14. GUN CRAZY
How nice is it to go into a film that is praised in hyperbolic terms and find that it is even more wonderful than promised?
Bart Tare (John Dall) is a genial, even goofy young man with a pronounced obsession with firearms. Said obsession set him on course to a stint in reform school, followed by four years in the army. Despite his penchant for guns, he's nevertheless averse to the idea of harming any living creature.
This aversion is sorely tested when he collides with one of film noir's drop-dead sexiest femmes fatale, a comely sharpshooter from the UK named Anne Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins). Bart manages to outshoot Anne in her carnival sideshow, and is quickly hired as a fellow performer. This is much to the chagrin of Anne's manager Packett, who, jilted, fires them both from the sideshow. Anne sees this as a ticket to better things, and Bart semi-reluctantly engages in a glorious life of crime with her.
Much hilarity ensues - the thing's packed with palpable sexuality, fierce (even for now) violence, deliciously fiery dialogue, and the feeling that these two nutty kids are headed straight to their doom - but the movie's packed from start to finish with virtuosic touches by director Joseph H. Lewis. So many films seem to have spun out from GUN CRAZY - obvious choices include other lovers on the run films (BONNIE AND CLYDE, BADLANDS, etc.), but the various abstractions throughout seem to anticipate less mainstream films (our heroes seem to wind up in the same swamp the escapees traverse in DOWN BY LAW; the numerous long takes employed at various points offer a powerful you-are-there feeling exploited later by, among many others, directors of the French nouvelle vague).
But Lewis' main artistic coup may have been the casting of his leads. Both actors were Hollywood outsiders to a degree: Cummins was a British actress dividing time between Hollywood and London, and Dall was a homosexual in America in the late 40s (cast by Lewis as he was certain that Dall's otherness would inform his character - Hitchcock had a similar strategy in mind when casting ROPE). The casting paid off: following Lewis' frank and explicit directions, Cummins and Dall crafted palpable sexual chemistry. There's never any question why Bart would happily give up everything and run off with so clearly unhinged a damn as Anne, and yet theirs is not the one-way, callously exploitative relationship familiar to film noir; Anne is already an explosive cocktail that needs only the love of a kindred damaged spirit to touch off.
There's something tangible and dizzying about their love for firearms and one another, something genuinely affirming about the heat between them. The story of Bart and Anne, flinging headlong down a highway to hell, hand in hand with guns blazing, is the very stuff of cinema.
Bart Tare (John Dall) is a genial, even goofy young man with a pronounced obsession with firearms. Said obsession set him on course to a stint in reform school, followed by four years in the army. Despite his penchant for guns, he's nevertheless averse to the idea of harming any living creature.
This aversion is sorely tested when he collides with one of film noir's drop-dead sexiest femmes fatale, a comely sharpshooter from the UK named Anne Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins). Bart manages to outshoot Anne in her carnival sideshow, and is quickly hired as a fellow performer. This is much to the chagrin of Anne's manager Packett, who, jilted, fires them both from the sideshow. Anne sees this as a ticket to better things, and Bart semi-reluctantly engages in a glorious life of crime with her.
Much hilarity ensues - the thing's packed with palpable sexuality, fierce (even for now) violence, deliciously fiery dialogue, and the feeling that these two nutty kids are headed straight to their doom - but the movie's packed from start to finish with virtuosic touches by director Joseph H. Lewis. So many films seem to have spun out from GUN CRAZY - obvious choices include other lovers on the run films (BONNIE AND CLYDE, BADLANDS, etc.), but the various abstractions throughout seem to anticipate less mainstream films (our heroes seem to wind up in the same swamp the escapees traverse in DOWN BY LAW; the numerous long takes employed at various points offer a powerful you-are-there feeling exploited later by, among many others, directors of the French nouvelle vague).
But Lewis' main artistic coup may have been the casting of his leads. Both actors were Hollywood outsiders to a degree: Cummins was a British actress dividing time between Hollywood and London, and Dall was a homosexual in America in the late 40s (cast by Lewis as he was certain that Dall's otherness would inform his character - Hitchcock had a similar strategy in mind when casting ROPE). The casting paid off: following Lewis' frank and explicit directions, Cummins and Dall crafted palpable sexual chemistry. There's never any question why Bart would happily give up everything and run off with so clearly unhinged a damn as Anne, and yet theirs is not the one-way, callously exploitative relationship familiar to film noir; Anne is already an explosive cocktail that needs only the love of a kindred damaged spirit to touch off.
There's something tangible and dizzying about their love for firearms and one another, something genuinely affirming about the heat between them. The story of Bart and Anne, flinging headlong down a highway to hell, hand in hand with guns blazing, is the very stuff of cinema.