One of the most entertaining vintage film noirs is Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun
Crazy (1949), featuring a dangerous couple on the run. From adolescence,
Bart (John Dall) is obsessed with guns. He is caught by authorities at a young
age trying to rip off pistols at a hardware store and finds himself thrown into
an institution for juvenile delinquents. He becomes a completely aimless adult
until he meets carnival sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) who
steals his heart.
Annie is the classic femme fatale, a woman who manipulates Bart into surrendering
his morals and surrendering his common sense. She has him wrapped around her
finger, and seduces him to join her on a robbery spree in which she believes
will make them rich. They become bank robbers, barreling across the country
in a series of stolen vehicles and stolen identities. They acquire riches but
the riches are transient, and they find themselves doing bank job after bank
job, never getting enough ahead so they can retire.
Gun Crazy is the classic film noir case where the man is seduced
into doing bad things against his better judgment only because he wants to appease
the woman whom he believes is good but is not. Annie is bad, but she is a personification
of excitement. But the excitement goes too far, and the violence becomes a never-ending
nightmare. Bart vows never to use his gun as a mortal weapon, but Annie is a
natural born killer. Bart’s weakness is that he believes he can convince
his woman to use non-violence but can’t admit to himself that she is really
an embodiment of evil. Annie is all about greed and remorselessness.
There are a number of remarkable scenes in Gun Crazy, but the
most famous is an unbroken shot that runs three-and-a-half minutes: Bart and
Annie drive into town to rob a bank. They look for a parking spot. They find
one near the bank entrance. Bart jumps out and goes inside to do the job. A
police officer shows up on a sidewalk. Annie gets out of the car in order to
distract the officer until Bart gets out from the bank. Annie restrains the
officer, and with Bart, jumps back into the car and rides out of town.
This is a stylish way of shooting a bank robbery scene. In a way, this is a
movie that at its time was working outside the rules of convention. As viewed
today, it is still startling and fresh, and has an alarming curiosity towards
malevolence. The journey of Bart and Annie nevertheless ends in doom, with the
two characters slogging their way through a swamp to evade the authorities.
What’s good is that it is an action picture with substance. It wasn’t
uncommon for B-movies in those days to be made on low money but with high creativity.
Gun Crazy was a forebear to Bonnie and Clyde
(1967), and a possible influence to other road movies.
The filmmakers placed a camera mount on back of the car for many of the driving
sequences, much like Thelma and Louise (1991) and Natural
Born Killers (1994). Gun Crazy is not nearly as intense
as those movies, but it is a really good suspense melodrama.
The DVD extras are virtually non-existent except for a commentary by film noir
expert and critic Glenn Erickson. Thankfully, it is a really good commentary.
Erickson has a breathless knowledge on the director and actors and is a commanding
specialist on film noir. He has good information on all of the movie’s
key scenes, including that three-and-a-half minute shot, the actors’ monologues,
the locations, etc. His commentary is a welcome companion to this solid movie.
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