Johnny Guitar 1954.

Ostensibly a western, but looking and feeling more like a fevered Freudian bad dream, a high pitch operatic frenzy that at times you expect the actors to break out in song. Directed by lefty Nicholas Ray at the height of the UHAC witch hunt and blacklisting, the film can be seen as a political statement against this right wing Washington D.C. government nightmare if you know where to look. Bathed in rich paint box colors (in Tricolor no less) the plot pushes 3 chunks of characters against each other in intense confrontations. In fact the film is pretty much all about confrontations, physical and psychological. The film opens with Sterling Hayden and his guitar on a horse riding out to Joan Crawford’s saloon-gambling hall where he’s just been hired to entertain the customers, except there aren’t any. On his way there he witnesses a stagecoach holdup, a mountain blast that is making way for the railroad to come through and a fierce dust storm all happening in the first few minutes of the film. Hayden who plays the title character walks in on a heap of trouble between Crawford who plays the owner of the joint called Vienna’s which is also her name, and the outraged landowners and cattle ranchers who are dead set against the railroad coming through and the influx of people it will bring to their quiet town. Crawford is the special target of Emma the sexually confused and repressed female co-owner of the bank whose brother was just killed in the robbery. Emma who is played with a magnificent intensity by Mercedes McCambridge really hates Joan, (it’s said that the two actresses hated each other in real time) but also has hidden sexual feelings possibly for her and definitely for the leader of the local band of thieves who may have robbed the stagecoach. Headed by the sexy “dancin kid” played by Scott Brady (brother of Lawrence Tierney) who teases and taunts Emma while still pining for Joan who he had a brief but I’m sure hot and heavy romance with. So in rides Johnny Guitar who is really a reformed gun fighter and also a one time lover of Joan’s (its said that Hayden also hated Crawford in real life) and is quickly caught up in the mess, immediately getting into a fistfight with Ernest Borgnine who is fat and mean and a member of Brady’s small gang along with Royal Dano as a sensitive book reading good bad guy and the young pup Ben Cooper who plays Turkey, and why he’s called Turkey is beyond me. Both Emma and Vienna are tantalizingly butch, in fact one of Vienna’s workers makes the comment that she’s more man than he is or something to that effect, and she is. Joan is usually decked out in black pants with a touch of color at her neck and has her trademark bright red lips slashed across her face that look big and botoxed, sort of like those funny wax lips that kids of the 1950’s including me would play with. Taking place at the end of the 19th century the visual look of the film is quite beautiful in this newly restored print, with the main action taking place in Vienna’s saloon that is very 50’s moderne looking with slick wooden floors, big beams and a rock wall, the whole place would not be out of place in Aspen. Also the costumes tell a lot about the characters moods and personas with Emma and her men all in black while Johnny and the gang of thieves are usually costumed in light pastel colors. There are some really out of breath running up the stairs scenes including Joan dressed up in a virginal white gown which accidently catches on fire, a mob lynching, the burning down of her saloon, an ecstatic (almost sexual) look of pleasure on the face of McCambridge as she takes her revenge out on Joan, and the final gunfight between two of the characters. Also in the cast is John Carrandine, Ward Bond (how did Ray pull the wool over his rapid right wing eyes to take part in this left learning movie?), Paul Fix, and several other familiar looking character actors. Also I love the title song co-written by the great Peggy Lee who sings it as the film comes to an end. The Screenplay is credited to Philip Yordan but he was a front for the actual screenwriter the blacklisted Ben Maddow. One of the ten best films of 1954.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiQKZQsntvE