Johnny Guitar

Johnny Guitar (1954) is Nicholas Ray's western, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Out on the dusty edge of an Arizona town, Vienna runs a saloon that sits where the railroad will soon cut through, and the locals want her gone. Into this standoff rides Johnny "Guitar," a gunfighter she once loved, hired to play music but ready to do more.

The real shootout, though, is between two women. The townsfolk mean to drive Vienna, played by Joan Crawford, off her land, egged on by Emma, whom Mercedes McCambridge turns into a knot of jealousy and spite dressed up as righteousness. A stagecoach robbery hands the mob its excuse, and they call for a hanging long before anyone proves a thing. The colors are lurid, the dialogue nearly operatic, and the climactic duel comes down to the two rivals rather than the men.

A box-office dud in 1954, the film was worshipped by François Truffaut and later named among Martin Scorsese's favorite westerns. Many read it as a rebuke of McCarthyism, a crowd ready to lynch on no evidence at all. Stream Johnny Guitar (1954) online on iFILM.