{"id":1503,"date":"2009-11-01T20:52:01","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T03:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/?p=1503"},"modified":"2014-11-17T20:42:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T01:42:30","slug":"johnny-guitar-ray-1954","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/johnny-guitar-ray-1954\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Vienna<\/a>
Vienna and Johnny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I don\u2019t usually watch too many Westerns. It\u2019s not that I have a problem with the genre, and I have in fact seen some that I really like. I\u2019m thinking specifically of Red River<\/em> and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid<\/em>, although the latter is probably pushing it in qualifying as a Western. So why did I decide to watch Nick Ray\u2019s Johnny Guitar<\/em>? I like Joan Crawford, but I\u2019ll pick Barbara Stanwyck over her any day. I\u2019m not extremely familiar with Nick Ray\u2014so it wasn\u2019t him. I watched it because I, like many others, follow, what I like to call, the gay Hansel and Gretel trail. If you\u2019re on it, you know what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get excited, Joan Crawford does not play a lesbian in this movie, unfortunately, but Nick Ray does do some really interesting things with the gender roles of the characters, especially the females.<\/p>\n

Although the movie is named for Sterling Hayden\u2019s character, the story really revolves around saloon girl turned saloon owner, Vienna, played by Joan Crawford. I\u2019ll chock the ill-chosen title up to the fact that it\u2019s 1954, and who wants to see a Western called Vienna<\/em>? When we first meet Vienna she is standing at the top of a large stairway surveying her saloon and the men who work for. What\u2019s somewhat shocking is her authority over these men and her outfit, which is almost identical to what the other cowboys are wearing (minus the hat). Her hair is short and her voice is low, even for Crawford. After she barks out a series of orders to the men below, one man looks to the other and says: \u201cI never seen a woman that was more man. She thinks like one, acts like one. It sometimes makes me feel like I\u2019m not.\u201d Hmm, what year was this movie made again? But this is the West, and in Hollywood\u2019s western frontier no rules apply; Ray has the ability to use this setting as a playground for bent gender roles. He\u2019ll show his ability to do this in a contemporary setting a couple of movies from now (think Plato in Rebel Without a Cause<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"The girl is just crazy.\"<\/a>
\u201cThe girl is just crazy.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not too long after we are introduced to Vienna and her male posse, in storms Emma Small and her band of merry men, like a bat out of hell. Emma blames Vienna for a stage-coach robbery that resulted in the death of her brother, but in reality Emma wants to convict Vienna of anything that will get her out of town or killed. We\u2019re supposed to believe that Emma\u2019s hostility comes from the fact that Vienna has caught the eye of Emma\u2019s love interest\u2014Emma denies all of this of course. A true queer theorist would argue that Emma is actually in love with Vienna (or at least envious of her on a homoerotic level), and there is plenty to support that claim, especially the more we see how obsessed Emma is with hurting Vienna, who she always refers to as a tramp. I, however, don\u2019t really favor this interpretation because there\u2019s almost too much hate in Emma\u2014this girl is just crazy.<\/p>\n

I see this as a flaw in the movie in general; I found myself unable to understand Emma\u2019s hatred and its plethora of poorly argued explanations let alone sympathize with her. I don\u2019t do well with being given a character I can only write off as evil, and I feel like that\u2019s all I can do with Emma. However, despite her failure as a significant and complex character (not helped by Mercedes McCambridge who insists on using one tone of voice in portraying this character: yelling), Emma does provide the audience with another less than conventional picture of the woman\u2019s role. She, like Vienna, is able to manipulate, control, and lead a whole pack of men hopped up on ego and testosterone. Further on in the movie, when Vienna is about to be hanged, the only person \u201cman enough\u201d to kill her is Emma. She is able to get a fairly large group of men to convict Vienna of a crime of which they know she is not guilty. Both women exhibit tremendous power, but while Vienna is resilient, direct, and reasonable, Emma is more often forceful, manipulative, and cruel.<\/p>\n

We are given two examples of female masculinity: one that is good and practical and the other which is extreme and violent. I use the word \u201cmasculinity\u201d as it would have been applied to Vienna and Emma by the film\u2019s audience in 1954, not necessarily as a term I would use to describe them.. What I do like about what Ray does is that he doesn\u2019t condemn both of these women\u2014just one (Emma who is killed by Crawford in the end). By doing this he shows his audience that an authoritative, strong, masculine female is not always a bad thing; it can even be good. To reinforce the good in Crawford we are given Emma to show us the bad. The problem with the effectiveness of the contrast between these two examples is that Emma is not complex enough to represent an actual person. I\u2019m afraid most probably wrote her off as just evil, crazy, or both\u2014as did I. While not ultimately sympathizing with Emma, I was still able to appreciate her power and force and see it as an extreme version of the same power Vienna possesses. Perhaps that is because I was paying attention to how she was represented as a woman. If you\u2019re not really looking for that, it would be easy for Emma to not even register as a woman because from the beginning she\u2019s painted as one thing: villain. I think it\u2019s important to remember that she is a woman and to recognize the novelty of a movie that presents only atypical representations of women.<\/p>\n

Having said that, I think the opposite could be said for the men in the film who are basically portrayed as complete stereotypes of men on the western frontier. The only thing atypical about them is their willingness to follow Vienna or Emma. All of the men who follow Emma are one dimensional, rowdy, and unthinking. They are like loaded guns\u2014they just need someone to pull the trigger, enter Emma. None of these men particularly want to have a huge fight with the opposition, but Emma plays to their small ideas of bravery and honor causing them to lash out willing to kill whatever she wishes. There are brief moments where the men who are on Emma\u2019s side use their reason and conscience instead of listening to her. This can be seen when they go to hang Vienna and they all refuse to kill her and at the end when they themselves stop fighting and let Vienna and Emma fight it out alone since it has been \u201ctheir fight all along.\u201d The men on Emma\u2019s side are represented as the typical example of the dangers of a pack mentality.<\/p>\n

Even the main male character, Johnny Guitar, brings little new or challenging to the audience. The only thing that makes him different from the other male characters is that he isn\u2019t quick to shoot anything that moves, or so we think. It turns out this is just because he is trying to reform himself now that he has returned to Vienna. His \u201cnatural\u201d instinct is to be \u201cgun crazy\u201d as Vienna calls it. Once again we have the man who is reformed or made virtuous because of a woman. I never do well with that idea because it implies that men are not or cannot be virtuous on their own andthat women are virtuous simply because they\u2019re women. Clearly, both of those notions are absurd, and this movie doesn\u2019t do very much to dispel that myth.<\/p>\n

The only way Guitar is atypical is in the fact that he\u2019s not threatened by Vienna\u2019s authority or power. In fact, none of the men seem to have an issue with a woman being in a position of authority; I believe it\u2019s only mentioned twice in the movie. Once when they are going to hang Vienna and they won\u2019t because she\u2019s a woman, and then once again when one of the men tells Emma she can\u2019t ride with them to go after the other men. Emma not only rides with them but she \u201crides in front.\u201d So, in this way the film does slightly bend the typical role of men by not portraying the men as threatened by the women. Normally I would heap a tremendous amount of praise on a film that does that, but the lack of complexity and depth in the male characters overshadows any subliminal message that these men aren\u2019t threatened by strong women. The film gives an unfair and incomplete picture of Johnny Guitar and the other men on the western frontier..<\/p>\n

\"Not if I kill you first.\"<\/a>
\u201cNot if I kill you first.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aside from the treatment of gender, there were many things about this movie I didn\u2019t like. The plot in and of itself lacks intrigue, and we\u2019re told the ending within 10 minutes of the film when Emma says, \u201cI\u2019m going to kill you\u201d and Vienna replies \u201cI know, but not if I kill you first.\u201d Everyone knows that the only person that can kill Joan Crawford in a movie is Crawford herself. So, you basically know that the movie is going to end in a shoot-out in which Vienna kills Emma, and it does. Emma is shot and dramatically falls off a balcony just in time for Johnny Guitar to \u201cbe the hero\u201d and kiss Vienna in front of a water-fall, reminding the audience that buried somewhere underneath all of the fighting and melodrama there is supposed to be a love story, whilst Peggy Lee does her best to convince us that this movie is, in fact, about Johnny Guitar.<\/p>\n

The movie isn\u2019t great on its own merits, but any bread crumb on the Hansel and Gretel trail is worth the time.<\/p>\n

Katherine Richards<\/strong><\/em> is a Senior English major at Campbell University. Her film interests include but are not limited to: novel\/play film adaptations, small, independent films, old classics (not always synonymous), and films with gender and\/or queer issues and themes.<\/h6>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although the movie is named for Sterling Hayden\u2019s character, the story really revolves around saloon girl turned saloon owner, Vienna, played by Joan Crawford. I\u2019ll chock the ill-chosen title up to the fact that it\u2019s 1954, and who wants to see a Western called Vienna? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1891,"featured_media":11927,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[294,295,158],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-joan-crawford","tag-johnny-guitar","tag-nicholas-ray"],"yoast_head":"\nJohnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Although the movie is named for Sterling Hayden\u2019s character, the story really revolves around saloon girl turned saloon owner, Vienna, played by Joan Crawford. 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