Johnny Guitar

An absolutely gonzo, fabulous firecracker of a movie.

Johnny Guitar is the Wild West by way of Joan Crawford — which means that terracotta desert becomes crimson red, and clear blue skies turn cerulean within the titanium white of her eyes. As Vienna, a former sex worker who now runs a saloon amidst hostile land grabbers, Crawford looks like a jackal that’s been pricked in the heal. 

She’s luridly unpredictable, as all the best cowboys are, and the scene where she graciously receives her antagonists in the hall of her saloon — garbed in white tulle with two thin black ribbons hung around her throat and waist — while playing the piano is all the more kinetic for her campy calm: “I’m sitting here in my own house, minding my own business, playing my own piano. I don’t think you can make a crime out of that.”

There’s a lot to love here: the literally explosive opening scene in which the titular Johnny (Sterling Hayden) winds his way though a ravine, casually glimpsing hold-ups as he rides along… the unmistakeable bi and gay subtext for characters like Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady) and Turkey (Ben Cooper)… Mercedes McCambridge frothing at the mouth like a rabid terrier, dressed in black and twitching to spill blood… Borgnine as a heel, again (thank God he had Marty a year later to change his persona)… and the costumes! I’ve already singled out Crawford’s white dress, but how about the bright red shirt and blue pants she changes into when Johnny suggests that the dress is too conspicuous? Or the yellow shirt and red scarf she dons for the gunfight at the end?

I’ll always adore this Western, because it’s really more of a melodrama than anything else. Which is maybe just a way of saying that it’s governed by a woman’s point of view, or plays to non-institutional sensibilities. Because of this, I think it presents a crueler estimation of the old West than was necessarily common in its time — though Anthony Mann was hard at work with The Naked Spur one year before, and The Man from Laramie one year later. 

Put it down to the savage psychology of director Nicholas Ray. It’s fascinating to realize that he was one year away from doing Rebel Without a Cause, and in his eyes the existential terror of 1870s Arizona feels no more critical than that of 1950s Los Angeles.