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Why John­ny Gui­tar remains a supe­ri­or sub­ver­sive western

20 Sep 2021

Words by Anton Bitel

Two individuals, a woman in dark clothing with a red scarf and a man in an orange jacket, standing on a wooden fence against a dramatic sunset sky.
Two individuals, a woman in dark clothing with a red scarf and a man in an orange jacket, standing on a wooden fence against a dramatic sunset sky.
With its pro­gres­sive gen­der pol­i­tics and lib­er­al under­tow, Nicholas Ray’s 1954 film was way ahead of its time.

A stranger wan­ders into a divid­ed com­mu­ni­ty. This is the plot of George Stevens’ icon­ic oater Shane, as its epony­mous gun­fight­er drifts into a local dis­pute and sides with the whole­some, home­spun under­dogs, before mov­ing on, injured, into an unknown future (or per­haps reced­ing for­ev­er into a lost past).

It would also sub­se­quent­ly become the stan­dard plot of many a Spaghet­ti west­ern, after Ser­gio Leone’s A Fist­ful of Dol­lars bor­rowed its more cyn­i­cal take on this sto­ry type whole­sale from Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Yojim­bo, as a duplic­i­tous stranger manip­u­lates both sides of a local con­flict. Nicholas Ray’s John­ny Gui­tar came out in 1954, one year after the release of Shane, and a good decade before the cycle of Spaghet­ti west­erns got rolling. It feels like both a rejoin­der to the black-and-white moral­i­ty of Stevens’ film and a pre­cur­sor to the anar­chy of Leone’s work.

In its approach to the received tropes of the west­ern, John­ny Gui­tar was to prove so sub­ver­sive that crit­ics did not know what to make of it upon its ini­tial release, and in mea­sur­ing the film against the very val­ues and stan­dards of the genre that it was decon­struct­ing, they found it want­i­ng. In the decades since, its odd­ness among oth­er oaters has been both recog­nised and cel­e­brat­ed, and it has been hon­oured with selec­tion by the Library of Con­gress for preser­va­tion in the Unit­ed States Nation­al Film Registry.

For a start, the lacon­ic stranger John­ny Gui­tar” (Ster­ling Hay­den) has not so much drift­ed into town as been sum­moned for a job. And (osten­si­bly, at least) not a job as a gun­man – even if con­ven­tion dic­tates that he cer­tain­ly knows his way around a firearm – but as a musi­cian at Vienna’s. He’s not even real­ly a stranger, even if the saloon’s own­er, Vien­na (Joan Craw­ford), does not at first acknowl­edge that she has as much, if not more, his­to­ry with John­ny as with sev­er­al of the oth­er male char­ac­ters in the film.

And if Vien­na, and the gang of the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), Turkey Ral­ston (Ben Coop­er), Bart Lon­er­gan (Ernest Borg­nine) and Corey (Roy­al Dano) that she makes wel­come in her estab­lish­ment, seem like the kind of folk nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with vil­lainy in a west­ern, John­ny signs up with them rather than with the decent, law-abid­ing cat­tle­men from the small near­by town of Red Butte.

John­ny Gui­tar is a film that makes para­dox­es of our pre­con­cep­tions. The sup­pos­ed­ly good towns­folk are dri­ven by their own prej­u­dices – and by their self-appoint­ed arbiter of ethics Emma Small (Mer­cedes McCam­bridge) – to become a mur­der­ous lynch mob. Mean­while the Dancin’ Kid’s sup­pos­ed­ly vicious gang is dri­ven to des­per­ate crim­i­nal action pre­cise­ly by everyone’s false assump­tion that they are crim­i­nals (“I’d hate to be run off for some­thing we didn’t do,” the Dancin’ Kid observes, So let’s do something.”).

Here good peo­ple are also bad, and bad peo­ple are also good, as Ray mud­dies the moral­i­ty of the west­ern and by exten­sion America’s very foun­da­tions. It is also not hard to dis­cern, in the witch hunt car­ried out by these oth­er­wise decent, upright folk, a reflec­tion of the McCarthy­ist per­se­cu­tions that were still run­ning ram­pant at the time Ray made his film.

A man in a cowboy hat and brown coat standing in a desert landscape with rocky formations and cloudy sky.

The most sub­ver­sive aspect of the film, though, is its gen­der pol­i­tics. John­ny Gui­tar may be named after a man (even if Gui­tar” is not his real sur­name), but it con­cerns a fight between two women (and its cli­mac­tic show­down is also between these women, with the men­folk, includ­ing John­ny, left on the side­lines). In any oth­er film, Vien­na would rep­re­sent the type of the fall­en woman’. Her saloon, regard­ed by locals as a den of iniq­ui­ty, was built, as she freely admits, on her back. But it is a far classier joint than is nor­mal­ly seen in an oater, lit by chan­de­liers and staffed by croupiers and bar­men dressed in clean, match­ing suits.

All this style seems incon­gru­ous giv­en the saloon’s loca­tion in the mid­dle of nowhere, beyond the lim­its of Red Butte (which is already only a small town). Yet Vien­na – whose very name is a mark­er of civil­i­sa­tion – cor­rect­ly sees her prop­er­ty as an invest­ment in the future (“I intend to be buried here,” she says, in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry”). For she knows, hav­ing exchanged con­fi­dences” with a sur­vey­or, that soon there will be a rail­way track pass­ing right through the spot where she has staked her for­tunes. This same com­ing change which Vien­na hap­pi­ly rides, the rest of the towns­folk fear.

When John­ny first sees Vien­na she is upstairs, sport­ing trousers rather than a dress, and also very much wear­ing the pants in this estab­lish­ment, with all the men who work under her also lit­er­al­ly look­ing up to her. Nev­er seen a woman who acts more like a man,” as employ­ee Sam (Robert Oster­loh) points out. She looks like one, thinks like one, and some­times makes me feel like I’m not.” Anoth­er employ­ee, Old Tom (John Car­ra­dine), tells John­ny: I nev­er believed I’d end my years work­ing for a woman – and lik­ing it.” Not long after­wards, Vien­na adopts the same pose on the stair­case in con­fronta­tion with an armed posse of men from the town, calm­ly but firm­ly prov­ing her­self very much their superior.

These men from the town are not only out­drawn, out­wit­ted and out­done by a woman, but also insti­gat­ed by one. For deter­mined­ly lead­ing them against both Vien­na and the Dancin’ Kid is the puri­tan­i­cal Emma, whose hatred for them both is root­ed in erot­ic feel­ings towards the Dancin’ Kid that she seeks to bury (“He makes her feel like a woman,” Vien­na observes, and that fright­ens her.”).

Like Vien­na, Emma freely adopts tra­di­tion­al male roles, lead­ing the men’s hunt­ing par­ties and show­ing a will­ing­ness, even a keen­ness, to hang Vien­na that her male part­ners by con­trast open­ly lack. Yet unlike the sophis­ti­cat­ed Vien­na, Emma is small-mind­ed and cen­so­ri­ous, and bor­der­ing on psy­cho­path­ic in her vendet­ta. That the two actress­es famous­ly did not get along (putting it mild­ly) on set only adds to the on-screen ten­sion between them.

Though sur­round­ing them­selves with men, between them these two women both call the shots and even­tu­al­ly fire them, while Vien­na, like Euripi­des’ Medea’, lays out the soci­etal dou­ble stan­dards that have made her ascent (as queen of a domain she built her­self) so improb­a­ble, so impres­sive – and so mod­ern. If she likes to hear the sound of a roulette wheel turn­ing, per­haps that is because she has spent her life play­ing against the odds, in a film where for­tunes change rapidly.

When a fire is burnt out, all you have left is ash­es,” says Vien­na of the rela­tion­ship that she once had with John­ny, and that John­ny hopes to rekin­dle, using imagery that also fore­shad­ows the film’s cli­mac­tic con­fla­gra­tion. For Philip Yordan’s screen­play – adapt­ed from Roy Chanslor’s 1953 nov­el, which was ded­i­cat­ed to Craw­ford, and which she had per­son­al­ly optioned – comes with the hard-boiled clip of a film noir, but also with a weighty res­o­nance that makes every word count.

John­ny Gui­tar was shot in Tru­col­or, and its visu­al style con­stant­ly under­mines the nat­u­ral­ism more nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the west­ern. Craw­ford, in par­tic­u­lar, is always lit by DoP Har­ry Stradling to glow – an oasis of glam­our, pow­er and allure in a desert that does not want her there. Ray’s film is a west­ern, but it is also an ampli­fied melo­dra­ma, with a rich seam of deviant psy­chol­o­gy just wait­ing to be dis­in­terred from its dusty sur­face. Its time has come.

John­ny Gui­tar is avail­able on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from 20 Sep­tem­ber as part of Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma series for Eure­ka! Entertainment.

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