Johnny Guitar

Johnny Guitar, an operatic western centered around two powerful female characters who are more masculine than the men around them, is one of the most unusual westerns of its era, or any era for that matter. Dense with psychological conflicts and political suggestions, including a not-so-veiled allegory for the McCarthy witch-hunts in Hollywood, which both director Nicholas Ray and screenwriter Philip Yordan have acknowledged was their intention, it is a rich, vivid film directed by an artist at the peak of his powers and one of the most expressive color westerns of all time. And it has been one of the most anticipated DVD releases since the inception of the format. Made for Republic Pictures, the poor cousin to the dominant Hollywood studios, and designed as a vehicle for Joan Crawford, a once powerful screen superstar whose popularity was in decline but whose talent and business acumen was still in fine form, this is a western as baroque melodrama. Crawford is Vienna, the owner of a saloon and gambling house built on the outskirts of a frontier town. She's staking her claim for her share of the American dream--she chose her location on a tip about the railroad line coming through the area--and the former saloon girl (western movie code for hooker) used the only path available to her to earn her own capital and build her own business without bowing to anyone. She's not ashamed of the road she took but neither is she especially proud of it either. Not that anyone in this film has a particularly proud past. It is past, however, for the Vienna we meet is no saloon girl. She's a businesswoman and a boss and she has the strength and stature to stand up for what is hers, materially and morally. It's not just business, it's her right to lay her stake on the future of the American west. Vienna faces hostility from the local townsfolk, most of it whipped up by Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), who co-owns the bank with her brother, and rancher John McIvers (Ward Bond). They are, not so coincidentally, the richest and most powerful people around. And when the local stagecoach is robbed and a passenger--Emma's brother, in fact--is killed, a mob arrives at Vienna's saloon and Emma accuses a group of miners led by the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) of the robbery and Vienna of sheltering the outlaws. There's no evidence, just suspicion and vitriolic hatred. The repressed Emma is attracted to Dancin' Kid (seriously, it isn't just his nickname, it's the only name anyone knows him by) and can't decide if she's more ashamed of her desire of the handsome bad boy or of the fact that Kid has the hots for her rival Vienna. Coupled with the fact that Vienna's prime location positions her to make a fortune when the railroad comes through, it makes for a combustible mixture of animosity and aggression. That's just the set-up and it this recounting doesn't begin to describe how Ray effectively introduces the characters, the conflicts, and the deep backstories that slowly emerge. In fact, based on the opening scenes, one might assume that the film is really about Johnny Guitar himself, a lanky, affable cowboy played by Sterling Hayden. The film opens with the stage robbery as viewed from afar by Johnny as he rides to the saloon, but when Vienna makes her entrance, stepping out of her private office onto balcony overlooking the floor of the establishment, it's clear who dominates this film. Ray's camera is on high looking down in both shots, but then effect couldn't be more different. Hayden's easy presence merely marks Johnny as a distant, disconnected observer to a crime, unaffected by the event and certainly not driven to get involved. But Vienna, standing strong and tall in jeans, a dark work shirt and a bright kerchief for stylish accent, takes on a commanding presence of the scene with a masculine identity and feminine flourish. Ray's camera, looking down to the bar from Vienna's POV, tells us that she's the boss in every way while Johnny is her employee, her bodyguard, and the love from her past. The film's dynamic first act occurs almost entirely within the confines of the gaming room of her saloon, with characters arriving, engaging, and exiting in dramatically timely fashion, but the effect is anything but stagebound or theatrical. Ray isolates, reframes, and comments on the shifting stories and conflicts of the story and he paces the action and energy with his editing like a conductor, taking us from the quiet intimacy of individual themes (Johnny and Vienna, Kid and Johnny) to the bold introduction of dramatic movements (the arrival of Emma and the posse) to the complex interplay of all these characters as the floor fills. It is like a piece of music, the provocative first act of a symphony, filled with grace notes in the form of some of the most quotable lines in Ray's career: "Why don't you carry a gun ?"/"Because I'm not the fastest gun west of the Pecos." "Lie to me. Tell me you love me." "I'm a stranger here myself." This last line echoes through Ray's cinema, both verbally and thematically. While Johnny Guitar doesn't feature the usual brand of western outdoor action spectacle, it is filled with conflict, explosive twists, and violent clashes. Yet through it all, the film keeps the focus resolutely on Vienna's fight to defend her business and herself against the town's disapproval and Emma's ferocious, homicidal campaign to drive Vienna away or, failing that, to kill her. Where Emma spends the rest of the film clad in a black mourning gown, Crawford's Vienna changes costume with practically every scene. It's a Hollywood tradition for female stars, of course, especially when it comes to screen divas of Crawford's stature, but in this case it is a deliberate choice woven into the visual design of the film, every outfit informing a defining aspect of character and her place in the unfolding drama. The most memorable clash of costume and character comes as Emma, leading a lynch mob her black dress, confronts Vienna, clad in a soft, white, elegant gown while playing the saloon's piano: the dark, angry fairy tale witch taking on the innocent heroine. The symbolic imagery only compounds when Vienna sets the place on fire and practically dances in triumph, a black figure against the bright flames. Symbolism aside, the scene burns deep and hot with rage and revenge unleashed. In addition to the fine leads already mentioned, Johnny Guitar features a superb supporting cast carving out memorable characters from the mob. John Carradine brings dignity to the role of Old Tom, the amiable town drunk that Vienna looks after and keeps around to sweep up, and the loyalty and devotion he communicates is a profound as it is quietly underplayed. Ernest Borgnine plays another of the tough, bullying thugs that defined his career at the time and Ben Cooper (playing a character nicknamed Turkey) is another of the weak-willed teenagers that fascinated Ray so, a kid trying to prove himself a man but failing to stand up when his character is put on the line. And Royal Dano is superb as the consumptive Corey, whose weak body is balanced with a strong will and sense of loyalty. The simple but evocative contradictions of these minor characters reflect the more complex contradictions and conflicts in the central players of the drama. Johnny Guitar is one of Nicholas Ray's greatest films, a standout film in a career filled with such classics as They Live By Night (1949), In A Lonely Place (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1952), Bigger Than Life (1956), and his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and the richness of the film can be traced back to Ray, who drastically reworked the original screenplay with screenwriter Philip Yordan and even managed to incorporate the demands made by Crawford into defining elements of the character of Vienna. Ray creates a story so compelling and an experience so engrossing that only in retrospect do you realize how radical a vision it is. Never before released on DVD, Johnny Guitar makes its digital disc debut on both Blu-ray and DVD by Olive in their new licensing deal with Paramount to release the Republic Picture library (previously licensed to Lionsgate). Most of these releases are without supplements and produced from masters created by Paramount itself. This disc features a single supplement, a video introduction by Martin Scorsese recorded for the film's VHS release twenty years ago or so. As with previous Paramount releases through Olive, the company is using Paramount's own digital masters, which have been remastered in high definition. Johnny Guitar is released at 1.33:1 Academy ratio, though Variety listed the production as 1.66:1. The Academy format is the same framing as all previous home video releases and it looks fine, though it would have been nice to offer the OAR. It is otherwise a very good transfer, with solid, deep color and film texture, from a fine-grain 35mm print. For more information about Johnny Guitar, visit Olive Films. by Sean Axmaker

Veteran character actress Mercedes McCambridge, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for All the King's Men, and later provided the scary voice of a demon-possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist, died from natural causes on March 2 in a rest home in San Diego. She was 87. She was born Charlotte Mercedes McCambridge on March 16, 1916, in Joliet, Illinois. After graduation from Mundelein College in Chicago, she acted in local radio, doing everything from children's programs to soap operas. By the early '40s, she relocated to New York, where her powerful voice kept her busy as one of the top radio actresses of her day, including a stint with Orson Wells' radio dramas. In the late '40s she appeared successfully in several Broadway productions, and this led a call from Hollywood. In her film debut, she was cast as Broderick Crawford's scheming mistress in All the King's Men (1949) and won an Oscar® for her fine performance. Despite her strong start, McCambridge's film roles would be very sporadic over the years. Her strengths were her husky voice, square build, and forthright personae, not exactly qualities for an ingenue. Instead, McCambridge took interesting parts in some quirky movies: playing a self-righteous church leader opposite Joan Crawford in one of the cinema's great cult Westerns, Nicholas Ray's kinky Johnny Guitar (1954); a key role as Rock Hudson's sister in George Stevens' epic Giant (1956, a second Oscar® nomination), and as a gang leader in Orson Wells' magnificent noir thriller Touch of Evil (1958). By the '60s, McCambridge's career was hampered by bouts of alcoholism, and apart for her voice work as the demon in William Friedkin's The Exorcist(1973, where the director cruelly omitted her from the credits before the Screen Actors Guild intervened and demanded that she receive proper recognition), the parts she found toward the end of her career were hardly highpoints. Some fairly forgettable films: Thieves (1977), The Concorde - Airport '79 (1979) and guest roles in some routine television shows such as Charlie's Angels and Cagney & Lacey were all she could find before quietly retiring from the screen. It should be noted that McCambridge finished her career on a high note, when in the early '90s, Neil Simon asked her to play the role of the grandmother in Lost in Yonkers on Broadway. Her return to the New York stage proved to be a great success, and McCambridge would perform the play for a phenomenal 560 performances. They were no surviving family members at the time of her death. by Michael T. Toole