Reviews Aug 16 2008 @ 09:11 am
REVIEW: Gun Crazy
Directed By: Joseph H. Lewis
Written By: Dalton Trumbo (as Millard Kaufman) and MacKinlay Kantor
Starring: John Dall, Peggy Cummins
Running Time: 86 minutes
Not Rated
Joel Ehly is a frequent commenter at Living In Cinema, and I first met him over some heated discussion on the Coen brothers. Joel is a passionate filmgoer and possesses an extensive cinematic vocabulary. Hey, why doesn’t this guy have his own site yet?
A precursor to Bonnie and Clyde, Gun Crazy is an example of the romantic subset of crime stories dating back to Macbeth: Two morally-weak kids fall hopelessly in love and take the short and easy route (i.e., criminal) to Happily Ever After. Fate has something else in mind and inevitably tragedy ensues. In other words, don’t try this at home.
Directed by Joseph P. Lewis in 1950, Gun Crazy (aka Deadly is the Female) is based on a short story by MacKinlay Kantor. Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay, working under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman. This crime noir is Lewis’ most well known work, featuring his daring visual style and rat-a-tat-tat storytelling.
Gun Crazy opens on a small-town street corner, drenched by showers on a dark and stormy night. Young Bart Tare (a young Russ Tamblyn) is out well past his bedtime, mesmerized by the gun display in the hardware store’s front window. He breaks in, striking a quick reverse Christ pose to conceal his crime while checking to see if the coast is clear behind him, then grabs a revolver and some ammo. He slips and falls, his gun sliding to the feet of a police man. Cut to a court room, where we learn in a quick series of flashbacks that Bart has always been fascinated by guns, that he once killed a small animal with his first pellet rifle, and that tiny murder scarred Bart with a mortal fear of ever harming another living thing. Moved by the testimony but determined to teach the delinquent a lesson, the judge sentences Bart to reform school.
After reform school and a stint in the army, a twenty-something Bart (John Dall) returns to his home town, hoping to settle down with a solid white collar job as a traveling salesman. Still fascinated by guns but more responsible now, Bart will soon meet the girl of his dreams and slip headlong into love and a life of crime. If it sounds like I’m jumping ahead, I am, but Lewis’ storytelling is so quick and purposeful that it doesn’t take long for Bart’s world to turn upside down.
Bart and his buddies end up at the traveling carnival seeing the main attraction, a British sharp shooting vixen named Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins). Annie’s intro is impressive. She literally rises from the depths of Bart’s yearning, his perfect match. With both six shooters blazing, she strides onto the stage from the bottom of the frame. Annie coyly smiles at the crowd and Bart is instantly taken with her, his two pals shooting knowing glances at each other. Annie rewards Bart’s rapt attention by firing a bullet (a blank) directly at his heart.
Lewis does an amazing job of showcasing Annie’s talents with a gun. Lewis shows the stunts in long, unbroken takes, making them very believable. Cummins plays the part to the hilt, her body language conveying a strong sexual undercurrent to her gun play. In an interview years later, Lewis remarked that he gave Cummins and Dall very explicit (and vulgar) direction to portray their sexual lust for each other as overtly as possible.
The climax of the show is to challenge the locals to a shoot-off versus Annie, the set-up intended to fleece their wallets by way of their chauvinism. Bart accepts and bests a flustered Annie. Packet, the carnival barker and proprietor, doesn’t have the money to cover the wager so he offers Bart a starring role alongside Annie. Bart accepts.
Bart quickly learns that the entire carnival is one long series of cons, draining the poor locals dry of each new burg before moving on. Bart is relatively unfazed. All he cares about is Annie. He doesn’t seem to realize she is using him to escape the clutches of Packet. She killed a man some time back in one of Packet’s con games gone bad (an accident she claims), and Packet has been blackmailing her ever since.
Annie and Bart eventually escape the carnival and things go well for a while…until their money runs out. Bart suggests he take that traveling salesman gig he was considering earlier, but Annie has no interest in being a housewife. Her greed and impatience demands Bart be her partner in crime or she will leave him. Bart, desperate to keep Annie, relents. He fears hurting anyone but puts his concerns aside.
Annie and Bart’s crime spree culminates in the film’s most well known sequence. Lewis mounts a camera on greased rails inside a car, allowing us to ride along with Annie and Bart before, during, and after a bank heist in one long unbroken take. It’s an exhilarating scene. As they escape, Annie briefly looks over Bart’s shoulder, noting the coast is clear, her weary smile slowly contorting into a craven grin of maniacal enthusiasm. While Bart fears where all this is leading, Annie can barely contain the thrill she gets from extorting power and control with a gun.
It’s a moment of pure cinema, the scene verging on verite. Only Dall and Cummins, a few actors on the street, and the folks inside the bank were in on the gag. I can only imagine how shocking and visceral this trick must have been for audiences in 1950, when mounting a camera inside a car would have been unheard of. Lewis does use this trick a few more times in the film, but it’s this first instance that works the best.
Annie and Bart will go on to become wanted fugitives and plan one last spectacular heist to fund their retirement from crime. It doesn’t go well, they end up with the law hot on their heels, and Bart is forced to make a fateful choice between the love of his life or being true to himself. Either way, he loses. It’s a classic crime noir, right down to the final atmospheric scene: Annie and Bart, trapped and shrouded in fog, uncertainty and danger awaiting them in every direction. They’ve made their bed and now they must lie in it.
For John Dall, Gun Crazy was following up his most well known role: the murderous intellectual Brandon in Hitchcock’s Rope. Bart is a long way from the sly and devious Brandon. Dall gives Bart an almost childlike exuberance for life. He hasn’t completely grown up and he’s easily taken in by the worldly Annie, the woman of his dreams. It’s a good performance, although Dall tends towards the melodramatic with a nervous stutter and an expression that veers between a giddy smile and a furrowed brow. I liked him better in Rope, but he gives Bart an honesty that makes the character very sympathetic.
Cummins’ performance is much stronger in the opening, but a bit uneven in her later scenes. Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay softens Annie as the story progresses and throws her some clunky lines near the end (”I get so scared I can’t even think. I can just kill.”). The uneven characterization weakens some of the darker themes of the narrative’s first two acts. Regardless, Cummins comes on so strong in her early scenes that she held my attention with the sheer force of her personality for most of the movie.
Gun Crazy is a lot of fun, one of those movies you likely haven’t heard of that catches you by surprise with its thrilling visuals and propulsive storytelling. It’s Lewis’ best work, showcasing his clever style and marvelous sense of timing.
on Aug 16 2008 @ 9:31 am 1. Sam Juliano said …
I quite agree with this stellar consideration of a minor gem in the film noir arsenal, and I commend Joel on a very fine and astute piece of writing. I particularly appreciated his wonderful recapitulation of GUN CRAZY’s most brvura sequence, and agree that it’s “pure cinema.”
I have no issue for the 4/5 rating either. I think it’s dead-on myself. But there is a sizable contingent out there that believes the film to be a genre masterpiece, and they make a strong case.
I agree with Evan that Joel is extremely gifted, and should have his own site. But who am I to talk? I could never handle those vigours; I let all the others do the work. he he he.
on Aug 16 2008 @ 10:16 am 2. Luke Harrington said …
I guess I’m in the contingent that considers this one a masterpiece (though I admit it’s been years since I last watched it). In terms of style and technique, it’s wildly uneven, but I always considered that part of its unique, baroque charm. The Freudian sexual tension in this picture is dizzying. Definitely not a film for everyone, but judged by its own aesthetics, it’s brilliant.
Nice work Joel.
on Aug 16 2008 @ 4:52 pm 3. joel said …
Thanks for the kind words. I’m humbled by the talent on display for noir month and just happy to be a part of it.
I normally reserve a full rating of stars for those rare perfect movies and while I definitively love Gun Crazy, I thought it had some slight weaknesses and rated it accordingly. I’m hoping anyone that hasn’t seen it will give a look though. I really like the audacity of Lewis’ direction and the film is a great reference point for Bonnie and Clyde.
I’m posting from a mobile away from home so I’ll keep it short but thanks everyone. I’m in very impressive company here at Moviezeal.
on Aug 16 2008 @ 6:53 pm 4. films noir said …
Good review Joel of a movie that fails - for me - to live up to the hype.
I greatly admire Lewis’s The Big Combo (1955), but Gun Crazy is a lesser work. I am not sure it is even a film noir.
While there is a potent mix of sex and violence, layered with psycho-sexual motifs and fetishes, the narrative lacks tension and some scenes are very slow. Peggy Cummins is strong as the psychopathic urban gun-slinger, Laurie, but there is no depth or history to this woman who kills on reflex and with no remorse. The rest of the cast is ok only, and it is the director’s signature obsession with violence as a sexual psychosis that drives the story.
Gun Crazy is really a robbers-on-the run movie with noir pretensions, and these are only really evident in the climactic early morning shoot-out at the end in a fog-laden creek. Bart, Cummins’ partner in crime, achieves some sort of redemption by shooting Laurie dead before she can kill two of his un-armed child-hood friends, one a deputy sheriff, who approach them pleading that they give themselves up, after which he is killed in a hail of police bullets. There is a tragic irony here: the man who is not a killer kills his reason for being.
The much-acclaimed long take inside the get-away car before, during, and after a bank robbery, is innovative for the period, but the action is flat until after the heist and they are pursued by the cops.
Low and high camera angles are used by Lewis to express mood and suggest sexual undercurrents, but if they operate on the audience, do so only unconsciously. While much has also been made of the ‘amour fou’ of the two protagonists, it is more an instinctual sexual attraction that is sustained on Laurie’s part by the sexual gratification that she achieves in their life crime.
Interesting historically and although it transcends its b origins, Gun Crazy is not a great movie. It’s cult status has more to do with the perversity of the theme and the performance of Cummins, than its merits as a film.
on Aug 16 2008 @ 8:15 pm 5. joel said …
You know, I was stressing about just how noir Gun Crazy really is, but after reading Sam’s entry I felt vindicated. I agree the movie isn’t consistently noir in visual style and it doesn’t feature any private dicks, but I’d argue that the I’ll-fated love affair and bleak ending are classic noir elements. I’d gladly argue in more detail, but typing on this cell is a nightmare.
on Aug 16 2008 @ 11:21 pm 6. films noir said …
A film can be a noir for any number of reasons, and on occasion simply because you can identify a noir sensibility, but on the other hand, you can identify noir elements in a movie but still conclude that it is not noir.
In the case of Gun Crazy, I agree there are noir elements as I identified in my earlier comment, but the gestalt for me is less than noir, as it owes too much to the gangster flick of the 30’s, and is intellectually shallow.
I agree that it’s perversity makes its hip like Tarantino is hip, but at bottom like Tarantino, it is an insubstantial pastiche that leaves me feeling empty and rather grubby.
In any event, I am swimming against the tide here: Borde & Chaumeton, Godard, Naremore, Silver, and others wax lyrical about it. Though I suspect there is some intellectual ‘chic’ at play and, if I may venture to say, a certain posturing or even hubris on the part of such pundits.
on Aug 17 2008 @ 12:34 am 7. Sam Juliano said …
Indeed, “films noir.” Joel’s position (and my own for that matter) is that GUN CRAZY has noir elements that by their definition define the genre. As Joel cites: the ill fated love affair and bleak elements are quintessentially noir, falling in line with a number of the genre’s most celebrated entries. The film, as you know, has been released in that terrific Volume 1 Film Noir set, which is graciously being awarded as the prize in a Movie Zeal conest being run by Evan, and all studies of the genre always place at the forefront of this ‘movement.’
But you admit ‘you are swimming against the tide.’ As always though, your knowledge, judgement and passion for this style are expressed in your customary erudite and discerning style.
on Aug 17 2008 @ 3:12 pm 8. Craig Kennedy said …
Nicely done review Joel. I’m a fan of Gun Crazy also. I think the flaws from its low budget are made up for by the hard scrabble attitude with which the same low budget informs it.
I have to disagree with Films Noir to a point. Perhaps Gun Crazy is neat noir fit and perhaps its not, but to say it has noir pretentions makes it sound like noir was a defined genre at the time these films were made instead of a conventient categorization arrived at by later critics and historians to describe a related group of films. It’s not like we’re talking about westerns or musicals here.
Noir has wide ranging definitions depending on who is doing the defining. So wide ranging that sometimes it’s almost a meaningless categorization used for marketing DVDs.
Gun Crazy is certainly in the noir orbit with two key elements, a kind of femme fatale and a flawed but generally decent man dragged down by his own libido. Even if it isn’t a perfect fit, it takes nothing away from it being an edgy, visceral and in many ways terrific film.
(apologies if I’m a late arrival to this whole noir discussion and covering previously worn territory…I’ve been indisposed)
on Aug 17 2008 @ 4:58 pm 9. Alexander Coleman said …
Very good review, Joel… I actually prefer Lewis’s The Big Combo to Gun Crazy, but I like the rawness of this picture rather well. Peggy Cummins is quite terrific; this is one case where I think “softening” her works in the film’s favor, as she’s portrayed as someone who almost can’t control herself. I think that speaks to the thematic current of the film: John Dall’s character controls himself to the point of finding himself unable to do what the woman of his dreams wants him to, and then finally when he has to, he kills her, making the ultimate choice of the film.
Seeing this with a huge crowd at the Castro is something of a treat. There are a lot of howler-worthy lines, both great and kind of overbaked, but it all sort of works in the film’s favor. Lewis later said he knew he was making a messy, somewhat unsightly melodrama. I like how he said he had the two leads act like a couple of dogs in heat when they meet each other, haha.
on Aug 17 2008 @ 5:28 pm 10. films noir said …
Craig “noir pretensions” is intended to be read figuratively…