Johnny Guitar
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“I’m a stranger here myself”
Overview
After arriving at a remote Arizona cattle town "Johnny Guitar" Logan (Sterling Hayden) visits his headstrong ex-lover Vienna (an incendiary Joan Crawford) at her saloon. Soon enough the townsfolk criticise her working relationship with the "Dancin' Kid" (Scott Brady) –another ex– and his gang who recently pillaged a stagecoach. One of the locals Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), just lost her brother to the gang and is hell-bent on taking Vienna down – secretly because she too desires Dancin' Kid's affections and simmers with jealousy. As suspicions rise and accusations fly, Johnny comes to Vienna’s defence and the two, plus the gang, are banished, soon to be hunted down.
Why You Should See This Film
Hailed by Martin Scorsese as “one of cinema's great operatic works...pitched from beginning to end in a tone that is compulsive and passionate”, Johnny Guitar is one of our favourite films by director Nicholas Ray: a vividly colourful, poetically spoken and explosively dramatic tour de force. While American audiences and critics dismissed the film on release because they wanted a Western, Johnny Guitar became a favourite of the French New Wave/Cahiers du cinema set for its style and complexity; transcending its period setting with ambiguities and subtexts, rendering it extremely modern.
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