Saw Johnny Guitar, a morbid and hysterical old western about a woman who owns a bar in the wilds of somewhere-or-other. The town of upright stiff-necks is rigidly opposed to her and her wonton ways. She has monologues where she hints at "doing what she needed to do" to survive, but this woman is played by Joan Crawford, so whereas another actress might tearfully weep these monologues, Joan spits them ironically and harshly. The main antagonist is a fresh-faced spinster who is consumed with jealousy for Joan's apparent hold over a roguish maybe-outlaw. She is actually not interested at all in the outlaw. Indeed, in the first scenes, Joan seems to be heavily coded as a lesbian.
She wears pants and leather boots, she lectures the townsfolk for their narrow-mindedness and talks longingly of the day the railroad will bring city-folk to drive away the ranchers and preachers. It's fitting therefore that the central protagonist/antagonist relationship is between two women and that the plot be fueled by the hidden desires of one of them. Later on the film Joan gets a male love-interest, but those first few scenes are so deliciously ambiguous!
The rest of the film follows the machinations of both women as the tension ratchets up. In the first scene, the sheriff gives Joan 24 hours to get out of town, so the clock is ticking and there's plenty of hysterics and grand speeches and tension galore. I enjoyed this film a great deal. It's not as great as an actual lesbian-cowboy film would have been, but it's the best we can hope for from the 50s. Also, there's my favorite weakness: opera-level melodrama. Neat film!
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