Johnny Guitar
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| Johnny Guitar | |
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| Directed by | Nicholas Ray |
| Written by | Roy Chanslor (novel) Philip Yordan |
| Starring | Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady |
| Music by | Peggy Lee and Victor Young (title song) |
| Cinematography | Harry Stradling Sr. |
| Distributed by | Republic Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 27, 1954 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 110 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Johnny Guitar is a 1954 Western made by Republic Pictures, famed for its unusual storyline and colorful cinematography. It features Joan Crawford as a tough, trouser-wearing saloon owner and Sterling Hayden as the eponymous musician who helps her fight a wrongful accusation of murder by the town officials, who are led by another woman (Mercedes McCambridge).
It was directed by Nicholas Ray, from a screenplay by Philip Yordan (although this credit is disputed and claimed by Ben Maddow), which was based on a novel by Roy Chanslor. The film was the last feature film produced in Republic's color process Trucolor.
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[edit] Responses
The film is beloved of French critics and filmmakers, such as François Truffaut, who described it as the "Beauty and the Beast of Westerns, a Western dream".[1] Truffaut was especially impressed by the film's extravagance: the bold colors, the poetry of the dialogue in certain scenes, and the theatricality which results in cowboys vanishing and dying "with the grace of ballerinas".
The style of Johnny Guitar is very different from the realism that dominates the work of classical Western directors such as John Ford and Howard Hawks, and this expressive boldness can be looked at as a form of allegory. In particular, many critics have pointed out that the film is a hidden commentary on the McCarthy witch-hunts.[2] The film is certainly more than just a Western — Truffaut called it "a phony Western". It is a sexual drama with obsessive personalities bordering on madness: the character played by Mercedes McCambridge is obviously the chief villain, but Joan Crawford's character is not entirely likable and Ray shows that Crawford's own psycho-sexual obsession affects her in equally bizarre turns, for example, she dresses entirely in white in a crucial scene where she must confront McCambridge.
The strong will and personalities of these two women effectively sideline the men. Sterling Hayden as the eponymous hero is something less of a hero as a result of Crawford's obsession (the fact that he plays a guitar and travels without a gun gives a clue to the downgrading of the Western hero stereotype that is implicit in the title). He is a secondary character, given to indecisiveness. He mostly functions as a passive observer: his tag line is "I am a stranger here myself", which can also describe Nicholas Ray himself (indeed, the line was used as the title of a 1975 documentary about the director).
The other male principals also take a secondary role to the women; none of the posse, not even McIvers, its purported leader, can bring himself to veto McCambridge's Emma, even when lives are at stake. The Dancin' Kid bases many important decisions (especially whether to rob the bank) on whether Vienna will continue to return his affections instead of leaving him for Johnny. Johnny and the Kid are both unusually sensitive cowboys compared to the icons of the time, including the fact that each has an artistic skill (dancing, guitar playing) which is a part of his name, and that both generally let the female characters make the decisions and are willing to abide by them.
[edit] Influence
The film's unusual sexual politics influenced some later Westerns (e.g. Samuel Fuller's 1957 Forty Guns, starring Barbara Stanwyck, revisits the formula of the strong woman[citation needed]). It also influenced foreign cineastes such as Godard, Truffaut, and Sergio Leone[citation needed]. The plot of Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) is partly based on Ray's Western.[citation needed]
[edit] Cast
The film features Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden (as the title character), Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ernest Borgnine, Royal Dano, Ben Cooper, Ward Bond, John Carradine, Paul Fix, Rhys Williams, and Frank Ferguson. Dennis Hopper makes his motion picture debut in this film.
After filming, McCambridge and Hayden publicly declared their dislike of Crawford, with McCambridge labeling Crawford "a bad egg."
[edit] Trivia
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- In Truffaut's La Sirène du Mississippi Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve walk out of a cinema after having watched Johnny Guitar. They express their enthusiasm for the film, in an obvious homage to Truffaut's own expressed admiration for it.
- In Pedro Almodóvar's Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown), Pepa (Carmen Maura) works dubbing films into Spanish. She and her ex-lover, Fernando Guillén, dub one of Johnny Guitar's most exciting scenes: Vienna descending the stairs in a red nightgown.
- The film is mentioned by Jean-Paul Belmondo's character in the beginning of Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou.
- Jealous of a much younger Mercedes McCambridge, Crawford fought but failed to have Claire Trevor cast in the role instead.
- A young Johnny "Guitar" Watson was inspired by the film.
- The Sunn O))) song My Wall contains the line "for this be the wall of Johnny Guitar." [1]
[edit] Adaptations
Johnny Guitar was adapted into a stage musical, which debuted Off-Broadway in 2004, with a book by Nicholas van Hoogstraten, lyrics by Joel Higgins, and music by Martin Silvestri and Joel Higgins. It starred Ann Crumb, Steve Blanchard, and Robert Evan, and was the recipient of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, as well as a nominee for the Lucille Lortel Awards and the Drama Desk Awards. The musical adaptation favored a more "camp" approach toward the material, which seemed to work in its favor, at least among the critics.
The musical version is now being staged in regional theaters across the United States.
