JOHNNY GUITAR
US,1954, 110 minutes, Colour.
Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes Mc Cambridge, Scott Brady, Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine, John Carradine, Paul Fix.
Directed by Nicholas Rey.
Johnny Guitar has become something of a cult classic. Directed by Nicholas Rey, who had made a number of solid films in the early 50s including the western, The Lusty Men, and who was to go on to direct Run For Cover and Rebel Without a Cause before moving on to bigger-budget films like The King of Kings, the film was seen as something of a feminist western. This is due to the fact that the two central characters are played by Joan Crawford and Mercedes Mc Cambridge. Joan Crawford is a woman with a shady past, who sets up a saloon waiting for the railroad to come through and to make her money and success. However, Emma Small, played by Mc Cambridge, is a bad woman in the town who is jealous of Joan Crawford’s character because of a handsome ne’er-do-well, the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady). Emma Small and the Dancin’ Kid are involved in a bank robbery – and Emma Small confronts Vienna, Joan Crawford’s character, and there is a showdown. The enigmatic title character, Johnny Guitar, is played by Sterling Hayden, who had been involved with Vienna in the past and was a famous gunman. There is a final whip-cracking confrontation between the two women.
Joan Crawford had been a success in the MGM studios in the 1930s, often in musicals. During the 1940s she had great success at Warner Bros in tough roles, winning an Oscar in 1945 for Mildred Pierce. Mercedes Mc Cambridge was a character actress who won Best Supporting Oscar in 1949 for All the King’s Men. Later she was to provide the voice of the demon in The Exorcist.
The film was written, allegedly, by Philip Yordan who wrote many screenplays. However, at the time he was living in Paris and was the front for several of the blacklisted writers. The writer of this film was Ben Maddow and Yordan fronted for him for about four years with such films as The Naked Jungle and No Down Payment. His own films include The Man From Laramie, The Last Frontier, The Harder They Fall at this particular time.
1. Was the title the right title? Did it give the accurate focus of the film? The tone for the film? The use of the song?
2. What impact did this film have as a Western? Why? Comment on its use of conventions, the hotels, the hold-ups, the silent hero, the posse, railways, lynchings, shootings, the escape? Were they more than conventional?
3. How important were the psychological tones of the film? The main protagonists being women? Vienna and the complexity of her appearance, as a gun-fighter, and as the belle of the ball? Enna as the lady gun-fighter and villainess? The significance of a shoot-out between women? Women acting in the traditional man's image? The identity of man and woman in each of the characters? The psychological struggles and the sub-conscious, especially in Emma and her reaction to Vienna, the kid? The love and hate relationship between Johnny and Vienna? How credible was all this? Was it meant to be realistic? Did it say that the West was the set for such psychological conflicts?
4 How effective was the plot, the hotel and the gambling, the railway, the owners and the bankers verses the squatters the role of the hero as gun-fighter and saviour, the background of robberies and chases, the realities of lynching especially for the heroine, the drama of the shootings and the final shoot-out? How good a Western plot was it?
5. How well did the film focus on Vienna as central for the film? Her appearance as a gun-fighter and in dresses? Her changing at the end for the shoot-out? Her ambitions and the way she forcefully spoke? The background of her emotional tangles, the love-hate with Johnny In the past, her relation to the dancing kid? Her hatred? The fact that she did good to others like her helpers? Tom? Such sequences as her playing the piano and protecting the boy? The hanging and her being rescued? Her response to the gambling place being burnt down, her being on fire? Her initiatives in the chase, yet her domestication, preparing breakfast? Her role in the shoot-out as not immediately shooting Emma? What future did she have? The appearance of Joan Crawford in this role? Insight into Vienna as a woman and as a heroine? In the American west?
6. How impressive was Emma and the impact she made? Appearing in black, her hatred, her role as a banker, her challenges to Vienna, the psychological struggles and the hatred, her leading the chase, her having the whip for the lynching, the pursuit, her shooting at Vienna, the impact of her death? Her reaction to the dancing-kid and her feeling like a woman and not wanting to be? The man-woman conflict in her? The social background of the banker and the squatter? Her hold over the men and their final reaction against her? How convincing a mixed-up villainess in the American West?
7. Johnny Guitar himself - what impact did he make, how impressive a hero? The past, the song, that he was gun-happy, his Independence, his rescuing of Vienna, following her, the love and hate, the final shootings? The future for them?
8. What did McIvers? stand for? The rich landowner threatened? His being pushed by Emma? His backing down?
9. What was represented by Bart? The typical villain cantankerous, evil, the initial fight with Johnny, killing his companion, the inevitability of his being shot? The comment on the ugly Western villain?
10. The character of the lynched boy? His place in the gang? The unwillingness to help him, his bargaining and betraying of Vienna? the horror of the lynching?
11. The character of Tom and his loyalty to Vienna, his death, everybody looking at him?
12. The importance of the saloon itself in the films Vienna's ambitions, the place of confrontations, the games being played? The emptying, the destruction by fire?
13. Comment on the way the confrontations took place, especially Vienna on the stairs, with the gun, at the piano?
14. Comment on the role of the hold-up of the stages the sequence of the bank robbery the importance of money?
15. The film's comment on hanging and lynching?
16. How exciting were the final chases, the tunnel, the waterfall etc?
17. The conventional shoot-out and the way that this happened with the women? The role of the men?
18. Many consider this a classic western. Why?
