Chapter 14: Health and warm

In Johnny Guitar by Nicholas Ray (1954), the hero carries a guitar instead of a revolver and seeks refuge in the saloon, unexpectedly trapped by an untimely storm whose fury has no effect inside and cannot be heard. Vienna speaks from the balcony, dressed in dark clothing, addressing one of the dealers. They have to spin the roulette wheel instead of reading world news. Because the world is not outside, but right here, inside, where Vienna deals the cards and where the action takes place. Chance has obscured the real or changed it into theater. The real, or what is presented as such, in its coherence and consistency; what, through the plausibility of fiction, maintains a certain relation with truth, this truth embodied as a woman, emerging from the well, or the cave, or a waterfall. But "what does woman have to do with truth?" exclaims Nietzsche. Nothing. Except as a game of appearances and meaning, where seduction begins.

In Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954), the hero has swapped his gun for a guitar andtakes refuge in the saloon,

unexpectedly caught in the ominous fury of a whirlwind the wrath of which has no effect inside and is not even

heard. Vienna is talking from the balcony, all dressed in dark attires, addressing one of her croupiers downstairs. He

must spin the wheel instead of reading the news of the world outside. For the world is inside, where cards are

sold and action unfolds. Chance has obfuscated the real or changed it into a stage. The real or what it is supposed to have been in its coherence and consistence, that which, through likelihood in fiction, maintains some relation to truth, that truth made woman, coming out of the well or of the cave or from under the waterfall. But "what

does woman have to do with truth," Nietzsche exclaims. Nothing. Only as a game of semblance and sense,

where seduction starts.

Vienna is the main character in Nicholas Ray’s 1954 movie Johnny Guitar.

A titular usurpation that may have deceived Anthony Mann who,

in a 1957 interview, assumes that “maybe someone will make a

western some day with a woman as the main character (F1).”1

ISSN. 1137-4802. pp. 49-58

1 Charles BITSCH, Claude

CHABROL, "Entretien avec Anthony Mann", Cahiers du cinéma, n°

69, mars 1957.

Jean-Louis Brunel

50

t&f

No doubt Vienna is: the woman of the western and the star.

The star of a western which is hers, spurred on by a movement

which is hers, overflowing tight frames and fixed forms for a

story in between at once within and without the genre, as gender expectations have collapsed and sense with it.

undecidable2 is the story then, in its principle, which is

the principle of the feminine, served by Ray against Mann.

For it generates what can only be read as what appears, the

appearance of reality within the fiction which happens to be the

reality of appearance –its truth– the only truth retrievable which

is the truth, always far, of seduction in Johnny Guitar,unveiled

by Vienna, the woman with many dresses, in that western where

Johnny leads us to.

To that place of silence inside (F2), where the fury of the

storm outside rages past, unheard. As if at Vienna’s were

not simply a shelter against howling and whirling dust, but

the shadow of absolute distance, the distance meant by and

made woman, because “the feminine is elsewhere,” says

Baudrillard3

. In another world, seemingly same but different and for which Johnny is called and in which he’s now

ready to dwell.

Ready, not simply because, as he tells Vienna, “a man’s got to

stop somewhere” (35:10), but because, to paraphrase Nietzsche,

he may think that there with the woman “dwells his better self.”

(Gay Science, aph. 60)

What could be then Johnny’s better self that would be part of Vienna’s

world?

And what could be that world where he is ready to dwell, now that he’s

realised he may have always longed for and belonged to it?

Should it be the expected world of motherhood or mother-nature?

Or the no less expected world of enchantment men are supposed

to be lured into? Both, maybe: at Vienna’s, there’ve been kids on

Friday nights4

; at Vienna’s, Johnny has swapped the gun for the

guitar, morphed the gunslinger into the troubadour, much more

in tune with enchantment.

Text:

Prime assistants for crossing to the other side, the messengers summon by themselves the sacredness in which Mary does not participate. Powerful intercessors, they dominate Mary's silhouette by occupying a space twice as wide with their open wings. If they were to watch over her, they could protect her. The miniaturist places them in the intermediate vignettes. Omnipresent, they constitute a substitute relay towards the sacred: mediation ceases to be Mary's exclusive attribute. Through them passes the divine mystery that could erase an excess of family relationships, and their presence signifies the need for a return to orthodoxy threatened by the semi-divine character that the Virgin has become. Thus, Bernard of Clairvaux clarifies:

"He made the angel great, but not as great as himself, for all the more reason, He did not make him most high. Only the Only Son was begotten – if not made – Almighty by the Almighty, Most High by the Most High, eternal by the eternal, and he alone can, without usurpation or injury to God, compare himself in all ways to Him".

The image thus restores a theological order and suggests the hierarchization of the world. Cistercian spirituality made it ordinary and necessary to have contact with the angelic world. The miniaturist carries out a theological readjustment of the doctrine presented in the text. He seems to be contaminated by the holy fear of exceeding the limits of acceptability in the handling of the sacred.

The secularization of the Virgin, courteous lady, queen of the world, is a way of stripping her of her mystery, which she is nothing but mystery: Immaculate Conception, Virginity, motherhood of God, being a woman. This mystery encloses its own key, humanity. The deification of Mary would have been like a slip or an excess that allowed the milestones of a journey from the divine to emerge more clearly among the populations in need of hope in the Alphonsine kingdoms. The mother goddess will reappear during the first third of the 14th century, more mother than goddess.

She has become the Mother of Mercy and is dressed in a cloak under which all her children find refuge. According to Paul Perdrizet, as quoted by Dominique Donadieu-Rigaut, "this framework developed by and for religious orders may have ultimately served as a model for society as a whole, represented in its diversitas. The brotherhoods […], situated between the secular and religious worlds, played the role of transmission chain between the representation of the orders and that of society."