Johnny Guitar (1954)

Better Late Then Never

A Masterpiece!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I used to run a film society. My tastes are very eclectic. But this parade of tortured perversity masquerading as art makes a foolish exhibition out of the Western genre. The film is a highly-elaborated and unreal contrivance of introverted pretension. It is so full of 'meanings' that it is utterly incomprehensible, and so hysterically excitable as to be revolting and ridiculous. The airless narcissism is stifling. The whole thing is like finding oneself at a fancy-dress party where everybody is drunk or drugged to the point of delirium yet no-one is happy, and where confusion and oblivion are the suicidal social dynamic. The whole film degenerates into something like a drug-induced nightmare, offering nothing more than a glimpse into the desperate and doomed attempts of a confused and disordered mind to clarify itself by indulging in ever more of the vivid but febrile fantasies that seem to promise so much illumination, yet deliver only madness. 'Switch on, tune in and drop out' as the hippy mantra had it.Fascinating to those of uncertain temperament who like playing with their own peculiar failings, the movie is utterly revolting to those who need to engage with some experience that can be measured against a more recognisable reality. Many people still do not recognise the camp or the kitsch this film represents as anything more than a certain form of self-indulgent vulgarity that is content to perversely parade itself as the height of artistic sensibility. Count me as one of those who doubt the value of such a futile exercise. The entire cultural model in which this film is steeped disqualifies it from being taken seriously - except insofar as it is an offence against good taste. It is an ugly parody of anything artistic. It might amaze the perpetrators of such schlock to reflect that Oscar Wilde had the intelligence and taste to avoid all such vulgarity in his work! But then he wrote long before this self-congratulatory and self-indulgent cult of campness elevated outrageous eccentricity and egomania above serious talent. And, yes, I am calling out Nicolas Ray and I'm saying that, if he's a genius, then so is Ed Wood.

A strong willed female saloon owner (Joan Crawford) is wrongly suspected of murder and bank robbery by a lynch mob, when she helps a wounded gang member.I can see why this western has something of a cult status. Certainly an outlaw who has a guitar strapped to his back rather than a gun makes for an interesting character. And it asks that age old question: can a leopard change his spots? Can Johnny Logan become Johnny Guitar? Joan Crawford leads the film, apparently because she helped produce it. For the life of me, I never figured out her appeal. Her acting is good but no great. She is no joy to look at. And from what I understand, she was more or less a terror to everyone around her. How did she ever get to be as big as she was?

Many people just think of this as simply a fantastic western movie, I mean it must have had a big distribution deal because it had huge box office takings world wide. But I think there is more depth to this movie than just that, I think the music that went along with it was truly amazing. I really like the pace at which the action in this movie plays out. The screen writers did a fantastic job is writing the script for the film also.I can't rate this film enough, I gate it 8 out of 10, maybe there were moments that could have been better but there are not many. Credits go out to all of the cast stand out performances from each one of them.Watch this film you will not be disappointed.

Nicholas Ray has taken a theme of America's expansion westward to the Pacific and brought us two strong women who embody landownership, cattle barons and the ever widening industrial revolution and urbanism that will challenge and ultimately vanquish older capitalist forms of power. Love is a theme but the women, Vienna played with nerve and steel by Joan Crawford and the impulsive Emma Small by Mercedes Cambridge overshadow the men in the film. And it's a duel in sun between the whore that made good as a bar girl and now has a title for land the railroad will develop and she will build a town on it, and Small the gun totting land and cattle baroness. is 'Johnny Guitar' a precursor of feminism? It's up to you to judge. Nonetheless, it's Crawford's finer hour.