Dominic O’Key looks at the western canon, in celebration of Quentin Tarantino’s new picture Django Unchained
When Christoph Waltz was interviewed by Berliner tabloid B.Z last week about his role in the new Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained, few would have guessed that the he would end up admitting his lack of enthusiasm for the western genre. The Austrian star called cowboy hats ‘drollige’ (comical), and explained that despite his ambivalence, the prospect of a western with Tarantino at the helm was just too good to turn down.
This choice of genre might seem like a new departure for the director, but look at Tarantino’s films and see many striking resemblances to westerns. After all, he uses long takes like Sergio Leone, bloodshed like Sam Peckinpah, and his recurring use of the American diner could be seen to substitute dusty saloons. The Mexican standoff, another classic motif of the genre, is used successfully in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds. Yee-haw, Quentin!
Doubtless there are facets of the director’s style that separate him from the western canon. For one, Tarantino’s films often involve prolonged scenes of witty and confrontational dialogue, something that seems at odds with one of the genre’s overwhelming tropes: silence. The stoic, masculine heroes of the western canon are famed for how quiet they are, subscribing to the idea that actions speak louder than words: “When you have to shoot, shoot! Don’t talk!” Tarantino’s films revel in their noise; and pop music is never far away either. And where would a character like Clint Eastwood’s the man with no name feature in the chaotic, fast-paced world of Kill Bill (2003), for example?
No matter what, Django enters an already saturated genre; from the unutterable Wild Wild West (1999) back to the classics, such as Tarantino’s favourite The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). From Kurosawa’s masterpieces (films like Yojimbo and Seven Samurai, which would inspire a decade of filmmakers) to the magical and haunting Dead Man (1995). Throughout the hundreds of best-of lists you can find across the internet, you are never far away from the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood; familiar films such as The Searchers (1956) and the Dollars trilogy pop up again and again. But for me there is one western, often overlooked, that stands out above the pile: Johnny Guitar (1954).
French master director François Truffaut wrote that Johnny Guitar is “the Beauty and the Beast of westerns, a western dream”. He labelled it “hallucinatory cinema” on account of its sheer strangeness: its otherness. He was not wrong. Nicholas Ray’s psychosexual drama is one of cinema’s most underappreciated diamonds in the rough. The film is camp, cynical and my favourite western of all time.
There are no rodeos, no savages; we do not really see the town that it’s set in. Joan Crawford plays Vienna, the headstrong owner of a saloon whose livelihood is being threatened. Enter the eponymous Johnny (Sterling Hayden), Vienna’s old lover, called upon to help her stop the barbaric opposition of the townsfolk, who fear that her plans for a railway will ruin local business. She is given 24 hours to leave the town.
Both on and off-set, the all-star cast’s relationships were at breaking point. Combine this with the production company’s unflinching frugality (Republic Studios made them film in Trucolor even though Technicolor had existed for over three decades) and you’re left with a fraught picture that is as much a product of its circumstances as it is of its screenplay. Filmed during McCarthyism, many read the film as a thinly disguised “fuck you!” to the reactionaries of the 1950s, lambasting the attitudes of the paranoid, witch-hunting mob.
Apart from its camp extravagance and raw aggression, I believe its main success to be is its subversive, proto-second wave feminist message. One year before its release we had Shane (1953), a quiet film focussing on the importance of family over the futility of gun slinging. Women were in the background but always spoke the truth. It’s just that the men didn’t listen. Ray’s film takes it one step further, pushing for another “spin [of] the wheel”, as Vienna says.
Vienna is the main figure and she knows it, stuck as the protagonist in a world she doesn’t want to inhabit. There’s nothing to be gained in this amoral universe; all innocence is lost. Even love is under threat. “Lie to me. Tell me all these years you’ve waited. Tell me”, Johnny asks of Vienna. She stares back, expressionless, and tells him what he wants to hear.
Dominic O’Key