Reviews

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  ★★★★★ review by Filipe Furtado on Letterboxd

  "Spin the wheel, Eddie".

  One of those great movies one can't quite explain, just experience. One bold choice that pays off after another. And such forceful violence. Also, for all the film's camp reputation Johnny Guitar never got enough credit for how functional as a narrative film it is, the first act in particular doesn't have a single wasted gesture and it traces so many different instances of unrequited passion and repression, if you only see it as stiff and silly, what can one do with blindness?

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  ★★★★★ review by ScreeningNotes on Letterboxd

  "Never seen a woman more like a man. She looks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I'm not."

  Really hard to imagine this coming out in 1954. Director Nicholas Ray had already made In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart, so it's not like this is some no-budget small-scale production where he can do whatever he wants, and yet Joan Crawford as Vienna is really unimaginable in a way that still feels progressive even today. She owns and operates her own saloon, so she has economic and cultural power, and she successfully persuades those around her to take her side, so she has social and psychological power, and there's never any point where she's marginalized.

  She's the ultimate embodiment of personal agency within the film and there's never any point where she's made out to be weird or abnormal or somehow Other. Not only does she structurally occupy a position traditionally used as a signifier of masculinity (she's a gunslinger and a landowner), she also makes characters around her confront their own gender identities (see above quote). She's just a badass lady running around in a world traditionally defined by its rocky landscapes as a battleground for male dominance within a patriarchal society.

  This undermining or redefining of the hypermasculine archetypes of the West can also be tied back to repressed sexuality, of both the characters (both men and women are afraid of being emasculated, and Emma's drive has an unspoken sexual undercurrent) as well as the culture of America at the time the film was made (1954 was right in the center of McCarthyism, when homosexuals were accused of treason). However, this reading has already been done better by Sally Jane Black than I could do.

  What I'm particularly interested in is the reversal of a more specific trend I've been noticing in the westerns I've been watching*. Usually, the cowboy comes to town; here, the town comes to the cowboy. Vienna has her saloon, and a mob of townsfolk enter it and demands that she leave. This works as a representation of the state of exception, the unspoken exclusion from society that the rest of the community's inclusion is founded upon, although here with an emphasis on the exclusion rather than the resulting inclusion. Rather than performing a foundational act of violence which must be then excluded, Vienna is excluded from the very beginning and never overcomes this social alienation.

  Civilization is spreading its borders, intruding itself into the lives of others and removing those it deems in conflict with its (supposedly) peaceful ideals. Here, the spread of civilization is called out as a witch hunt more savage than the frontier it's replacing; pre-established community is shown to be the intruder rather than the one intruded by a feared outsider. The world turns inside out; the inside (the supposedly benevolent society) becomes the outside (the intrusive, violent mob), and the outlaw (the community member included by virtue of her exclusion, included only as an outsider) becomes the final agent of the law, the unjust avenue for justice.

  Top 10: Westerns | Westerns Ranked

  *most notably Bad Day at Black Rock and No Name on the Bullet

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  ★★★★★ review by Neil Bahadur on Letterboxd

  For some inane reason I feel like this movie should not be as great as it consistently ends up being! There is relatively little to glean here upon repeat viewings, but more than any other film I think does this one have the ability to stun you in the same way as the first time one watches it. Godard's famous 'And the cinema is Nicholas Ray," was applied to a later film, the greatest film about male pride, but I feel like that dictum describes this film much better - this movie is true mashup cinema, a combination of so many different and disparate elements digested and then spewed out that it ends up the most baroque and romantic western ever made. For me, the most obvious influence on Ray around this time (before Rebel, where he finally found himself) is pre-'34 Von Sternberg, and this movie almost feels like what JVS might have done in a Western around that time (remember, pre '34, so the die-hard romantic, not the suicidal maniac! But then that's the same thing, isn't it? Anyways..)

  There is so much thrown in and mishmashed here - the politics, but though McCarthyism was probably an inspiration for lynch mad citizens, this gives us a very interesting demonstration of the mechanics of a group mentality - essentially it boils down to emotionalism versus rationality - and what's most interesting is that real love is found with the latter! It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the dangers of a group of people who all react with their emotions first and think after, but it's actually quite chilling how far this goes, such as bribing a person with their life to lie, only to reengage on their promise immediately after. There are little mediations on violence and pride - Turkey only shows his gun twice in the film: first he pulls it out and exclaims "I'm a man!"...the next time we see him with gun revealed he is collapsing on the ground covered with blood. Coupled with his considerable youth compared to the rest of his ilk, this is one of so many threads thrown into this movie, a quick thought of the kind of indoctrination males are privy too, again when one is ruled by emotions alone. For any other film I feel like these mere two instances aren't enough...but it's just perfect.

  There is also the surreal, unusual relationship between Crawford and McCambridge...a constant battle of will and psychology. I understand the claims made about McCambridge's character's repressed sexuality, however this is maybe a bit unclear to me...what (at the moment) is more interesting to me are McCambridge & Bond's characterizations, wealthy landowners who want to remove Crawford so to profit on her land. The lynch mob is headed by the most powerful people in the town! In fact virtually every relationship in this film has some kind of nuance or dynamic to it which opens up the movie considerably - it touches on virtually everything without fully going into it...but I think this is a virtue rather than a flaw, as though every kind of relationship is glanced at through sensory reaction - incredibly cinematic! Hayden and Brady's relationship is also quite interesting, of course being that they are two men in love with the same woman. It's easy to forget that for a fair portion there is actually a love triangle going on throughout the film - Crawford slowly falling back in love with Hayden, while Hayden & Brady constantly picking to find clues regarding the other's relationship with Crawford. As you all know of course it's Hayden that ends up with Crawford, but in the movie's later portions there is some wonderful segments of passive-aggressiveness from Brady, followed by quick displays of pride from each man, each trying to one-up the other almost theatrically. But Crawford offsets all of this, immediately revealing that these theatrical displays of male pride often amount to little more than a childish game.

  But even with all that, none of this would really elevate this movie to a masterpiece had it not been for the key relationship: that of course of Crawford and Hayden. And for me not even so until the later sections! The emotive early sections play, again, like early Sternberg - each lover trying to rediscover faith. Crawford has made herself, she wants love too but is able to exist without it - Hayden is the opposite, the despairing dreamer: "Laugh, Vienna! And be happy, it's your wedding day!" That Crawford loves Hayden prior to this is indisputable, but she is also rational: he is a violent man & if this violence cannot be curbed then she would rather live without him. So Hayden curbs his worst tendencies for love. But it's the moments where they run in danger together, after the burning of saloon where this movie becomes very moving to me. Just two people who love each other running away from the world - they bump into grass and chuckle even though their lives are in danger. They run through waterfalls - "Only you and me, that's real." And this is what makes the movie, even with everything else, one of the most beautiful films ever made.

  And that doesn't even get into this movies truly psychedelic colour palette...

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  ★★★★½ review by SilentDawn on Letterboxd

  90

  "You ever know anyone to take a hangin' easy?"

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  ★★★★½ review by SilentDawn on Letterboxd

  90
  
  Tell the truth they want to hear.

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