Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954)

The only other Nicholas Ray movie I really remember was Rebel Without a Cause which was just awful, even with the father distressed by his sexual attraction to his teenage daughter and Sal Mineo with a picture of Alan Ladd in his locker. James Dean's character was the opposite of a rebel. He screams YOU'RE TEARING ME APART because his parents didn't give him simple, easy-to-understand commands. He wasn't a rebel. He was just a jerk. So I guess he really was misunderstood.

Johnny Guitar starred Joan Crawford as Vienna. She has a saloon she managed to situate right where the railroad is coming through. This puts her in conflict with the cattlemen who don't want a railroad bringing in a lot of people. Of course, she was only going to profit from it. She doesn't control where they go. And she was already in conflict with Mercedes McCambridge who wanted her and the Dancin' Kid dead.

Overwrought psychological western. Mercedes McCambridge was more appealing than Joan Crawford, even though she played a horrible woman who whips a lynch mob into a frenzy. I didn't understand why Vienna didn't let Johnny Guitar kill a few of them. McCambridge's character acted out of spite and not greed or ambition. I can respect that.

I'm glad we now live in an age when men and women are socially equal to the degree that they can shoot each other in a movie.

In garish Trucolor, Republic Pictures' answer to Technicolor.