'Johnny Guitar'

I checked out Johnny Guitar from the library in the VHS format.

It was part of a set of films chosen by Martin Scorsese as the ones that initially inspired him to become a director. It had an interview before the film with Scorsese where he tells you why he loves Johnny Guitar. It's not that he's not sincere or that I don't believe him, but I would bet Scorsese could say the same things about 100 different films.

He notes that Johnny Guitar is a non-western in a western format. It's not gun battles, battles with bandits or Indians. There's no cattle rustling or horse thieving. It might as well have been set in the 1920s and be about gangsters.

Furthermore, it's a western vehicle driven by female leads in Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Francois Truffaut called it a "phony Western." Pedro Almodovar used the film in Women in the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, when his lead actress is voicing Crawford's Spanish subtitles for the film. Another film overrun with powerful women.

Also, you could question the casting for this film in making the female characters overly powerful. Did they cast Sterling Hayden and Scott Brady as the male leads on purpose to have lesser actors cowering in the shadow of McCambridge and Crawford? It would appear so. They're not bad actors, but they aren't going to overwhelm the camera like Rock Hudson or Cary Grant would.

I don't know if it's a classic. But it certainly is very, very original and still very good.

A production note: Crawford was apparently very jealous of the younger McCambridge, despite the fact that three years later, the latter would play the utterly asexual sister Luz to Hudson in Giant. Conversely, neither McCambridge or Hayden liked Crawford speaking out against her after filming.