To the unconverted, Westerns are a predictable genre in which the same archetypal characters, settings and situations recur over and over again. To fans, Westerns are a fabulously varied genre in which the same archetypal characters, settings and situations can be combined in an infinite number of original variations. Think, for instance, of a Western character who wears all black, has a steely gaze and a financial interest in a railroad. You might be thinking of Henry Fonda’s Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West, one of the most chillingly evil figures in cinema history. Or you might be thinking of Joan Crawford as Vienna in Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece Johnny Guitar, reissued on Blu-Ray by Eureka Masters of Cinema. Vienna shares her fashion sense with Frank, but not her morality: the film may be named for Sterling Hayden’s character, but Vienna is unquestionably the protagonist.
Crawford hadn’t starred in a Western since her pre-fame role in the silent cheapie The Law of the Range; she agreed to this one on the condition that she be given the kind of role a male star would get. Given that Vienna is a gambling den owner holding her own in hostile territory while pining for a lost love she associates with an oft-requested song, the male star in question might be Humphrey Bogart. Whoever she’s based on, Vienna is one of the few icons of female power in the Golden Age of Westerns. She is such an unconventional lead for this kind of movie that Ward Bond, who plays her nemesis John McIvers, spent the whole of the shoot under the impression he was the hero.
From the start, Johnny Guitar announces its iconoclasm by showing Hayden’s title character riding through a picturesque valley… which is then blown up as part of a mining operation. It’s one of those rare Westerns – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is another – which spends more time indoors than outdoors, although the interiors aren’t much of a sanctuary. The first time we enter Vienna’s saloon, the vicious winds outside are clearly audible through the walls, adding an undercurrent of threat to the already menacing-enough dialogue and – a particularly nice touch, this – the irritating rattle of the roulette wheel which Vienna insists stays spinning, despite the fact that McIvers and his followers clearly haven’t turned up to play.
Before camp became synonymous with comedy, it was a way for gay audiences to both vent and ironise the suffering they could never openly admit to. Johnny Guitar, and its stern, magnetic, otherworldly leading lady, is made for this kind of appreciation. It is, as Martin Scorsese describes it, an “operatic” film.
What they have turned up to do is threaten Vienna with a lynching, accusing her of harbouring an outlaw despite a complete lack of evidence. This, perhaps, is why Bond was so confused about which character the audience would sympathise with; he was a prominent supporter of anti-Communist causes in Hollywood, and there is a definite Red Scare undercurrent to Johnny Guitar. Vienna’s faith in the railroad might be seen as pro-capitalist, but there’s no mistaking what kind of politics lead her enemy Emma Small to oppose it. Played by Mercedes McCambridge with a frustrated Puritan temper that couldn’t be further from her role in Touch of Evil, she rallies up the lynch mob using rhetoric that sounds awfully familiar: “You heard her tell how they’re gonna run the railroad through here, bringing thousands of new people from the east. Farmers! Dirt farmers! Squatters! They’ll push us out!“
McCambridge and Crawford were rivals on screen, and rivals in real life too. Crawford dismissively referred to McCambridge as an actress who hadn’t done anything for a decade (when in fact she’d won an Oscar for All the King’s Men just five years ago), an animosity which McCambridge believed stemmed from her marriage to Crawford’s ex Fletcher Markle. Crawford’s knack for collecting feuds is one of the central building blocks in her camp icon status, but even if she’d been an absolute pussycat behind the scenes, there would be reason enough to read Vienna as implicitly queer. With her masculine clothes, her masculine role, her confident gun handling and a strongly-hinted-at extensive sexual history, she is positioned as the antithesis to the modest, sexually repressed yet ferocious and vile Emma.
There’s also a camp, theatrical quality to the whole film. Shortly after that remarkably naturalistic sound design at Vienna’s saloon is established, Robert Osterloh’s Sam appears to break the fourth wall to talk to the audience. The next shot reveals he’s really talking to two off-camera characters, but the shock of the moment lingers. The last half-hour begins with an uncharacteristically long shot of Vienna lighting gas lamps; they turn out to be relevant to the plot, but there’s still something wonderfully strange and artificial about watching a movie character literally set the scene for the final act. Yet this is a version of camp which is never frivolous. Before camp became synonymous with comedy, it was a way for gay audiences to both vent and ironise the suffering they could never openly admit to. Johnny Guitar, and its stern, magnetic, otherworldly leading lady, is made for this kind of appreciation. It is, as Martin Scorsese describes it, an “operatic” film.
That Scorsese quote comes from a short introduction included on this Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray, which viewers can select to play before the film. There are also video pieces by Tony Rayns and David Cairns, a commentary by Adrian Martin and another introduction from Geoff Andrew, whose biography of Ray – Nicholas Ray: The Poet of Nightfall – takes its subtitle from François Truffaut’s appreciation of Ray’s rich, moonlit nocturnes. Another quote from Truffaut, this time directly about Johnny Guitar, will see us out: he likened it to “Beauty and the Beast, with Sterling Hayden as Beauty”.
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