outside. It’s the ultimate bad trip.
While Vienna fondles guns with her black leather gloves and struts about in stiff shirts and tight trousers tucked into riding boots, milksop Johnny (Sterling Hayden), an old flame new in town, ‘doesn’t wear a gun’ (go figure) but is a crack shot nonetheless. Just as Vienna and Johnny are gender bending contrasts so the stultifying saloon – haunted by its resident spider queen – contrasts with the fresh, manly outdoors. To get to their silver mine hideout the baddies have to pass under a cleansing, redemptive waterfall.
When Vienna finally puts on a white gown it’s like a shockingly bad drag act. It’s difficult to know what to make of Vienna and Johnny’s relationship but there is a definite sense that whatever is going on isn’t healthy. Who knows what corrupted emotions are lurking under the surface? While Vienna acts the tough gal Mr Guitar slopes about like a lost boy. The psychology (like the plot line) needs an Alfred Kinsey working group.
Much of the action is as lurid as the colours (photography is by Harry Stradling in Trucolor and gloriously enhanced in this 4k restoration). Look out for some wonderful low-angle shots of huge explosions high in the red rocks.
Johnny Guitar can be seen as hideously kinky, or just misjudged fun. The French New Wave loved the film despite its baroque touches and creepy symbolism. Martin Scorsese once said, ‘there is no other film quite like it’. On one level it’s is a powerful attack on American alienation and McCarthyism. Its storyline convolutions are partly due to excessive script rewrites, and are also deeply reflective of Nicholas Ray’s frustrations with his own sexuality as much as his status as stifled auteur battling the controlling studio system. A year later he made his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause, which further hinted at unspoken gay longings.
It’s the weirdest of Westerns. Ernest Borgnine is one of the baddies. Diva Peggy Lee did the theme tune. There’s a bank robbery and a lynching. The film was made on location in Sedona in Arizona. For the past 30 years Sedona has been the New Age capital of the US attracting UFO spotters in night vision goggles. Says it all.