Johnny Guitar is a 1954 American independent[4] Western film directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Ernest Borgnine and Scott Brady.

In 2008, Johnny Guitar was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[5][6] The main theme of the film's score, composed by Victor Young, and title song, co-written and performed by Peggy Lee, is loosely based on the Spanish Dance No.

On the outskirts of a wind-swept Arizona cattle town, an aggressive and strong-willed saloonkeeper named Vienna maintains a volatile relationship with the local cattlemen and townsfolk.

Not only does she support the railroad being laid nearby (the cattlemen oppose it), but she permits "The Dancin' Kid" (her former amour) and his confederates to frequent her saloon.

Dancin' Kid and his gang rob the town bank, while Vienna is there by coincidence, to fund their escape to California, but the pass is blocked by a railroad crew dynamiting a way in, and they flee back to their secret hideout (a played-out silver mine) behind a waterfall.

Crawford, who held the film rights to the novel Johnny Guitar, which its author Roy Chanslor had dedicated to her, brought the script to Republic and had the studio hire Ray to direct an adaptation of it.

The people in the story never achieve much depth, this character shallowness being at odds with the pretentious attempt at analysis to which the script and direction devotes so much time.

"[19] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times singled out Crawford's physical appearance, stating "no more femininity comes from her than from the rugged Heflin in Shane.

For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades."

He further commented that the film was no more than a "flat walk-through — or occasional ride-through—of western cliches...The color is slightly awful and the Arizona scenery is only fair.

Filmed in what is without question the best example of Trucolor photography yet shown, its mixture of romance, hatred and violence grips one's attention throughout, in spite of the fact that it is overburdened with a number of 'talky' passages.

He was especially impressed by the film's extravagance: the bold colors, the poetry of the dialogue in certain scenes, and the theatricality which results in cowboys vanishing and dying "with the grace of ballerinas".

The website's critical consensus reads: "Johnny Guitar confidently strides through genre conventions, emerging with a brilliant statement that transcends its period setting -- and left an indelible mark.