Film Forum

(1954) “How many men have you forgotten?” “As many women as you remember.” In a dusty Arizona town, Joan Crawford’s pants-wearing, gun-toting saloon owner (“Down there I sell whiskey and cards. All you can buy up these stairs is a bullet in the head. Now which do you want?”) stands to rake in the dough when the railroad comes through. But when the stage is robbed and a rancher murdered, the townspeople ready a noose for her more-than-friend The Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), with insanely jealous cattle baroness Mercedes McCambridge (years later the voice of the Devil in The Exorcist) hell-bent on having Crawford join him. Enter Joan’s old flame Sterling Hayden, as the eponymous Johnny, who, despite preferring guitar-play over gun-play – and up against bad guys like Ernest Borgnine and Ward Bond – does what a man’s gotta do. Nick Ray’s baroque, emotionally tormented Western, photographed in “gorgeous Trucolor by Consolidated” (and looking better than it ever deserved in this new 4K restoration), bursts at the seams with sexual tension and anti-McCarthy allegory. American reviewers scratched their heads (British critic Gavin lambert deemed it one of the silliest films of the year), but it was immediately embraced by the young critics of Cahiers du Cinéma – among them future directors Eric Rohmer (“Ray is the poet of love and violence”), Jean-Luc Godard (“here is something which exists only in cinema”), and François Truffaut (“dream-like, magical, delirious… the Beauty and the Beast of the Western”). High praise indeed for a Republic Pictures oater!

Reviews

“JOAN CRAWFORD AND STERLING HAYDEN GIVE TWO OF THE STRONGEST PERFORMANCES EVER FILMED! Hayden has the coolest delivery in classic Hollywood, and it clashes gloriously with the overwhelming heat of Crawford’s ferocious stillness and blowtorch stare.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker


 [Highest Rating]
“MAGNIFICENTLY BIZARRE! Take a chance and surrender to the most deliriously weird Western ever made.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

“ONE OF THE CINEMA’S GREAT OPERATIC WORKS! Convulsive and passionate, filled with bold, stylistic strokes!”
– Martin Scorsese

“EXQUISITELY RESTORED! A slyly radical psychosexual oddity busting through genre conventions.”
– Village Voice

 “WEIRD, HYSTERICAL, AND QUITE UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF THE COWBOY FILM!” 
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)

"Dream-like, magical, delirious… the Beauty and the Beast of the Western” 
–François Truffaut

“THE SCREEN’S GREAT KINKY WESTERN!” 
– Leonard Maltin

“Ray is the poet of love and violence”
– Eric Rohmer

 “Here is something which exists only in cinema” 
–Jean-Luc Godard

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