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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Nice work Joel.

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.