Johnny Guitar [DVD]

Product Description ------------------- Nicholas Ray directs this prime example of vivid 50s melodrama. Vienna (Joan Crawford) is an Arizona saloon owner who also controls the local gambling operation. The arrival of the local railroad looks to be a profitable development, but Vienna has a problem in the form of the vindictive Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), who is after her land. Small and a posse accuse Vienna and the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) of being behind a stagecoach job. Although innocent, Vienna finds herself being hounded out of town. She turns for support to her former lover, Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), but matters take a turn for the worse when she is caught up in a bank heist. .co.uk Review ------------- "I've never seen a woman who was more like a man," a character observes of Vienna (Joan Crawford ( /gp/search?search-alias=dvd&field-keywords=Joan%20Crawford+-ntsc )), who has just opened a saloon that hasn't exactly endeared itself to the local townspeople. Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), the local sexually repressed, lynch-happy harpy, is particularly displeased. Vienna is wooed both by the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and by Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a peripatetic tough guy-turned-troubadour with whom she has a past. When the Kid's gang (which includes Ernest Borgnine) decides to knock over the bank before heading to California, Emma wants just about everyone in on the business end of a rope. Nicolas Ray's 1954 epic was considered one of the downright strangest Westerns of all time--the women were far tougher than the men (Johnny watches on laconically during the bank robbery, not bothering with heroics), and some saw in the film a bizarre allegory for the McCarthy Red e. A half-century later, it's still a curious, intriguing piece of moral ambiguity from a time when such a thing ostensibly didn't exist. Hayden is an enigmatic presence, and Crawford's commanding star turn is what you'd expect. --David Kronke

undefined