Nicholas Ray, one of those rare directors who could put in a style or outlook of his own in various films of different conventional types in 1950's Hollywood, has with his film Johnny Guitar a job very well done. I had the chance to see it on the big screen at a revival screening some months ago (mostly among Joan Crawford fans) on a double bill with Sam Fuller's Forty Guns. Crawford, McCambridge, and definitely Sterling Hayden (one of my all-time favorite 'guy' actors) brought a lot to the entertainment factor of the film. The story goes like this (and if you've seen Sergio Leone's Once Upom a Time in the West, you'll notice obvious similarities, as his was a slight homage of this film)- Crawford owns a bar/parlor on the edge of town. The townspeople want her out to make way for a railroad, most vocally of this is McCambridge (in maybe the best performance of the film, really the most theatrical). The title character is played with usual panache by Hayden, who at first is a little enigmatic, then reveals himself to have a past with Crawford.
The story then unravels from there, in a way that actually went against my expectations, much to my delight. This is the kind of genre picture that knows what it is, but with a director clever enough to take chances. For example, there is the contrast of color between Crawford and the angry townspeople near the beginning of the film. She's playing the piano on one side of the room in a white dress, while the others, the supposedly 'good' people of the town, are all in black. Is Ray messing with the convention of good guys white, bad guys black, or do we have to keep attentive all the way through to know how it plays out? I think you'd have to - this is one of those westerns that has enough excitement, humor (mostly dark or unintentional), and a climax that goes with some of the best of them. At the least it should hold up for those expecting something very dated- it's not quite as towering as the Leone films, but on its own terms Ray has a contender against all those old-school Ford/Wayne westerns.
The story then unravels from there, in a way that actually went against my expectations, much to my delight. This is the kind of genre picture that knows what it is, but with a director clever enough to take chances. For example, there is the contrast of color between Crawford and the angry townspeople near the beginning of the film. She's playing the piano on one side of the room in a white dress, while the others, the supposedly 'good' people of the town, are all in black. Is Ray messing with the convention of good guys white, bad guys black, or do we have to keep attentive all the way through to know how it plays out? I think you'd have to - this is one of those westerns that has enough excitement, humor (mostly dark or unintentional), and a climax that goes with some of the best of them. At the least it should hold up for those expecting something very dated- it's not quite as towering as the Leone films, but on its own terms Ray has a contender against all those old-school Ford/Wayne westerns.