A Walk with Johnny Guitar

_**A cult 50’s Western that’s colorful, melodramatic, surreal and mesmerizing**_ The railroad is coming soon to a town in northern Arizona where a tough saloon owner (Joan Crawford) faces off with a power-mad cattle baron (Mercedes McCambridge) over the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady) and more. Into this mix Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) rides into town, a former love of the saloon proprietor. Who will be left standing when the ashes settle? “Johnny Guitar” (1954) is melodramatic to the point of being surreal, not to mention implausible, but it's colorful, passionate, original and spellbinding. It's a Tarantino Western 40 years before Tarantino movies existed. The director, Nicholas Ray, also did “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) so imagine that kind of overwrought 50’s melodrama translated to a Western, albeit in glorious color. Despite the title, Crawford’s Vienna is the undoubted protagonist counterbalanced by McCambridge’s fiendishly neurotic antagonist, who might bring to mind the Wicked Witch of the West. Interesting quirky bits are thrown in that enhance the picture, like the A-framed saloon built into the side of a cliff; Vienna’s piano recital in a bridal dress; and Old Tom (John Carradine) reading a book while on guard duty. Then there’s the mystery of why no one in the area would be aware of the secret passageway behind the waterfall that leads to the “hideout” curiously located on top of a rock mount plain for all to see. I shouldn’t fail to mention Ernest Borgnine as a gang member of questionable character. The film runs 1 hour, 50 minutes, and was shot in the Sedona region of north-central Arizona, including Oak Creek Canyon, with studio stuff done at Republic Studios in North Hollywood. GRADE: A-

“Vienna” (Joan Crawford) runs her bar on the outskirts of town earning the disdain of just about everyone else. When the stagecoach is robbed, a baying mob turn up accusing her of involvement. They haven’t a shred of evidence, but egged on by “Emma” (Mercedes McCambridge) whose brother had been killed, the sheriff (Frank Ferguson) and local kingpin “McIvers” (Ward Bond) are determined to take her in. Luckily, she has just hired “Johnny” (Sterling Hayden) to come and pluck some strings for the punters’ entertainment and so his, unarmed, intervention lessens the tension a little and then the local gunslinging “Dancin’ Kid” (Scott Brady) arrives with his gang and the would be posse leaves empty-handed but with “Emma” swearing that she will have her revenge. “Vienna” had the “Kid” have some past, so when she takes a shine to the bravado of her new guitarist that causes a bit of chagrin not just from the “Kid” but from his right-hand henchman “Bart” (Ernest Borgnine) who seems the easily offended sort. There’s a semblance of a truce holding next day until the bank is robbed and this time the townsfolk know who it was, and that “Vienna” just happened to be making a withdrawal of her own at the same time! Two and two is swiftly put together and soon a large conflagration, some crawling through old silver mines and even a secret hideaway are in the mix as the action hots up and, of course, we discover that “Johnny” isn’t quite the pacifist he’d pretended to be at the start. Barbara Stanwyck was my favourite when it came to strong, characterful, women in this genre but here, Joan Crawford gives her a run for her money. Her sassy attitude, tempered with an alluring personality, works quite well as she defiantly struts her stuff whilst keeping the more thuggish elements of her town eating out of her hands. By comparison, Brady, Hayden and the usually dependable Bond all pale into an insignificance as the plot develops into a grudge match between two women with an axe to grind - and McCambridge holds up her end quite grittily too. It isn’t end-to-end shoot out stuff, no. This is a bit more cerebral and in some ways illustrates the emergence of the “West” from the “Wild West” - even “McIvers” isn’t readily prepared to resort to mob violence, even at the instigation of “Emma”. Clearly, Crawford has been dressed to impress, and - especially at the end, you do have to wonder about the appropriateness of the colours and/or the frocks she is wearing, but that doesn’t detract from an enjoyable story well played out.