the fact that it is overburdened with a number of 'talky' passages. This, however, is not a serious flaw and could be corrected by some judicious cutting of the rather overlong running time." Critical re-evaluation According to Martin Scorsese, contemporary American audiences "didn't know what to make of it, so they either ignored it or laughed at it." European audiences, on the other hand, not having the same biases as American audiences, saw Johnny Guitar for what it was: "an intense, unconventional, stylized picture, full of ambiguities and subtexts that rendered it extremely modern." During its release overseas, the film found acclaim by then-critics Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut who wrote reviews in the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Truffaut further described the film as the "Beauty and the Beast of Westerns, a Western dream". He was especially impressed by the film's extravagance: the bold colors, the poetry of the dialogue in certain scenes, and the theatricality which results in cowboys vanishing and dying "with the grace of ballerinas". In his 1988 release Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar paid homage to the film. His lead character Pepa Marcos (Carmen Maura), a voice artist, passes out while dubbing Vienna's voice in a scene where Johnny (voiced earlier by Pepa's ex-lover Iván) and Vienna banter about their conflicted past. Almodóvar's film also ends with a chase and an obsessed woman shooting at his lead character. In 2012, Japanese film director Shinji Aoyama listed Johnny Guitar as one of the Greatest Films of All Time. He said, "Johnny Guitar is the only movie that I'd like to remake someday, although I know that it's impossible. It's probably closest to the worst nightmare I can have. I know for sure that my desire to remake this movie comes from my warped thought that I want to remake my own nightmare." On the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93% with an average score of 8.52/10 based on 45 critics. The website's critical consensus reads: "Johnny Guitar confidently strides through genre conventions, emerging with a brilliant statement that transcends its period setting -- and left an indelible mark." The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains: Emma Small – Nominated Villain 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10: Nominated Western Film Adaptations Johnny