Pedro Almodóvar Caballero Pedro Almodóvar Caballero Pedro Almodóvar Caballero ' onMouseout='HidePop("90405")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Women_on_the_Verge_of_a_Nervous_Breakdown">Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a 1988 Spanish comedy film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Carmen Maura and Antonio Banderas...
. His lead character Pepa Marcos (
Carmen MauraCarmen García Maura is a Spanish actress. In a career that has spanned several decades, Maura is best known for her collaborations with noted Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar.-Early life:...
), a voice artist, passes out while dubbing Vienna's voice in a scene where Johnny (voiced earlier by Pepa's ex-lover Iván) and she banter about their conflicted past. Almodovar's film also ends with a chase and an obsessed woman shooting at his lead character.
The Chicago Reader's
Jonathan RosenbaumJonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
lists
Johnny Guitar as one of the 100 best American films.
Commentary
The
romanticRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
style of
Johnny Guitar is very different from the
realismRealism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation...
that dominates the work of classical Western directors such as
John FordJohn Ford was an American film director of Irish heritage famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach and The Searchers and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
and
Howard HawksHoward Winchester Hawks was an influential American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, and this expressive boldness can be looked at as a form of allegory. In particular, many critics have pointed out that the film is a hidden commentary on the
McCarthy witch-huntsMcCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence...
.
The film is certainly more than just a
WesternThe Western is a fiction genre seen in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in what became the Western United States , but also in Western Canada, Mexico , Alaska The Western...
— Truffaut called it "a phony Western". It is a sexual drama with obsessive personalities bordering on madness: the character played by Mercedes McCambridge is obviously the chief villain, but Joan Crawford's character is not entirely likable, scowling through much of the movie. Ray shows that Vienna's own psycho-sexual obsession affects her in equally bizarre turns; for example, she dresses entirely in white in a crucial scene where she must confront McCambridge (who dresses in black for most of the film).
The strong will and personalities of these two women effectively sideline the men. Sterling Hayden as the eponymous hero is something less of a hero as a result of Crawford's obsession (the fact that he plays a guitar and travels without a gun gives a clue to the downgrading of the Western hero stereotype that is implicit in the title). He is a secondary character, given to indecisiveness. He mostly functions as a passive observer: his tag line is "I am a stranger here myself", which can also describe Nicholas Ray himself (indeed, the line was used as the title of a 1975
documentaryDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expressions that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can...
about the director).
The other male principals also take a secondary role to the women; none of the posse, not even McIvers, its purported leader, can bring himself to veto McCambridge's Emma, even when lives are at stake. The Dancin' Kid bases many important decisions (especially whether to rob the bank) on whether Vienna will continue to return his affections instead of leaving him for Johnny. Johnny and the Kid are both unusually sensitive cowboys compared to the icons of the time, including the fact that each has an artistic skill (dancing, guitar playing) which is a part of his name, and that both generally let the female characters make the decisions and are willing to abide by them.
Adaptations
Johnny Guitar was adapted into a stage musical, which debuted
Off-BroadwayOff Broadway theater is an umbrella term for a defined set of plays, musicals or revues performed in New York City. Originally referring to the location of a venue and its productions on a street intersecting Broadway in Manhattan's Theatre District, the hub of the theater industry in the United...
in 2004, with a book by American television producer Nicholas van Hoogstraten, lyrics by
Joel HigginsJoel Franklin Higgins is an American actor and singer with a stage career spanning over 30 years. A graduate of Michigan State University, Higgins initially performed in coffee houses to help pay his way through school...
, and music by Martin Silvestri and
Joel HigginsJoel Franklin Higgins is an American actor and singer with a stage career spanning over 30 years. A graduate of Michigan State University, Higgins initially performed in coffee houses to help pay his way through school...
. It starred
Ann CrumbAnn Crumb is an American actress and singer.The daughter of composer George Crumb and sister of composer David Crumb, she made her Broadway debut in 1987 as a member of the original cast of Les Misérables...
,
Steve BlanchardSteve Blanchard is a stage actor best known for his musical theatre roles, being most closely associated with the role of Beast in the musical Beauty and the Beast, which he played both on Broadway and on tour for eleven years...
, and Robert Evan, and was the recipient of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, as well as a nominee for the Lucille Lortel Awards and the Drama Desk Awards. The musical adaptation favored a more "
campCamp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality,...
" approach toward the material, which seemed to work in its favor, at least among the critics. The musical version is now being staged in regional theaters across the United States.
External links