Johnny Guitar (1954)

Johnny Guitar opens with a man passing between two explosions.  On one side of him, a railroad company dynamites the hills, and on the other, bandits fire their guns robbing a stagecoach.  One of these activities is thought to advance civil society, and the other violates it.  But to this one man, both explosions are dangerous. 

Johnny Guitar is a wandering guitar player hired by a woman named Vienna. She runs a saloon out in the desert, some distance away from a frontier town, intending to build a town of her own when the railroad comes in.  Two prominent and domineering townspeople, McIvers and Emma Small, incite the rest townspeople against Vienna.  They have an apparently stable life on the frontier, but their response to Vienna reveals the fault lines on which they rest.

The American western often takes place in the wide-open lands of the west and focuses on a group of people who have ambitions for those lands--at the expense of the indigenous people living there, but that's not always in the spotlight.  But in Johnny Guitar, Vienna's attempt to build a new life for herself is not a journey into the frontier, but a matter of ownership.  She worked to own her own saloon, planning to seize the value created by the coming railroad, without ever capitulating to the local bankers and landowners.  There is no riding away from the old life, no retreat into new land; there is only struggling over the many odd instruments of value.  Johnny says he doesn't want to hear about how Vienna struggled to obtain "every board, brick, and beam" of her saloon; she says she wants him to listen, and to know.

Beneath the laws of ownership that Vienna, McIvers, and Small are fighting over, there lie currents of human emotion.  They hold everything together and they can destroy it all.  Late in the film, when the townspeople's rage boils over, Johnny warns her that all bets are off.  

Still, Vienna hopes they can build something new.  The way she treats her employees and anyone she calls a friend is totally different from the imperious, brow-beating way McIvers and Small treat the townspeople.  

This takes imagination, which can be beaten down.  When Vienna tries to make Johnny face reality, she reveals she has given up on some of her hopes.  Suddenly Johnny becomes a poet, using his words to illustrate a fantasy he thinks might restore them.  

But this comes right after Johnny asks Vienna, "lie to me," asking for empty words to make him feel better.  There's a boundary between comforting lies and things that can seriously be hoped for.  The film has an artificial, surreal quality that keeps us in tension as the characters try to find this boundary.  Vienna's saloon pops from the screen with its red walls and green card tables, while Vienna's own private room, painted white, looks like it belongs in a different building entirely.  Vienna herself changes outfits throughout the movie, sometimes in ways that barely make sense, and she always wears striking, bright colors.  

Late in the film, the townsfolk promise Vienna's friend Turkey he won't hang if he scapegoats Vienna.  Many characters in this film find themselves persuaded by far less legitimate threats than the one they pose in this scene.  But he looks at Vienna and says "what should I do?"  Their relationship is strong enough for him to ask this question, to not give in immediately to impulse.  It's another point of tension: Turkey has won a personal victory by keeping his nerve, but it seems to change very little about his fate.  

On the other hand, things turn out better for Johnny and Vienna.  If there is a difference between the lies Johnny asked Vienna to tell him and the fictions he tells to Vienna, it's in the intention and the spontaneity behind what they're saying.  Words alone are cheap; the relationships underneath are what's really important.  Maybe things didn't turn out all bad for Turkey when they turned out OK for people he was related to.