Slideshow
JOHNNY GUITAR
U.S., 1954
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Adapted from the novel by Roy Chanslor
Starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ernest Borgnine
Cinematography by Harry Stradling
Approx. 110 min. DCP.
“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 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 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”).
Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film
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
“MAGNIFICENTLY BIZARRE! Take a chance and surrender to the most deliriously weird Western ever made.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out
“EXQUISITELY RESTORED! A slyly radical psychosexual oddity busting through genre conventions.”
– The Village Voice
“THE SCREEN’S GREAT KINKY WESTERN!”
– Leonard Maltin
“WEIRD, HYSTERICAL, AND QUITE UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF THE COWBOY FILM!”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)