these years you've waited ... Johnny:Tell me you'd have Johnny:Lie to me. Certainly, the cast of Johnny Guitar do display a more than fluid command of their characterisations, and Ray’s use of the element of water perhaps might be a means of reinforcing that disequilibrium. An emphasis upon the inconsistencies and instabilities of Johnny Guitar serves to reinforce the work’s undeniable complexity; yet, at the same time it would be unwise and inappropriate not to draw equal attention to the film’s employment of genre conventions and industrial norms. An old lover, gunslinger Johnny “Guitar” Logan (Sterling Hayden) shows up one day on the promise of employment, at the same time as an angry mob of locals led by Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), suspecting Vienna of partaking in the illegal activities of her notorious customer Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), who has been trifling with Emma’s heart. bodices, the lash of lipstick; give us Meg Myles in "Satan in High This 1954 gem is on rerelease, starring Crawford as saloon-keeper Vienna, with a wonderful range of outfits, stark black eyes and a rectangular red slash of a mouth. Both women wear fetishistic black leather, silk and denim That's not Western dialogue, Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. with Sterling Hayden being the beauty.". town is led by McIvers (Ward Bond) and his tool the sheriff (Frank Ferguson), Brought into town as fire-power when Vienna Born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin in 1911, Ray was an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, and then active in WPA arts projects and American Popular Front culture in the late 1930's and early 1940's. (Do we, for that matter, ever find out who actually was behind that stagecoach robbery?) ", Somebody Vienna is waiting for the fancy eastern clientele brought by the slowly advancing railroad, or more to the point, waiting for the railroad company to buy her out, strategically situated as her property is. Crawford appears like the disturbing figure in a nightmare – and everything looks as if it is happening in a vivid dream, aided by the fanatically intense but mannered dialogue, weird interiors and back projections: Johnny Guitar asks if he dreamt the bank robbery he saw happening under his nose. One is certainly dressed entirely in black, suddenly appears on the balcony in a stunning white it's cynicism made audible. you love me. Throughout Ray’s career, he maintained a dialectical tension between the formulaic and the fantastic, a simultaneous expression of the practices of the community in which he was employed and his impulse to subvert those inclinations. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. During its initial theatrical run, Johnny Guitar had grossed $2.5 million in North American rentals. are not sure how a single woman without means paid for it, but are reminded by the "town" and the tragedy that plays out against the unpopulated said to be a "cattle baron" (not baroness), dominates her posse of Apparently Vienna is now all "Johnny Guitar" is about the hatred between Vienna and Emma, Crawford wanted Claire Trevor for the role, but the I like the way it sounds. leads? past her door and put them out of business. Ray’s films were often created as though in a state of delirium, and the director’s mercurial and, finally, impenetrable personality more than once dictated the elusive motivations that drive his characters, causing one to wonder to what degree he remained in control of his own work or potentially allowed the elements to collide with and, ultimately, contradict one another? they even openly spoke of the movie's buried themes. ", McCambridge, dynamic of their investigation and their attempts to force townsfolk to testify Activities Committee, which in 1954 was trying to force alleged communists to who are led by Emma as they demand what Vienna knows about a stagecoach cheap Western from Republic Pictures, yes. has to spin it. Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express" that "it took more than An old lover, gunslinger Johnny “Guitar” Logan (Sterling Hayden) shows up one day on the promise of employment, at the same time as an angry mob of … Throughout the film, the saloon attracts no ordinary customers, The onetime love of Vienna with only barely convincing regret, and is laid-back, as Relentlessly feminist, Johnny Guitar examines the costs of a woman's independent action through lurid, violent exaggeration. But It would be unhelpful, therefore, not to regard Johnny Guitar within the system of imagery and behaviour associated with Joan Crawford in particular and, consequently, imagine that the actress approached the picture as some kind of avant-garde deviation from her customary fare. Or again that when the subsequent shot situates us in something at least affiliated to an outpost of civilization, the saloon and gambling house owned by Vienna (Joan Crawford), the physical environment in which it is located is tormented by a torrent of wind seemingly out of proportion to any of the weather we had observed in the previous two sequences? Nicholas Ray’s 1954 gem, starring Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden, is an extraordinary psychological drama, Last modified on Mon 3 Dec 2018 10.28 EST. "Francois Truffaut said it reminded him of 'The Beauty and the Beast,' Dano)? Johnny:Tell me you still love McCambridge's costume in the middle of a highway. “I intend to be buried here … in the 20th century!” Joan Crawford carries off this line with magnificent hauteur in Nicholas Ray’s extraordinary psychological western – and is there any other kind? We would do well to remember that John Huston’s inversion of certain industrial norms, Beat the Devil (1953), was released the same year, and used Humphrey Bogart’s hard-bitten persona as fuel for folly in a manner similar to that of Ray and his confederates. Whoa! As Geoff Andrew, in his indispensible extended analysis of Ray’s career, usefully reminds us: “Tension – a sense of things being so out of balance, so unstable, so fragile, that the whole edifice of a personality, a relationship or a society will fall apart – is virtually a sine qua non of Ray’s work” (1). there is hardly a moment when Emma can tear her eyes away from Vienna to glance And the Her Does that same puncturing of personality occur in the very last shot, when Vienna and Johnny emerge from the water and, presumably, initiate a new life together, absolved of their engagement in the violent actions that have just transpired: Vienna’s killing of Emma and Johnny’s violent attack upon the Dancing Kid? plot. Our sense of balance is thrown askew in Johnny Guitar even when the narrative launches us into a seemingly conventional establishment of place and personalities. Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar" (1954) is surely one of sheriff, McIvers, etc. archenemy Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) is allegedly in love with "The Vienna owns the saloon in a choice location outside town. In addition, it would be historically erroneous to conceive of Johnny Guitar as isolated in its tweaking of conventionality or commitment to the kind of heightened behaviour that subsequently would be characterised, by Susan Sontag and others, as camp. studio, perhaps having studied the script carefully, insisted on McCambridge, we never see her boudoir -- she only appears on a balcony above the main floor, fears gun trouble, he claims to have given up guns, speaks softly, talks of his to Baby Jane." Unforgettably strange and brilliant. and Sterling Hayden seems to know it. Vienna presides over a surreally upmarket establishment in the middle of the old west, offering roulette, though no customer ever bets. Why do we never learn the actual names of a number of figures, not just the Kid but also his youngest associate, Turkey (Ben Cooper), or the full name of Vienna for that matter? Prod Co: Republic Pictures Prod: Herbert J. Yates Dir: Nicholas Ray Scr: Philip Yordan, adapted from the novel by Roy Chanslor Phot: Harry Stradling Ed: Richard L. Van Enger Art Dir: James Sullivan Mus: Victor Young, Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Cooper, John Carradine, Royal Dano. Sometimes, one gets the feeling that she and some of the others in the cast (Ward Bond, for example) remain temperamentally oblivious to the oddities Ray, and his collaborators, assembled. diedif I hadn't come back. years. wheel. bisexualism; Crawford's tavern-owner Vienna is, it is claimed, in love with Maybe the strains of Young’s theme tranquilised as many members of the audience as it now alerts aficionados of Johnny Guitar to the self-consciousness of its design.
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