Always gratifying to hear about a film for a long time that’s considered a classic, like Gun Crazy (1950) is considered a classic of film noir, and when you finally watch it, it’s so clear and apparent how great the movie is. Yes, this is a classic. Why did it take me so long to watch it?
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis with an uncredited script by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo along with MacKinlay Kantor who wrote the original short story, there’s clear expressionistic style when we see the young Bart Tare (played by Russ Tamblyn) break a shop window at night, and steal a revolver. Caught by the law, his obsession with guns is explained in a courtroom hearing, an obsession that precludes killing anything, but is more charged and fixated on the technology itself and being a dead-eye shot. Played as an adult by John Dall (who I recognised from Hitchcock’s Rope), with time in both reformatory school and the army served, Bart is a gee-shucks upstanding citizen who visits a carnival and locks eyes with Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins), wearing a cowgirl outfit and displaying her amazing skill at shooting balloons from a spinning wheel and cigarettes from an assistant’s mouth. Sexual attraction is reorientated in a sharp shooting demonstration between Bart and Laurie, and before you know it, Bart has joined up the carnival to be closer to Laurie.
Eventually, Laurie’s femme fatale desire for a greater life and riches leads them to planning robberies and heists. It’s Bonnie and Clyde before Bonnie And Clyde. Impressive to realise that with the sunglasses and trench coat looks that Bart and Laurie sport, that this was a clear influence on the French New Wave and ultimately back around again to the New Hollywood types influenced by Godard and Truffaut in turn (such as Arthur Penn’s Bonnie And Clyde). When one heist is shot in a long take from the back of the car that Bart and Laurie are driving, it is a spectacular sequence for how vanguard and inventive it is from this filmmaking period, while being very simple, a stark contrast to the common practice (even in other scenes from this film) of using rear-projection screens when people are driving in a car. Dall and Cummins are great as the gun-obsessed lovers, particularly the sultry and fierce Cummins, and it sidesteps a little bit of the film noir conventions by demonstrating the passion and love between them, even if they disagree over the taking of a human life. Brilliant cinematography from Russell Harlan with beautiful use of close-ups, angles and expressionism throughout.
Purchased a copy from Apple. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 