Johnny Guitar (Import , All Regions), Joan Crawford
by Nicholas Ray
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DVD details
Actor: Joan Crawford, Sterling HaydenDirector: Nicholas Ray
DVD: Region Code 0
Running Time: 105 minutes
Studio: South Korea
Product features:
- Johnny Guitar DVD
DVD Reviews of Johnny Guitar (Import , All Regions), Joan Crawford
DVD Review: MOMMIE DEAREST battles for control--the men run for cover
Summary: 4 Stars
JOHNNY GUITAR qualifies as a guilty pleasure, like other bad movies that I like in spite of themselves.
What should we provide as a tag-line for this off-beat western? See Joan get tough with a small handgun: "Anyone else think I'm lying?" See Joan duke it out verbally with the character aptly named Emma Small: "You have it backwards, Emma. You want him (the Dancing Kid) so much you want to see him dead." (paraphrase) See the film the French fell in love with, for some inexplicable reason. Even the quintessential French director Francois Truffaut admired the set-up of the black-suited posse positioned in Vienna's gambling emporium in the shape of an inverted V. . . so much so that he imitates it with the firemen in FAHRENHEIT 451. He even admired the two-strip color process known as Trucolor and wished that he could use it instead of Technicolor for his apocalyptic story of book burning. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and we have this atypical Truffaut anti-utopia film in Technicolor.
Joan's adversary in the film, well-played by radio queen Mercedes McCambridge (hear some of her radio drama broadcasts on Mystery Play-1 MPIR Old Time Radio on iTunes), matches her line for line: "Someday I'm going to kill you." "I know," counters Joanie Dearest who is having her status as Queen Bee challenged. "If I don't kill you first." Stunning dialogue, matched only by comic book dialogue or lame speeches found in spaghetti westerns. "I always wanted to kill me a guitar man," says Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady). "That's a noble ambition," Vienna tells him. This may be her most logical line of dialogue in the film. Of course, it is appropriate for the Dancin' Kid who behaves like the second word in his name when he sees a rival return to Vienna's life.
In other scenes in the film, she contradicts herself. She draws a handgun on the townspeople and cattlemen that Emma has led to her saloon, telling them that she can shoot any two men who try to drag her down from the staircase. Later, she fires Johnny Guitar for being too gun crazy, saying that she abhors violence. Why is it again she hires him? for his guitar playing or for his prowess with a gun? She drops enough hints throughout that she has slept with many men in order to get what she wants -- a stake in the claim of a new town when the railroad comes through -- yet claims to be so virtuous when it comes to defending herself. She tells a railroad executive that she met his railroad surveyor and "we exchanged confidences." What a skillful way of explaining how she slept with the surveyor in exchange for information that would put her in a good position financially once the blasting heard in the distance throughout much of the film is finished and rails are put down near her saloon. "How many men have you forgotten?" JG asks her when they are finally alone at night. "As many women as you have remembered," she replies. C'mon now, are we supposed to take this dialogue seriously, or hoot at the screen? She accuses JG of feeling sorry for himself, yet does the same when she explains the sacrifices she has had to endure in order to build her gambling palace. She first appears in femme fatale black with a gun strapped to her leg, then in a fetching red gown, then in a white gown that could be used for a wedding dress, then in a red shirt and jeans, and finally in a yellow shirt -- the latter having belonged to the youngster Ben Cooper after he is lynched. When JG changes out of his wet clothes in the cabin of the silver-mining foursome turned into bank robbers, he emerges from a room wearing dry clothes and a gun-belt. Whose gun-belt it is we never know, but it is enough to make DK nervous, particularly when Joan tells DK that JG is really Johnny Logan. DK starts to draw on Logan, and Logan beats him to the draw. Then the Kid points out what an itchy trigger finger he has. I mean, does anyone in this film take responsibility for his/her own actions and big mouth?
What the name Johnny Logan really means is never explained. We can assume that he is/was some formidable gunslinger, but we never know for sure. Anyway, Vienna tells JG that when a fire burns out, all you have left are ashes -- a line my ex-wife borrowed from this film to use against me. . . before we were married. A few moments later, Vienna falls into JG's arms and tells him that she did miss him and asks why it took him so long to return to her. Okay. Conflicted characters, you say, people with contradictory feelings and more than one name.
Speaking of names -- what about the title? Even though the film is named JOHNNY GUITAR, this character as played by Sterling Hayden is not the center of the film. Like the other male characters who are kept under the thumb of the two female antagonists, he is cowed by Vienna. Around her, he becomes not the watchdog he was hired to be but a lapdog. He is nearly a head taller than his adversaries -- particularly the villainous character played by Ernest Borgnine whose face looks like it has been used for a punching bag one too many times. JG gets to gun down only one character, and that in order to save the life of the person who is his rival for the affections of Vienna. Maybe the title should have called VIENNA'S SALOON since so much of the action, including one excruciatingly lengthy scene near the beginning, takes place within its walls. This is a shame since the exterior scenery is quite stunning and intimidating, the way that Blanco Canyon and the vast wide-open terrain over-power the characters in THE BIG COUNTRY.
Ward Bond is an interesting character -- a man who wants to throw his weight around as the kingpin rancher and yet draw the line at hanging a boy and a woman. He tells the one law enforcement person to "go fishing until this is over" but finally says, near the end, that there has been enough killing. Maybe he can be seen as being contradictory, like Vienna at times, or as being a human with a good side and a shadow side, like most of us in the real world. He was a likable supporting actor on the big screen (such as in westerns like RIO BRAVO) and in his stint on the long-running TV series WAGON TRAIN. His death in a plane crash created a loss for all of us, not unlike that of The Big Bopper, Richie Valens, and Buddy Holly. DK as played by Scott Brady (noted for other Republic films such as the scene-borrowing MOHAWK) is another conflicted character. After he has been showing how jealous he is regarding JG and Vienna, he runs toward Emma Small at the end like a bleating lamb, only to be drilled through the forehead for his troubles. Why does he run toward her during a gunfight? This is, after all, the Vienna-hating woman who caused the boy in his gang (Ben Cooper) to be lynched.
A couple of continuity problems exist in JOHNNY GUITAR, but the most notable occurs at the end when JG helps the wounded Vienna walk away from the cabin of the outlaws after she has gunned down Emma Small. (Early in the film, JG does his only vocalizing to accompany his strumming of the guitar when he intones: "Her name was Emma Small . . . Emma Small." This is a perfect commentary on the main antagonist, yet it passes almost unnoticed by the other characters.) When JG and Vienna leave the hideout area by walking into the waterfall, getting drenched still another time, JG is still wearing the gun-belt he acquired inside the cabin. However, after they emerge from the waterfall on the other side, the gun-belt is missing. Duh. Were you asleep on the job, continuity person?
Nicolas Ray is no slouch as a director. Maybe with this film he just decided to put his brains on hold while convincing himself that he was destroying a few western icons. Maybe, considering the time when this film was made, he succeeded. As I wrote at the beginning, this is a guilty pleasure, a film that is fun to watch in spite of itself. It is nowhere in the category of the great westerns like SHANE, THE BIG COUNTRY, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, and THE LAST FRONTIER, but it stands out as a significant film merely because it is different.
Is being different enough to make a film great? You decide that. I still like it, but durned if I can tell y'all why.
Description of Johnny Guitar (Import , All Regions), Joan Crawford
High Quality import from Korea~~~Audio: English~~Subtitles: Korean/Off..../Plot Summary: Vienna has built a saloon outside of town, and she hopes to build her own town once the railroad is put through, but the townsfolk want her gone. When four men hold up a stagecoach and kill a man the town officials, led by Emma Small, come to the saloon to grab four of Vienna's friends, the Dancin' Kid and his men. Vienna stands strong against them, and is aided by the presence of an old acquaintance of hers, Johnny Guitar, who is not what he seems.Bestsellers in DVD
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