Johnny Guitar - When women hate

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Movie
German title Johnny Guitar - When women hate
Original title Johnny Guitar
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1954
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Nicholas Ray
script Philip Yordan ,
Nicholas Ray,
Ben Maddow (?)
production Herbert Yates / Republic
music Victor Young
camera Harry Stradling Sr.
cut Richard L. Van Enger
occupation
synchronization

Johnny Guitar - If women hate (Alternative title: Johnny Guitar - hated, hunted, feared and Johnny Guitar - Hunted hated, feared , OT: Johnny Guitar ) is an American Western of Nicholas Ray in the year 1954 with Joan Crawford in the Main role. While the film received mostly negative reviews when it was released, it is now widely recognized by film critics; it is often even referred to as a " cult film ". Johnny Guitar was inducted into the National Film Registry .

action

A remote Arizona village in the second half of the 19th century. The entrepreneur and former bar singer has brought Vienna to some prosperity through the operation of a gaming room and lucrative real estate deals. Their presence is a thorn in the side of the local ranchers, as the construction of the railroad will reverse the previous power structures and the influx of new settlers will mean the end of the domination of the ranchers. In addition to the businessman Mr. McIvers, the spokesperson is the energetic Emma Small, who is one of the largest landowners in the area. Her hatred of Vienna, however, is more intimate than she wants to admit: For some time now, Emma has been unhappily in love with the gang leader “Tanzender Ted”, who has more or less romantic relationships with Vienna.

One day the mysterious and silent former gunslinger Johnny Logan comes to the saloon in Vienna. He has left his criminal past behind him, instead of a revolver he now carries a guitar with him and calls himself Johnny Guitar. He takes a job in Viennas Saloon , with whom he was in a relationship five years ago before going to prison. Vienna and Johnny indulge in shared memories, with Johnny jealously inquiring about the nature of their relationship with Ted.

When the stagecoach is robbed, Ted and his gang are accused of the perpetrator by the jealous Emma. She also claims that Vienna is his lover and accomplice. At her insistence, the sheriff issues an ultimatum: Ted, his gang members Turkey, Bart and Corey as well as Vienna, who is also a suspect, have to leave the city within 24 hours. However, Vienna is not thinking of backing down and decides to stay. Disappointed by the villagers' false suspicions about them, Ted and his gang head west to California . In revenge, the gang attacked Emma's Bank when Vienna happened to want to withdraw money there. Emma uses chance to suspect Vienna of complicity. In contrast to Johnny, who wants to defend himself against Emma's machinations with a revolver, Vienna tries to convince the villagers of their innocence in a peaceful way. But when Ted's wounded, young gang member Turkey Ralston, whom Vienna had hidden out of pity, is found in her saloon, the villagers are finally turned against her. Turkey is pressed to testify against Vienna, with the promise that he will not be executed for it.

Despite the promise, Turkey and Vienna are sentenced to death by hanging ad hoc without a trial. Meanwhile, Vienna's self-built saloon is set on fire by Emma. At the last minute, Johnny can save her life, but the help comes too late for Turkey. The lovers take refuge in Ted's remote hiding place in the nearby mountains, where he and his people are. The rivalry between Ted and Johnny leads to a tense situation, but Johnny still saves Ted's life when his intriguing gang member Bart tries to shoot him from behind. In the mountains there is finally a final confrontation between the two opponents. After Emma initially killed Ted, Vienna ends up having to shoot Emma. The villagers, eyeing Emma more and more critically and having had enough of the violence, end their lynching. Johnny and Vienna can look to a future together.

Production background

The plot of the film was based on a few months earlier published novel by Roy Chanslor (1899-1964). Apart from the title of the same name, the final film has little to do with Chonslor's novel. In the opening credits only is Philip Yordan known as a screenwriter, but Yordan served in the 1950s as front man for other colleagues in the McCarthy era of communism were suspected, and fell on black lists so that they in Hollywood officially not allowed to work . It was therefore often speculated that the script for Johnny Guitar actually came from Ben Maddow, who was then on the blacklist . Maddow himself maintained this for a long time, but when he got to see the film for the first time at an advanced age, he said that he had recognized nothing of himself and that he might have been wrong in his assertion.

The career of Joan Crawford , who had risen to fame in the late silent film days, was in jeopardy after the financial and artistic failure of Heartfelt Fever , a revue film she made for MGM in 1953 . For this role, the actress even turned down the part of Karen Holmes in the Fred Zinnemann adaptation of Damned for All Eternity , which eventually went to Deborah Kerr . Crawford was initially determined to shoot a spy film called Lisbon with the director Nicholas Ray - with whom she had a brief affair at the time. The plans failed and in the end the two accepted an offer to shoot a western for the Republic Pictures studio . Since Republic rarely had big stars other than John Wayne , and Crawford also had the film rights to Chanslor's novel, she was almost a producer of sorts. For example, she was able to get Nicholas Ray through as a director.

Filming was not a pleasant experience for Joan Crawford. On the one hand, in the 1950s, westerns formed a reservoir for actresses who had already passed the zenith of their fame. Marlene Dietrich had already appeared in 1953 under the direction of Fritz Lang in Rancho Notorious , Claudette Colbert , Barbara Stanwyck and even Greer Garson increasingly sought refuge in the genre when other roles became rare. In addition, the Republic Pictures studio was known in the industry as a C-studio, as Poverty Row . Herbert Yates' studio, which specializes primarily in westerns, was already in crisis at this point, as its usual B-movie wests were now overtaken by western series on increasingly popular television, making Johnny Guitar one of the last major Republic films .

The film was shot in the Sedona area

The film was mainly shot in Sedona , Arizona , where Republic Studios had a small ranch. Nicholas Ray only had a small budget, but at the same time was given a high degree of artistic freedom in making the film. He shot it in the Trucolor color film process , which was specially developed by Republic Pictures and had been used there since the 1940s. Ray used his creativity primarily in the architectural field, for example in the furnishings of the saloon and the geometric relationships between the locations.

The original idea of ​​giving the role of Emma to Crawford's good friend Barbara Stanwyck had failed because of the small production budget. Claire Trevor was also brought up for the role, but Crawford found her too attractive for that. The relationship between Joan Crawford and the eventual Emma actress Mercedes McCambridge was tense, also because Crawford is said to have feared the supporting actress would steal the show from the enthusiastic reactions of the film crew to McCamber's performance (she received applause from the staff). Nicholas Ray did nothing to break the hostile mood between the actresses as this would make the portrayals of their characters in the film more realistic. There were also problems with Sterling Hayden , as Hayden approached his role lethargically and with little vigor. After filming was over, a number of co-stars commented negatively on Joan Crawford's behavior, especially the Confidential gossip about an entire series titled Joan Crawford - Queen or Tyrant? cannibalized.

Even decades later, Joan Crawford was derogatory about the quality of the film and her own portrayal.

“I should have had my mind checked. There is no excuse for such a bad movie and for me for making it. "

At the end of the film, the song Johnny Guitar is played , sung by Peggy Lee , who gained fame beyond the film and was able to place himself in the charts.

Content analysis

For many film critics, the brutal, unfounded “ witch hunt ” on Ted and Vienna is an allusion to the McCarthy era, not least because of the biographies of those involved, Philip Yordan, Ben Maddow and Nicholas Ray, who were blacklisted or at least as outsiders in the McCarthy-era Hollywood. The film shows "how quickly a rope is tied out of false accusations, and how willingly good citizens call for the death penalty, as long as they see their prejudices confirmed in the designated victim." It is remarkable that the bandits are portrayed comparatively positively, while the "Normal" villagers appear brutal and easily manipulable for evil purposes - this was also interpreted by film critics as an allusion to the role of the population in the McCarthy era. Ironically, Mr. McIvers, co-leader of the lynching in the film, was played by actor Ward Bond : Ward Bond was one of McCarthy's leading supporters in Hollywood and, according to Philip Yordan, played his part in the belief that he was the good and likeable citizen just doing his duty.

Decades later, screenwriter Yordan commented on the film:

“I have to say that the subject of Johnny Guitar has always kept me busy. They live peacefully in a quiet place, and then suddenly an individual comes along and explains to them: 'You do not have the right to live here for this and that reason, so make sure you get away with it, or ...' (.. .) I believe that this is an essential modern subject, a drama resulting from the development of a petty-bourgeois morality that favors this tyranny. But there are other moments in Johnny Guitar . The film is also a passionate attack on puritanism , embodied in the person of the sparse old maid Emma Small. And then of course there is Johnny, the tragic hero in the Fury of Furies. All of this is constructed as a lyrical story that allowed Nick to give free rein to his baroque ideas. "

In contrast to almost all other westerns, the focus here is not on the male, but on the female characters. This probably goes back to Joan Crawford, who wanted her role in the script enlarged, so that in the end the two main male characters Johnny and Ted had to back off. The film “closes with a duel between two women while the men stand by helplessly and watch”. In feminist film criticism, the different appearances of the two strong female characters in the film were often compared, whereby Emma, ​​who appears against modern Vienna as the keeper of the old large landowners, finally loses. Georg Seeßlen writes: “Emma Small, who is not called that for nothing, wants to destroy Vienna and Dancin 'Kid, clearly out of revenge, but also out of defense. It is said that she is secretly in love with Dancin 'Kid, but probably even more in love with Vienna itself ”.

reception

When it was published

When it was released, Johnny Guitar received mostly negative reviews. Bosley Crowther described the film in the New York Times as a "fiasco", including Joan Crawford

"No more femininity comes from Joan Crawford than from the rugged Van Heflin in Shane. For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the Public Library steps, and as sharp and romantically forbidden as a package of unwrapped razor blades. "

"Not more feminine than the gruff Van Heflin in My Great Friend Shane [and] as sexless as the lions on the steps of the city library and as sharp and untouchable as an open pack of razor blades."

Brog wrote the most famous review in Variety :

"It turns out that [Miss Crawford] should leave saddles and jeans to someone else and present themselves against the backdrop of city lights."

Despite the mostly negative reviews, the film was found in the US with revenues of 2.5 million  dollars  - this corresponds to a current total of about 23.7 million US dollars - as relatively successful. The contemporary German film criticism was also not very friendly in many cases: "The direction is primitive, the plot is poorly glued together from hate and love, kiss and shot," wrote the film observer , for example . For Joan Crawford it would have been better to resign her "at the zenith of her work" than to "celebrate such a miserable return as Joan Crawford as a 'young, desirable woman'". The other actors would also fail, the film music was “exciting”, the camera work was just “mediocre”.

Revaluation in the Nouvelle Vague

For the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague , however, Johnny Guitar became a cult film, which they also referenced several times in their later films. The film magazine Cahiers du Cinema , which is close to the Nouvelle Vague, named him the best western of all time in 1966. François Truffaut admired Johnny Guitar very much: “Johnny Guitar is a false western, but not an 'intellectual' one. It is a dream, a fairy tale, a hallucinatory western. (...) Johnny Guitar is Beauty and the Beast as a western, a western dream. The cowboys disappear and die with the elegance of ballerinas. The strong, powerful colors add to the feeling of oddity; the colors are lively, sometimes very beautiful, always unexpected. ”Truffaut said of Joan Crawford:

"[Joan] has become unreal, a phantom of herself. Whiteness has invaded her eyes, muscles have taken over her face, a will of iron behind a face of steel. She is a phenomenon. She is becoming more manly as she grows older. Her clipped, tense acting, pushed almost to paroxysm by Ray, is in itself a strange and fascinating spectacle. "

“She has become unreal, a spirit of herself. White has taken hold of her eyes, muscles of her face, an iron will behind a face of steel. It is a phenomenon. The older she gets, the more masculine she becomes. Her tight, tense game, which Ray has driven almost to the point of spasm, is a strange and fascinating spectacle in itself. "

Later reviews

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
Critic (%)
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Critic (Ø)
Audience (Ø)
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Thanks to the Nouvelle Vague, Johnny Guitar received a new evaluation today. Joe Hembus calls the film "a curiosity and a cult film." The screenwriter understood the script as an indictment against McCarthyism and against Puritanism . Crawford was "at a critical stage in her career". Hembus interprets that the film was Ray's parting gift to Crawford, a "work of love" by the couple Ray and Crawford, who were just separating.

In the US critics portal Rotten Tomatoes gets Johnny Guitar 45 reviews a positive rating of 93% and an average rating of 8.52 out of 10. According to Turner Classic Movies was looking for new forms in the 1950s, the Western genre, but no work could Imitating Nicholas Ray's vigorous experiment with colors, gender changes, stylized sets and operatic emotions. It is "a kind of masterpiece that will never be repeated".

Phil Hardy notes that the film is "in a lyrical and baroque [...] way a masterpiece like few westerns". The dialogues are “trance-like”, the actors' acting “mannered”, the lighting “bright, almost surreal”. In 2008, the influential US film critic Roger Ebert gave Johnny Guitar the highest rating of four stars for being one of the “most radical psychosexual melodramas” in the guise of a western. He pointed out the tangled love affairs in the film as well as the lesbian undertones in the main female characters.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created in 1954 by Deutsche Mondial Film GmbH .

role actor Voice actor
Vienna Joan Crawford Gisela Breiderhoff
Johnny "Guitar" Logan Sterling Hayden Curt Ackermann
Emma Small Mercedes McCambridge Gudrun Genest
The dancing Ted Scott Brady Siegmar Schneider
Old Tom John Carradine Carl Heinz Carell
Turkey Ralston Ben Cooper Horst Buchholz
Bart Lonergan Ernest Borgnine Fritz Tillmann
Corey Royal Dano Friedrich Joloff
John McIvers Ward Bond Wolf Martini
Marshall Williams Frank Ferguson Hans Hessling
Pete Ian MacDonald Manfred Meurer

Awards

The film was entered into the National Film Registry in 2008.

literature

  • David Bret: Joan Crawford. Hollywood Martyr . Robson Books, London 2006, ISBN 1-86105-931-0 .
  • Charlotte Chandler: Not the Girl Next Door . Simon and Schuster, New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-4332-0926-0 .
  • Shaun Considine: Bette and Joan. The Divine Feud . Dutton, New York 1989, ISBN 0-525-24770-X .
  • Norbert Grob: When women hate. Johnny Guitar. In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Film genres - Westerns. Reclam junior, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-018402-9 , pp. 170-175.
  • Roy Newquist (Ed.): Conversations with Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1980, ISBN 0-8065-0720-9 .
  • Lawrence J. Quirk : The Complete Films of Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1988, ISBN 0-8065-1078-1 .
  • Lawrence J. Quirk, William Schoell: Joan Crawford. The Essential Biography . University Press, Lexington, KY. 2002, ISBN 0-8131-2254-6 .
  • Alexander Walker: Joan Crawford. The Ultimate Star . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1983, ISBN 0-297-78216-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joe Hembus: Western Lexicon - 1272 films from 1894-1975. 2nd Edition. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1977, ISBN 3-446-12189-7 , p. 318f.
  2. ^ Bill Crider: Johnny Guitar - Roy Chanslor. In: billcrider.blogspot.com. May 31, 2008, accessed September 24, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Roland M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: The 100 best cult films. Munich 1998, p. 301.
  4. ↑ Patrick McGilligan: Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s . University of California Press, 1997, ISBN 0-520-20908-7 ( google.de [accessed July 28, 2019]).
  5. ↑ a b c d see literature used, in particular a detailed description in Shaun Considine: Bette and Joan. The Divine Feud. 1989, pp. 278-283.
  6. ↑ a b c Michael Schlesinger: Johnny Guitar. (PDF; 743 kB) Library of Congress , accessed September 24, 2019 .
  7. ^ A b Jeff Stafford: Johnny Guitar (1954) - Articles. In: Turner Classic Movies . Accessed August 6, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Roland M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: The 100 best cult films. Munich 1998, p. 301.
  9. ↑ I should have had my head examined. No excuse for a picture being this bad or for me making it.
  10. ^ Johnny Guitar - DVD. In: traumathek.de. Retrieved September 24, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Roland M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: The 100 best cult films. Munich 1998, pp. 300-301.
  12. ↑ Alexander Brock, Uwe Küchler, Anne Schröder: Explorations and Extrapolations: Applying English and American Studies . LIT Verlag, Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-8258-1865-4 ( google.de [accessed on July 28, 2019]).
  13. ↑ Patryk Czekaj: Golden Age of Hollywood: Johnny Guitar (1954). In: patrykczekaj.wordpress.com. December 4, 2012, accessed September 24, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Jeff Stafford: Johnny Guitar (1954) - Articles. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved on August 6, 2019 (English): "The very next day Crawford demanded major changes to the screenplay - favoring her - and had them approved since she was the star of the film. The major revision was an issue over gender. Instead of Johnny Guitar and the Dancin 'Kid as the central focus, Vienna and Emma would take center stage in the more traditionally masculine roles. "
  15. ↑ Roland M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: The 100 best cult films. Munich 1998, p. 300.
  16. ↑ Roland M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: The 100 best cult films. Munich 1998, pp. 299-300.
  17. ^ Johnny Guitar - 1954. In: joancrawfordbest.com. Retrieved September 24, 2019 .
  18. ^ Johnny Guitar. In: The Best of Everything. A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia. Retrieved on May 29, 2018 (English): "It proves [Miss Crawford] should leave saddles and Levis to someone else and stick to city lights for a background."
  19. ^ Johnny Guitar (1954). In: Legendary Joan Crawford. Accessed August 6, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Roland M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: The 100 best cult films. Munich 1998, pp. 298-299.
  21. ^ Johnny Guitar: a live text conversation between Mitchell and myself. In: sheilaomalley.com. February 25, 2010, accessed on September 24, 2019 (Trauffaut, quoted in The Sheila Variations ).
  22. ^ François Truffaut: The Films In My Life . Diversion Books, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-62681-396-0 ( google.de ).
  23. ↑ a b c d e Johnny Guitar - If women hate at Rotten Tomatoes (English) Template: Rotten Tomatoes / Maintenance / "imported from" is missing, accessed on September 24 of 2019.
  24. ↑ a b Johnny Guitar - When Women Hate from Metacritic , accessed September 24, 2019.
  25. ↑ Johnny Guitar - If women hate in the Internet Movie Database (English) retrieved on September 24 of 2019.
  26. ↑ Joe Hembus: Western Lexicon - 1272 films from 1894-1975. 2nd Edition. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1977, ISBN 3-446-12189-7 , p. 318f.
  27. ^ Phil Hardy: The Encyclopedia of Western Movies . Woodbury Press, Minneapolis 1984, ISBN 0-8300-0405-X , p. 232.
  28. ^ Roger Ebert : Johnny Guitar. rogerebert.com, May 8, 2008, accessed September 24, 2019 .