“Never seen a woman who was more a man. She looks like one, acts like one and sometimes makes me feel that I’m not.” – saloon croupier speaking directly into the camera about his über-female boss Vienna

“We’ve both done a lot of living… our problem now is how to do a little more.” – Vienna, to her returned from the past lover Johnny Guitar, as they’re hold up against an angry mob out to kill ‘em for things they didn’t do

Through raw ambition and a ‘any means necessary’ approach (and I mean ‘any’, if you catch my drift – AND she ain’t apologizing for it to nobody!), no-nonsense Vienna (Joan Crawford) has built a saloon in the middle of the wind-swept Arizona desert with the intention of turning it into a thriving modern town once that railroad construction makes its scheduled way through… with the single (yet considerably large) catch being the local nearby townies aren’t too keen on either her new town idea… or on her, for that matter… especially mean-spirited spitfire hellion Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge, who – little footnote – eventually provided the voice of the demon Pazuzu in The Exorcist), a one-time rival for the affections of the gun-totin’ gang-leadin’ Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady, a tight-lipped performer with just enough rugged looks and charm to make a quality second banana, which places him perfectly in this part), who self-righteously twists herself into knots convincing the town’s men into taking violent action against Vienna and her crew… that is, until Vienna’s old time love, the mysterious Johnny Guitar (that one-time commie leftist-par-excellence, the legendary Hollywood bad boy Sterling Hayden, pictured above) shows up to rekindle the romance… and add more than a dash of dangerous jealousy between him and the Kid.

I had read that the film operates as a clear parable for the blind mob hysteria around the McCarthy hearings when many well known actors and directors were shamed and pressured (under the threat of losing their Hollywood livelihoods) into naming co-workers who they suspected of being communists, often with little real evidence. And the parallels are certainly clear such as the moment in which the youngest and most vulnerable member of the Dancin’ Kid’s gang Turkey, beaten and terrified, is accused by Emma’s riled-up mob of having robbed a bank along with the rest of the Kid’s gang and coerced into saving his own skin by openly lying and fingering Vienna as being involved, so Emma’s crew can hang her instead (though they hang the kid anyway and Vienna gets away with a little help from Monsieur Guitar). But I’d say, the film has even bigger notions on its mind; as with just about every western, either overtly or subtly, the underlying concern of Johnny Guitar — the one that really propels the narrative and the mob — is the tension between encroaching modernity and the New West sensibility it brings against the inevitably fading gun-slinging ways of the Old West. However, where many of these films see this evolution as something to mourn, with the individual values and responsibilities – as well as the prominent position of masculinity — of the Old West lost under an onslaught of corrupt banking and faceless corporate capitalism of the New, noted leftie filmmaker Nicholas Ray takes a different approach; for him (and Johnny Guitar), the New West over the Old indicates the death of faceless mob law and of rigid (sexual) repression… and the dawning of gender equality. Even more daringly (certainly for its time), the two sides are presented through two powerhouse female characters; the proud, take-no-shit Vienna and the spiteful Emma. Both of them easily overpower the mostly weak-willed men around them; and yet while Vienna may make her croupiers and bartenders feel emasculated (as the quote above points at), the same men openly admire her (even love her). With Emma, the local townsmen who become the mindless mob are driven by fear of her intensity and are cunningly manipulated by her through primal, irrational fears of change.

Emma is a creature of sexual repression driven to anger and spite. Vienna, on the other hand, is sexually liberated. She has no hang ups, allowing her to operate with fairness and without contempt. In what must have been incredibly bold strokes for the time, the first time we meet her she’s entertaining a potential business partner in her room above the saloon, with her bed openly visible behind them as she coaxes him a bit with wine asking if he’ll stay ‘a little longer’, coyly mentioning (again, entirely unapologetically) how she learned about the railroad coming through this section of town in an ‘mutual exchange’ one night with a railroad man. And when she later contemptuously harangues Johnny for how men are forgiven for most everything as long as they hold onto their “pride” and yet a woman’s actions are constantly held over their heads against them, it must have been pretty groundbreaking stuff (and pretty amazing it got shot and made in the first place).

The dialogue and the performers’ deliveries just crackle. It’s a sheer joy to listen to. The film ends, not surprisingly, on a showdown between the two women and when one of them gets plugged (I won’t say which, but it isn’t all that hard to figure out), leaving that last woman standing, let’s just say the final romantic embrace doesn’t feel much like the traditional hug of a conquering male hero claiming his final female prize.

Now, okay, in real life Joan Crawford might have been a relentlessly unpleasant, mentally unstable drunkard openly detested by her fellow performers (and it’s hard to forget the wild-eyed ‘no wire hangers!’ routine from the Crawford bio Mommy Dearest) but… on-screen? Not only could she hold her own against the onslaught of all that testosterone and masculine Hollywood myth constructs of the genre, but project a powerful sexuality that makes you feel she’s up for getting down and fucking anyone she either wants to for pleasure, or needs to for business. And, yet, equally capable of love and old school romance. And that’s not even mentioning the open kindness and maternal instincts she shows with Turkey (ironically, her eventual betrayer). She’s a western cowgirl with strength, ambition, sex appeal, romantic inclinations, sensitivity… a cinematic broad way ahead of her time!

Buck A Review   feminism   joan crawford   nicholas ray   western