Johnny Guitar (1954)

2025-01-14

For January’s weekly director examinations we’re on week three with a loaded line up of Nicholas Ray Films spanning five years. Today it’s another standout western that stood out for being baffling to audiences when it initially released but history has grown kind to Ray’s 1954 film “JOHNNY GUITAR” for how unique it feels in any era. Joan Crawford owns the screen as Vienna, a hard nosed woman who just opened a casino saloon to nobody, but very soon the train tracks will be laid and she will live her life. She’s not the only woman in control. Her biggest rival is Mercedes McCambridge’s “Emma” a psychotic cattle baron who feels so burned by a past love’s history with Vienna that she’s willing to kill her for it and she’s got the law and the rest of the town behind her. In comes Johnny Guitar as played by Sterling Hayden. A mystery man hired by Vienna to entertain the saloon. Of course, they got history. She needs a body guard and he’s a secret gunfighter. She doesn’t want it to be this way but some people are gonna die. Will it be her? Will she lose everything? Can all the girl boss swag in the world save her? Joan Crawford lights it up in this film but Mercedes McCambridge more than holds her own and it’s convenient to us, the viewer, that they absolutely hated each other in real life. A worthy western melodrama that is worth seeing once. Hear us talk of it. Here’s a link to the film that we found: https://archive.org/details/johnny.-guitar.-1954.1080p.-blu-ray.x-264.-aac-yts.-mx

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