Johnny Guitar: A Pop-Culture Madhouse

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Last night I watched Johnny Guitar, expecting yer basic Western with perhaps better production values than most.

That's Joan's actual size as she appears in the film, during which she swallows several horses, whole.  They go well with scenery.

That is not what Johnny Guitar is. It's hard to say WHAT Johnny Guitar is.

Hard not just for me, but apparently for almost every critic and commenter who's ever reviewed the film. 

“It's a film that's many things to many people, from camp spectacular to revisionist genre epic, and nearly every reading seems viable.”

“A pop-culture madhouse dressed up in spurs and a cowboy hat"

“Quite possibly the weirdest Western ever made by a mainstream studio in the 1950s."

“This 1954 Freudian Western is one of the all-time left-field wonders of the studio system, a film so subversive it's a wonder it ever got made.”

“Compared to other Westerns, Johnny Guitar is high art--richly atmospheric and with noir elements that will remind viewers of such dramatic films as Key Largo.”

“This Technicolor cowboy picture feels like it exists in some other dimension. "Johnny Guitar" satirizes macho posturing, even as it elevates the catfight to a whole new level.”

"Johnny Guitar is not really a Western, nor is it an 'intellectual Western'. It is a Western that is dream-like, magical, unreal to a degree, delirious.”

That last one was French New Wave filmmaker François Truffaut.  If HE says your film is delirious, then it is.

On paper, it sounds like a regular Western, with familiar elements such as: 

  • Land Speculation Based on the Expected Arrival of the Railroad In An Area, 
  • Ranchers versus Farmers, 
  • the Land-owner Whose Wealth Gives Him Inappropriate Political Power,
  • Gold-Hearted Gunmen, 
  • the Lynching, 
  • the Baby-Faced Bandit, 
  • the Man With A Past, 
  • the Bank Robbery, and 
  • the Stagecoach Robbery.  

But it's as if the entire film were a Cubist telenovela.  

Pictured: Pretty damned close to an actual Cubist telenovela

The sets, the dialog, the acting.  Johnny Guitar is like a shapeshifting alien that's trying to pass itself off as an earthling, but can't mimic behavior as well as it can appearance. This film is NOT normal and one of the most perverse things about it is how difficult it is to pinpoint and then articulate WHY.

See Johnny Guitar, ideally with friends, on a big television.  And turn captions on to confirm that you are actually hearing what you are hearing.

Pictured: Joan Crawford, at a putative piano, not holding up banks.
SPOILER ALERT: That dress does NOT survive.

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