At #122, this is another western, but it’s a weird one.

In broad outline, it kinda sounds like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: A train is going to be coming through this area, changing everything and undermining the local cattlemen’s power; a woman owns a saloon and a bunch of land, and intends to let the railroad company build a station there, and the cattle barons are trying to get rid of her so they can prevent that from happening. Meanwhile, a peace-loving guy — the titular Johnny Guitar, who only carries his eponymous instrument instead of a gun — comes into town on her side.

You can see all the parallels — the changing force of the railroad, the evil cattle barons, the non-violent hero — but I’m here to tell you that it’s all an illusion. This movie has nothing to do with that one. It has no interest in exploring how technological progress drives societal change; it has no interest in talking about non-violence and its role in a fight; it glances at the conflict between the rule of law and the rule of force, but with barely concealed disinterest; it doesn’t even honestly give a shit about Johnny Guitar himself, who is mostly a passive supporting player in the movie that bears his name.

This is a movie that is about (and that is surely on this list for) only one thing: Joan Crawford’s Vienna, the former prostitute turned real estate speculator/saloon owner. Whether she’s facing down an angry mob with a gun, playing the piano while calmly fending off a posse with sheer force of personality, sparring with the villainous Emma, or engaging in unconvincing romantic banter with Sterling Hayden’s Johnny Guitar, it’s her presence that animates the movie.

Her performance is so heightened that (along with the film’s hyper-saturated “Trucolor” palette), it makes the film seem deliberately stylized and surreal. The relationship between Guitar and Vienna leans into this, with staccato back-and-forth exchanges that almost seem like they’re trying for quippy romantic banter, but end up just feeling cold and cynical. The relationship between the other characters makes even less sense — the love square between Vienna, Emma, Guitar, and “the Dancing Kid” is maybe one of the most dysfunctional and least psychologically realistic you’ll see. Everyone wants to kill everyone else, often for no reason at all.

I can understand why critics of a certain age love this movie. If you were seeing movies in 1954, and were watching a parade of bland westerns go across your screen and then this came on, it would blow your mind. It’s so unusual, the performances so mannered, it would just be absolutely fascinating (or offputting; it apparently got a lot of negative reviews on release). But in modernity, I think that its shallow characters and silly plot keep it from being genuinely great, and keep it at the level of an interesting curiosity. But it is an incredible performance from Crawford, and worth seeing.