Jealous local cattle-farmer Emma Small wants her gone. Here are my two centsβ¦. Like Johnny Guitar. Dressed in a black shirt and trousers, gun belt around her waist, she strides out onto the landing to deliver one of her first lines to the disgruntled townsfolk below:. All you can buy up these stairs is a bullet in the head. Now which do you want? Thankfully, toughness is not her sole attribute.
All a woman has to do is slip β once. Must be a great comfort to you to be a man. She hates Vienna with a passion, ostensibly for ruining the town with her gambling and drinking den, but also for bringing the threat of freedom with her.
A pervasive theme of the Western genre, the relationship between human nature and liberty is often paradoxical and highly volatile, and Johnny Guitar is no exception. Emma Small is both terrified and deeply envious of the freedom that Vienna has claimed for herself, not least because she represents the movement of a woman into a traditionally male-dominated realm. Emma is a fascinating character in her own right.
In contrast, the male characters are surprisingly passive. Even when Emma has contrived to have Vienna strung up, sitting on a horse with a noose around her neck, neither of the lawmen has the stomach to go through with the actual hanging. Emotionally, the film has more in common with a stage play than a Western; its scope and use of environment is surprisingly narrow, more A Streetcar Named Desire than Once Upon a Time in the West. Where did those convenient explosives along the mountain pass come from?
Who did rob that plot-device stagecoach? Best not to ask. Also best not to ask why Vienna has so many convenient changes of clean clothes or why she feels it necessary to tie her neckerchief just so whilst hiding out in a bandit cabin on the run from a vengeful mob.
