Film review: Johnny Guitar (1954)

Are you ready for a Western starring Joan Crawford?  Well, ready or not, here it is!

This is certainly a unique film.  It's a Western directed by Nicholas Ray of In a Lonely Place and Rebel Without a Cause fame.  It's actually a lot like the latter, with lots of seething sexual tension and lurid technicolor.  The film begins with the titular Johnny (Sterling Hayden playing an agreeable thug instead of a disagreeable one for once) riding (with his guitar strapped on his back) past some kind of mining explosion in the mountains and then looking down on a stagecoach being robbed in the valley below, with one of the men on it left dead on the ground.  He then proceeds down into the valley and a windstorm whips up before he enters "Vienna's", which appears to be a bar and casino, although currently empty.  He informs the Croupier that he's here for Vienna.  It turns out that she's hired him, supposedly for his guitar-playing skills.  But while he's sitting down for a meal, a crowd of people flood in carrying the draped corpse of the man we saw shot.  They are led by the other female lead in this picture, and Vienna's nemesis, Emma, played by Mercedes McCambridge (who kept reminding me of Paula Poundstone, for some reason).  They accuse Vienna of harboring their key suspect, "The Dancing Kid".  She isn't, but in short order "the Kid" and his gang (which notably includes Ernest Borgnine as Bart) blow in.  There are bizarre scenes where Johnny tries to make peace by playing guitar (Hayden clearly has NO guitar playing skills whatsoever, so he usually turns his back to us as he "plays") but just succeeds in annoying various people.  The townspeople do not end up arresting the Kid (who insists he is innocent, and seems to be - we never actually learn who DID kill the man (who was Emma's brother)) because of Vienna's gun-brandishing, seen above, and leave, but only after the richest man in town has (over the Sheriff's weak objections) insisted that he will pass a law outlawing gambling and drinking outside the city limits, effectively ending Vienna's business.  (It emerges also that Vienna is sitting on a gold mine because she bought her land knowing that the railroad was on the way, and rich man McIvers is very annoyed that she owns the plum real estate.)  This will happen in 24 hours, and he also gives the Kid and his gang that amount of time to get out of town.  After the townspeople leave, Bart and the Kid get into an argument (which seems totally unmotivated - a lot of the dialogue in this film is very mannered - more like a film noir, as Jami noted, than a Western, but that is Nicholas Ray's wheelhouse). and then Bart and Johnny get into a fight (Johnny wins, as anyone who has looked at both Sterling Hayden and Ernest Borgnine might have guessed) and then the gang leaves, but not before the youngest of them, "Turkey" (the names!) shows off his gun slinging to prove to Vienna that he's become a man, and Johnny reveals that he is actually an expert gunslinger, and not the unarmed musician he has heretofore claimed to be.  In fact, Johnny's real name is Johnny Logan, and he's notorious, and he and Vienna have a history.  It turns out that he was scared of commitment and left her five years ago and in the intervening years Vienna has done a lot of prostitution to save up for her casino.
Anyway, there's a LOT packed into this film.  Sexual politics!

Sexual frustration!  (Emma loves the kid and hates him for the feelings it gives her, that scare her.)  Woman vs. woman (Emma is obsessed with Vienna to the point of burning down her casino and trying to shoot her in the climactic gun battle)

There's a hanging (a very heartless one), an attempted hanging, a hideout behind a waterfall, double-crossing, jealousy (the Kid thought he and Vienna were a thing but Vienna was always waiting for Johnny) a bank robbery (the Kid's gang figure that if they're going to be accused of crimes they might as well commit one) and somebody gets shot right in the forehead, in surprising pre-Peckinpah bloodletting.  Probably the most surprising feature of the film is that the women are the main antagonists, and Vienna is the clear star.  It's an odd role for an older Joan Crawford.  She's not really gorgeous in the way that she's supposed to be to have all these men chasing her (she looks more like a severe schoolmarm than an ex-whore) but Ray loves to zoom in on her piercing blue eyes and she gets some great melodramatic speeches.  You have to wonder what audiences at the time, used to John Wayne, would've thought of it.  It almost seems to thumb its nose at convention.  Subversive, even.  But it's certainly exciting, and for all the drama and bloodshed, it's sort of a happy ending.  Definitely an oater to check out!