The Front

 

Director Martin Ritt

Writer Walter Bernstein with Woody Allen

Walter Bernstein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FRONT         B+                                                                                                             USA  (95 mi)  1976  d: Martin Ritt

What if there were a list?  A list that said: Our finest actors weren’t allowed to act.  Our best writers weren’t allowed to write.  Our funniest comedians weren’t allowed to make us laugh.  What would it be like if there were such a list?  It would be like America in 1953.             —movie poster

Among the only films to deal honestly with the Hollywood Blacklist, with Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul (1947) being made by the very people who were eventually blacklisted, while Red Hollywood (1996) is more of a documentary film, yet this film is distinguished by the fact it carries a certain credibility, having also been written and performed by people who were themselves blacklisted, each one identified in the end credits, including the year they were blacklisted.  The script is written by Walter Bernstein, a legendary screenwriter who lived to be over 100 and may be remembered for his longevity in the industry, as his screenplays have covered the period from the 1940’s to the 2000’s, where he may be the longest-working writer of produced films and television programs in history.  Bernstein got his start in the late 40’s working with Robert Rossen shortly before the House Un-American Activities Committee conducted hearings on the alleged Communist influence in the motion picture industry, with an intent to purge the subversive elements through blacklists, a devastating abuse of power that prevented targeted individuals from ever working again for nearly a decade because of alleged Communist or subversive ties, where people were hauled before the committee to name names, badgered and humiliated into taking a pledge of loyalty that was little more than a publicity stunt before television cameras, as the committee already had all the names.  Yet this was part of the postwar patriotic fervor that led to the paranoid overreach of McCarthyism, aka the Red Scare, when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s name became synonymous with Red-baiting political extremism, portraying freedom versus Communism as a life or death matter in the most apocalyptic of terms, where every Communist was viewed as a Soviet agent infiltrating the fabric of American society, reaching a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, characterized by playwright Lillian Hellman, integral in the fight against fascism both at home and abroad, and twice the recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best play of the year, yet she was blacklisted in 1949, describing this era as “the time of scoundrels.”  Anyone thought to have radical political views in general was investigated, arrested, imprisoned, fined, fired from their jobs, and barred from future employment in their fields, as people lost their careers, their friends, and sometimes even their families.  Ordinary people were encouraged to spy on their friends and neighbors, like going to actor’s union meetings, writing down the names of everybody there and turning them in, reporting any suspicions of “subversive” activity.  It was a terrible time, with plenty of hatred developing, leading to family divisions, and in some instances to suicide.  Bernstein was blacklisted in 1950, and was not credited with any work again until 1958, reportedly sleeping on director Martin Ritt’s couch during the McCarthy era, yet throughout the 1950’s he managed to continue writing for television, both under pseudonyms (Paul Bauman) and through the use of fronts, non-affected individuals who allowed their names to appear on his work, with the producer typically having to explain to his bosses that the author was a literary hermit and recluse who shied away from being seen in public, which would explain why you never saw them.  Bernstein unapologetically joined the Communist Party in 1939 as a college student at Dartmouth, a time when roughly half of the Communist Party members in America were Jewish, an extension of Yiddish culture, the labor movement, and the Jewish Left, extremely popular with newly arriving Jewish immigrants, coming from a long history of fleeing persecution, and part of a burgeoning socialist movement from the Great Depression to the war.  Many forget that McCarthyism targeted education as well, as it’s important to remember that 90% of the teachers blacklisted from working in public schools due to alleged subversive activities were Jewish, as were six of the original Hollywood Ten.  Bernstein served in the Army during the war, writing dispatches as a war correspondent from multiple war fronts that he compiled into his first published book in 1945, Keep Your Head Down.  After the war, however, what had formerly been tolerated was suddenly criminalized, writing his published memoirs years afterwards in 1996, Inside Out, A Memoir of the Blacklist, Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist - Google Books, providing his own perspective on the so-called menace of the Communist Party in America, which was, by that time, a small and beleaguered organization wielding little influence, where the only time most citizens even became aware of their existence was viewing Presidential candidates on the ballot every four years, never once becoming a factor or posing a threat to democracy.

Hollywood was a company town.  The cold war was starting, and with it the blacklist, but it was not affecting me and, secure in wish fulfillment, I did not really believe it would.  Winston Churchill had made his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri.  The Hollywood Ten were summoned before the House committee, but the committee members seemed only stupid; I understood their bigotry but not their power.  Who, really, could be on their side?  I also knew the Communist Party was no menace. After all, I belonged to it.  The charge that we wanted to overthrow the government by force and violence was ludicrous.  Nothing I had ever done or intended or even thought was designed for that.  No one I knew in the Party even dreamed of it.  Our meetings might have been less boring if they had.  I took for granted that I could be both radical and accepted, since that had always been the case.

Made by the director of Edge of the City (1957) and Hud (1963), Martin Ritt was known for making socially conscious films, and was himself blacklisted in 1951, largely for his connection to the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal theater company that provided jobs for struggling artists during the Great Depression, hardly a threat to anyone, nonetheless the blacklist forced him to earn a living as an acting instructor until he could find work again.  Some of those blacklisted chose exile in Europe as the only way to avoid a subpoena.  In Paris, directors Jules Dassin, John Berry, Ben and Norma Barzman, and screenwriter Lee Gold, among others, made films for television, allowing them to earn a livelihood, though they were exploited by producers, paying rock-bottom prices for uncredited work.  Blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo won Academy Awards under a pseudonym for ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953) and THE BRAVE ONE (1956), while Michael Wilson did the same for THE BRIDGE OVER RIVER KWAI (1957), making a mockery of the blacklist, with Trumbo receiving official credit for EXODUS (1960) and Spartacus (1960), officially breaking the blacklist.  Of unique interest here is the casting of Woody Allen as Howard Prince, aka “the Front,” one of the rare instances when Allen worked in a film that wasn’t his own, but he had only made a handful of movies at that time and was still a relative unknown, coming after LOVE AND DEATH (1975) and a year before his breakthrough film Annie Hall (1977), featuring the same squirrely, anxiety-ridden character that appears in his own films.  What he brings is a comedic element, very funny, especially early in the film, but as his character grows inherently more aware of the circumstances surrounding the blacklist and the impact this is having on some of his friends, he grows more serious, having a terrific punchline near the end of the film, literally coming out of nowhere, changing the entire perspective of the film, like something only Billy Wilder would write.  But it’s extremely hard to balance comedy with such a serious subject, something only a few films can do, overshadowed that same year by Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), which drew all the attention and critical praise, especially the Oscar-winning Paddy Chayefsky script.  Unfortunately, this film has faded from the public consciousness, with many in the younger generation who have never even heard of the blacklist, as it’s not something taught in schools, and is instead something of an embarrassment in our nation’s history, a stain on our legacy, supposedly promoting freedom and democracy, yet, as this film shows, the government can also wrongly target innocent people with impunity.  The Hollywood blacklist ruined the lives of thousands, destroying their careers and livelihood, often without proof, or just based on rumors, turning friends and colleagues against each other.  Despite a lack of any proof of subversion, more than 2000 government employees, mostly black postal workers, and nearly 3800 seaman and dockworkers, also mostly black, lost their jobs as “poor security risks” during the government crackdown, left in an absurdly Kafkaesque limbo having no legal recourse, never informed why they lost their jobs, as blacklists were never officially acknowledged, with apologists, Ronald Reagan among them, who continued to proclaim the blacklist never happened.  It even drove Charlie Chaplin into exile, the iconic Little Tramp, who was responsible for founding the same motion picture industry that ultimately rejected him, moving his family to Switzerland where he remained until his death, accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being a Communist, informed in 1952 after a promotional tour in England that he would be arrested if he ever returned, only setting foot in America 20 years later to accept an honorary lifetime achievement award at the Academy Awards in 1972.  You can’t make this stuff up, as it’s too absurd to believe, where the investigatory hearings, working closely with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, ultimately uncovered nothing, as there never was any Communist infiltration, only innocent lives destroyed, yet it actually happened, and this is one of the rare films to take the subject seriously – with Woody Allen, of all people, who has ironically suffered his own brand of blacklisting, accused of sexually molesting an adopted 7-year old daughter, charges he has vociferously denied from the outset thirty years ago, and was never charged, as evidence was inconclusive, but eventually the #MeToo Generation caught up to him, unable to work in the industry anymore, as potential sponsors bolted out of fear.      

The first Hollywood film to tackle the blacklist, made just a year after HUAC was abolished in 1975, the dreamlike opening features Frank Sinatra singing "Young At Heart" 💖Frank Sinatra YouTube (2:36), a million-selling hit in 1953 that includes clips of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s wedding, bombing raids on Korea, a family entering a backyard air raid shelter, with other noted dignitaries, including General Douglas MacArthur, Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe, Rocky Marciano, Miss America 1952 (Colleen Kay Hutchins), and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  This eloquently sets the stage for where we are, a period when artists, writers, directors, and others were rendered unemployable, with Allen as Howard Prince starring as an ordinary diner cashier who moonlights as a bookie for extra cash, seemingly always in debt, until he’s visited by an old friend, left-leaning television writer Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), who has just lost his job due to Communist sympathies that he openly acknowledges in a meeting with Howard, which was a Hollywood first, like a punch to the gut, never before having the audacity to be up front and open about it.  Bernstein acknowledged in interviews (4_books - QC) that he wasn’t blacklisted for nothing, as it wasn’t an accident.  Together they concoct a plan for Howard to put his name on Miller’s scripts for 10 percent of the selling price, becoming the blacklisted writer’s “front.”  While Miller is concerned about Howard’s naïveté, that he doesn’t really know what he’s getting himself into, he’s nonetheless a well-meaning friend, attracted to a steady source of income, claiming how hard can it be?  Miller has been the hugely successful writer of a dramatic anthology series entitled Grand Central, produced by Phil Sussman (Herschel Bernardi, blacklisted in 1953) and hosted by former vaudeville comedian Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel, blacklisted in 1950).  Yet the storyline veers elsewhere, with Howard having a roving eye for the ladies, in particular Sussman’s idealistic script editor, Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci), a Connecticut girl who judges him by the quality of his work, overwhelmed by his principles and human insight, claiming “In my family the biggest sin was to raise your voice.” Howard’s immediate retort, “In my family the biggest sin was to buy retail.”  Howard immediately develops a swelled head, basking in the glory of this newfound sense of importance, seeing dollar signs in his future, broadening his enterprise to include fronting two more of Miller’s friends, Delaney and Phelps (Lloyd Gough, blacklisted in 1952, and David Margulies), who in reality represent blacklisted writers Walter Bernstein, Abraham Polonsky, and Arnold Manoff, yet foolishly he begins to believe he’s actually part of the creative process.  Never taken seriously before by such important and influential people, always relegated to the economic fringe, much like the imposter Sabzian in Kiarostami’s Close-Up (Nemaye Nazdik) (1990), this gives him a newfound sense of power and authority that he never dreamed possible, suddenly paying off all his debts, buying new clothes, and moving into an upscale apartment.  This inflated cachet works wonders with Florence, dropping her old boyfriend for him, where his sense of importance on the set is staggering, with people constantly referring to his judgment, as there are times they need an immediate rewrite, but instead of getting to work, he mysteriously disappears (meeting secretly with Miller), only to return with the precise changes needed.  It’s like a fairy tale life, where he’s suddenly the golden boy, a position only made available because he’s not on a blacklist.  Ritt very calculatingly reveals what’s going on behind the scenes in the offices of the Freedom Information Services, a supposedly patriotic, right-wing organization working for the networks that spies upon and does background checks on everyone in the industry, like a detective agency, run by a team of investigators led by Francis X. Hennessey (Remak Ramsay), with portraits of J. Edgar Hoover and Chiang Kai-shek on the walls, where anyone not given a clean bill of health is instantly fired.  It’s astounding the amount of power and influence they hold within the industry, especially for a relatively small operation, working completely behind the scenes, accountable to no one except the industry moguls, skewed by extremist political views that were hardly reflective of the viewing television audience.  

The tone of the film shifts considerably, growing much darker with a renewed focus on Hecky, already under investigation by the committee, where in a desperate act to save himself he’ll agree to anything, with Hennessey instructing him to name names and to spy on Howard, bringing the quietly introspective Woody Allen and larger than life Zero Mostel together in the same scenes, which are positively riveting, and historical, as both share similar backgrounds, Borscht Belt comedians who became much bigger stars, with Mostel’s performance the real stand-out of the film.  The heartbreaking aspect is that as much as Howard’s career trajectory took off, Hecky’s started to tumble, as he is quietly removed from his job by the network and forced to capitulate to Hennessey in order to survive.  He invites Howard along for a job back in the Catskills where he got his start, hoping to extract some useful information, but comes up empty, and is instead exploited by a resort owner (Joshua Shelley, blacklisted in 1952) to work for a pittance, knowing he has no other options, and then cheats him out of half his fee, where in the ensuing argument the owner kicks him out, calling him a “commie son of a bitch!”  This humiliation takes its toll, with Howard growing more serious, developing a conscience about what’s going on around him, with the film exploring the real impact, illuminating the terrible personal tragedies experienced by those who were blacklisted, not only robbed of their livelihood, but their dignity as well.  In a perfectly executed single shot, the most heartbreakingly tender moment of the film reveals Hecky in his darkest hour, one of the many souls crushed under the weight of a manufactured threat.  This would end up being Mostel’s final onscreen performance, where much of his story is borrowed from actor Philip Loeb, a friend of both Zero Mostel and Walter Bernstein, who was labeled a communist for his union activities, dropped from the cast of an enormously popular TV show, The Goldbergs (1949-57), driven to debt and despondency, and committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills in a room at New York’s Taft Hotel.  His suffering is made all the more poignant by the knowledge that much of what Hecky goes through was drawn directly from Mostel’s own experience.  Woody Allen is also most convincing watching from a distance as events take a darker turn, becoming painfully real in ways that feel unimaginable.  When Howard is himself hauled before the committee, supposedly a mere formality, never expecting difficulties, yet when he’s asked to name Hecky as a subversive collaborator, the moral dilemma is written all over his face, where the impact of the finale is an absurd twist into the surreal, reminiscent of the final turn of Kubrick’s black comedy DR. STRANGELOVE OR: WHY I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), with black and white  newsreel footage both opening and closing the film to the same Sinatra tune, creating a wonderland fantasia fused with real events that actually happened.  For those who think the concept of blacklists is a thing of the past, it’s worth noting that governments and police authorities use cameras to identify subjects of political rallies and demonstrations, while also singling out journalists, where the Attorney General can compile a data base of subversive organizations and oppositional views, once again placing names on lists.  Employers also target union activities, discharging employees for activism while hiding their real intentions, also singling out those who dare speak up over safety issues, not only discharging them, but actively making sure they would never find similar work elsewhere (On the blacklist: how did the UK's top building firms get secret ...).  In the NFL, after being singled out by President Trump, the billionaire owners conspired to prevent social activist quarterback Colin Kaepernick from ever playing in the league again (for kneeling during the national anthem), effectively blacklisting him from future employment.  In a hyper-suspicious Cold War atmosphere of allegiance and loyalty oaths, it was a particularly shameful and ugly time in our country, when insinuations of disloyalty were enough to convince many Americans of a sinister plot infiltrating the country, allowing narrow-minded politicians to become fear mongers preaching hate and fear, reaching out to blind followers – mirroring what we’re seeing on the American political landscape today.   

The Front, by Martin Ritt (1976)  entire film on YouTube (1:34:46)

Johnny Guitar

 

Director Nicholas Ray

Ray with Joan Crawford

Crawford (left) with Mercedes Cambridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHNNY GUITAR         A                                                                                                             USA  (110 mi)  1954  d: Nicholas Ray

Never seen a woman who was more of a man.  She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I’m not.    —Sam (Robert Osterloh), one of the blackjack dealers

Easily Nicholas Ray’s most subversive film, coming after They Live By Night (1948),  In a Lonely Place (1950), and On Dangerous Ground (1952), doing well at the box office but trashed by the critics, completely misunderstood at the time, refusing to conform to expectations of the male-dominated Western genre, which is typically an amalgamation of racism, sexism, and xenophobia, viewed by Ray as the biggest failure of his career, a continuance of his brooding outsider theme while also an indictment of mob psychology.  Conceived as a blatant response to the Hollywood blacklist and the witch hunt period of McCarthyism, this was a Cold War-era pursuit of men and women who were accused of being communists, most were falsely accused and imprisoned, their livelihoods and careers ruined by men who blatantly pushed the conspiracy theories of the day, yet the film’s reputation has been resuscitated by Martin Scorsese and other film scholars, beloved in Europe, including François Truffaut, who hailed Ray as “the poet of nightfall,” describing this film as “the Beauty and the Beast of Westerns,” listed at #9 for best picture in 1955 from the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Cahiers du Cinema: 1951-2011, with many now praising this as among Ray’s best work.  Based on a 1953 novel by B-picture screenwriter Roy Chanslor, with a script largely credited to Philip Yordan, though blacklisted writer Ben Maddow may have contributed, heavily revised by Ray, it was written for Joan Crawford, who bought the rights for the movie, basically the producer for her own picture, the one calling the shots, often altering the script to suit her, with Crawford at the time an aging film star who grew paranoid about her fading career, constantly making demands that only heightened her insecurity, where there was constant friction on the set between her and her leading man, Sterling Hayden, with Crawford calling him “the biggest pill in Hollywood,” while Hayden exclaimed, “There is not enough money in Hollywood that could lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford.  And I like money.”  Yet within this cauldron of Hollywood combustion and turmoil lies a truly magnificent script, among Hollywood’s greatest poetry, as the dialogue is crisp and fiercely antagonistic, filled with shots and counter shots at one another, where this is the epitome of a town that’s not big enough for the two competing interests, with Joan Crawford as Vienna representing the new world dream of the railroad, hoping to cash in on the future, and Mercedes Cambridge as Emma Small representing the old world of cattle interests, where they don’t believe in fences or anything restricting the far reaches of vast and unlimited lands.  Vienna even has a miniature model of a town in her saloon, destined to become a railroad stop, referenced by Sergio Leone when he created Claudia Cardinale’s character in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968).  Subverting the Western as a male vehicle, Nicolas Ray pits two women against one another, both detesting the other, with the film seething with their outright contempt, becoming an eroticized antagonism, with both distinguishing themselves in the roles, while Hayden as Johnny Guitar serves as the love interest, a role usually reserved for a woman, yet his pretty boy image is mocked by his direct and straightforward approach, standing up to any man, though often from the shadows.  Due to the camp nature of the film, wildly flamboyant with exaggerated stereotypes and operatic melodrama, some may question the feminist intent, but that’s the baffling nature of the film, examining the costs of a woman’s independent action through lurid, violent exaggeration, where Vienna isn’t willing to sacrifice her autonomy for Johnny, and just as surprisingly, he never asks her to.  Described as “a revisionist western, a feminist polemic, a vibrant fairy tale, a subversive cold war parable, maybe even a queer cult classic, ReFramed No. 23: Nicholas Ray's 'Johnny Guitar' (1954),” it has a beloved stature in the gay community (who loved to do Crawford in drag), openly embraced for how it has undermined the sexual roles, leaving audiences confused at the time of its release, with Vienna bitterly reminding Johnny, “A man can lie, steal, and even kill, but as long as he hangs on to his pride, he’s still a man.  All a woman has to do is slip – once, and she’s a ‘tramp!’  Must be a great comfort to you to be a man.”  There are also lesbian undercurrents, with Emma having a delusional fantasy about the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), yet her real interest, it seems, is Vienna, yet the sentiment is not reciprocated, which only leaves her more incensed, subconsciously repressing that interest and wanting her dead if she can’t have her.  It’s a strange alignment of stars, certainly among the most mysterious of all Westerns, yet it has all the standard conventions, a stagecoach holdup, a bank robbery, a hired gun, a posse turned into a lynch mob, a villain’s lair, a barroom brawl, a woman with a past, and a kid trying to prove himself.  Hayden’s tough guy persona is used to brilliant effect, as he doesn’t carry a gun, carrying a guitar on his back instead, introducing himself as a disinterested bystander at one point, “I’m a stranger here myself,” completely confounding the outlaw gang who don’t know where he stands, making the barroom confrontation even more wonderful, as the standoff isn’t with guns but with words, a delightful turn of events, and the rapid-fire dialogue doesn’t disappoint, ever more mythologized over time, endlessly quoted and repeated, including his maxim for living, “When you boil it all down, what does a man really need?  Just a smoke and a cup of coffee,” a line that diffuses armed conflict from escalating. 

The last film shot on Trucolor, a highly saturated two-strip, red and blue process, much of it shot in some stunning outdoor landscapes of Sedona, Arizona by Harry Stradling Sr, while other scenes were filmed near Oak Creek Canyon between Phoenix and Sedona, where the rocks have a reddish tint, yet Crawford refused to subject herself to the desert setting, so all her outdoor close-ups were actually shot in studio, using a double for long shots.  Shot at Republic Pictures, Ray’s first after leaving RKO, a smaller low-budget studio known primarily for B-movies that was a step down from Crawford’s days as the glamorous star at MGM and then Warners, so she let Ray and everyone else on the set know it, making their lives a living hell with temper tantrums and constant demands for more scenes and close-ups, even attempting to sabotage actress Mercedes Cambridge, bullying her on the set while ripping her costumes to shreds, thrown along the side of a highway in a drunken spree.  Ray reportedly vomited several times before arriving to work each day, as the heightened tension working with Crawford was unbearable.  Not like any other cowboy drama, playing havoc with Western conventions while reveling in sexual role-reversals, where in the middle of it all is Victor Young’s enchanting musical score, Ray sets his film shortly after the Civil War, taking place outside a fictitious town of Red Butte, Arizona (identified by the bank), as a stranger wanders into town by the name of Johnny Guitar, but along the way he witnesses a stagecoach robbery from high above a mountain vista, unable to see details, while all around them explosions are going off to make way for the coming railroad.  Entering town is like entering a dream, arriving during a sandstorm, where all you can make out is the name of the saloon, Vienna’s, with a casino inside, yet it is eerily empty, with no customers, yet the barkeep and dealers are all eyeballing the man who walked in out of a storm, discovering Vienna, now the owner, is a former saloon hostess, with short cropped hair, dressed entirely in black boots, pants and shirt, with dark red lipstick, yet carrying a holster, just like a man.  Seen early on having a business meeting with a railroad executive, she more than holds her own, viewed as a domineering force who is defiantly self-reliant, even barking out orders in her low voice to her casino workers, yet this establishment is peculiarly built right into a rock, which accounts for some of the jagged walls.  The leisurely pace of the opening is interrupted by the arrival of an angry mob led by Emma, including John McIvers (Ward Bond), a cattleman mayor, Marshal Williams (Frank Ferguson), and a motley group of men, providing a dead body as evidence, calling out for Vienna to be charged with the murder of her brother in the stagecoach robbery, though no evidence points to her.  Emma claims it was done by the Dancin’ Kid gang, friends of Vienna, claiming she’s harboring a gang of criminals and needs to be run out of town.  Vienna starts out on the top of the stairs, eyeballing the group, calmly proclaiming her innocence, indicating “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?”  But when Emma makes it personal, making threats, she walks down the stairs, with Emma warning, “I’m going to kill you.”  Vienna answers, “I know.  If I don’t kill you first.”  And therein lies the dramatic theme, radiating a persistent anxiety about change, as the two protagonists are dead set in their intentions, both fiercely independent, yet stubbornly persistent.  Emma’s hysteria is matched by Vienna’s calm restraint, never backing down, but holding her own against heavily stacked odds.  McIvers gives her and her ilk 24-hours to get out of town if they want to avoid trouble, an ultimatum at odds with the Marshal’s law, but he means business, with threats setting the stage for future hostilities.  In the midst of this showdown in the saloon, Johnny distinguishes himself as the only man without a gun, yet his calmness and good humor belies the situation, egged on by Bart (Ernest Borgnine), one of the Kid’s gang, and the two get to tussling, mostly happening offscreen, as the camera stays on Vienna and the Kid, who stand around a blackjack table discussing their feelings, returning to the fight only when it’s over, a forgettable brawl of no consequence whatsoever, with Johnny beating him senseless.  While no one says it out loud, this stranger seems surprisingly at ease, appearing out of nowhere, raising the question, “Who is this guy?”  Johnny and Vienna have a history together, yet broke it off five years ago, with Vienna calling him back as hired protection, yet her underlying motivation is to rekindle that love affair.  She hides her feelings, however, behind the bravado of the brawl, with each dancing around the inevitable, creating a mysterious ballet of emotional standoffishness, yet then instantaneously they apparently reconnect, awakening the next morning with their relationship reassured.  Vienna has some unfinished business, making a withdrawal from the bank to pay off her staff, as she’ll be closing down.  But they’re met by the Kid and his gang, who are there to rob the bank, thinking so long as they’re run out of the premises, they’ll at least have some traveling money.  While the timing couldn’t be more peculiar, the outlaw escape is equally harrowing, as they head into the mountains at the same time as dynamite explosions are closing down the pass, making the crossing impossible, returning to their hideout tucked away from it all, perched atop a mountainous rock, yet completely out of sight behind a waterfall, with the anxious men seething in anger and discontent.

While this is a Joan Crawford picture, Mercedes Cambridge steals the show as a raving psychopath, insanely over-the-top, serving as the town instigator, stirring the men into a frenzy, underscoring the men’s sheepishness, quickly forming a posse headed by McIvers (which mirrors Ward Bond’s anti-communist role in spearheading the McCarthy attacks), but she spurs them on at every turn chasing after the Kid and his gang, banishing Vienna from town, and even worse, instilling the men with a lynch mob hysteria, veering into territory explored by Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and William Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), where ordinary citizens can be bullied into a psychotic rage, completely transformed into a communal bloodlust for killing.  While McIvers is the man in charge, she is the pathological force that actually drives this picture, playing an unforgettable role of pure evil incarnate, getting a maniacal reaction after torching Vienna’s business and burning it down, and while the community may be responsible for carrying out a hanging, she goads them all along the way, pushing them further and further into following their worst instincts, crossing the line into criminality and even murder.  The half-crazed, pathological mania behind her neurotic vengeance is at the heart of the picture, standing for the ruthlessly corrupt power behind the McCarthy hearings, whose rigid standards are driven by a delusionary, Puritanical repression, matching Emma’s own deeply repressed sexual identity, with Vienna explaining that the Kid “makes her feel like a woman, and that frightens her,” instead instilling a poisonous venom over every frame of the film.  Identity fluctuates throughout this picture, as Vienna changes from pants to dresses (butch to femme), Johnny goes from being unarmed to wearing a gun, Johnny has changed his name, while Vienna has changed her profession.  Moreover, the Kid and his gang are charged for a stage holdup they didn’t commit, Vienna is repeatedly charged with masterminding crimes she had nothing to do with, while her sexual role from male to female also fluctuates with the costume she wears.  She is financially independent, owning her own business, and is always in control of her relationships, whether it be with the Kid or Johnny, always choosing the man she wants rather than be chosen by them.  Meeting an angry lynch mob in her saloon after the bank robbery, she’s alone in a cavernous saloon wearing a flowing white dress of innocence, seen calmly playing a sad song on the piano, an astonishing yet remarkably unforeseen image with the interior rocks adding an eerie backdrop, but when the vicious mob overruns her claim of guiltlessness, she’s hauled off for a hanging with her saloon gleefully burned down by Emma.  The lynch mob possesses evil intent, consumed on getting vengeance, browbeating a terrified kid into implicating Vienna (pressuring many well-known actors and directors into naming names is precisely what was so heinous about the McCarthy hearings), promising him immunity, but breaking every promise they make, hanging him anyway while Vienna is gallantly rescued by Johnny with the noose still around her neck, a last second reprieve from the gallows’ rope.  A figure of female power in a traditionally male-dominated West, she maintains her composure even after her business is burned to the ground, viewed as a rugged, tough individual, an equal in every respect to Johnny Guitar, or any other man, switching back into pants afterwards, easily exuding both masculine and feminine traits, but what’s missing is any sense of vulnerability or female mystique, where any romance is more suggestive than real or visibly expressed onscreen.  While Mildred Pierce (1945) breathed new life into Crawford’s flagging career, this film coincided with a downturn in her star status, where the exaggerated fever dream of this film only heightened a prevailing view of her as camp.  Figuring into this public descent was Crawford’s open attack on Marilyn Monroe’s flaunted sexuality, which she likened to a “burlesque show” unsuitable for the screen, claiming her films weren’t doing any business.  The story was a sensation in Hollywood, with most defending Monroe, who would, of course, become a huge box office star, while Crawford was viewed as an over-the-hill actress whose star had faded, openly revealing her jealousy of Monroe’s quick ascent into the Hollywood mainstream.  Even during the filming of this film, the press viciously attacked her, claiming her behavior on the set was unprofessional, accused of bullying Mercedes Cambridge, with Sterling Hayden echoing that thought, so her personal life matches a character that hates all other women, viewing them all as rivals, which greatly accelerates her exaggerated view as camp.  The finale, however, really tops it off, where there is an inevitable shootout between the two female stars, taking place at the outlaw hideout, while the men are reduced to secondary characters who simply watch it all happen, but the film begins and ends with Johnny, elevated to an intoxicating degree with a lover’s kiss in front of a waterfall to Peggy Lee’s wistful and melancholic rendition of the final theme song, Johnny Guitar (Title Song) YouTube (3:11), singing “There was never a man like my Johnny, like the one they call Johnny Guitar,” as if the entire film has been narrated by her.  Out of nowhere, viewers are reminded that the title of the film is in name only, as Crawford is the one wearing the pants and pushing all the buttons.  Described as part fatalism, part romanticism, the cinema of outsiders and loners, and also the cinema of gun fighting women, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum described this as the “first existential western.” 

Martin Scorsese introduces Johnny Guitar (USA, 1954) dir. Nicholas Ray YouTube (3:27)