Gun Crazy (1950) For a blogger on classic films, we're long, long overdue getting around to this one, now considered one of those movies that every buff needs to see before they die......
In this case, all the critics, pundits and film gurus are right - everyone with even a passing interest in movies should see this one.......it's one of the best examples of pure cinema ever committed to celluloid.
A movie like 'Gun Crazy' is why people went crazy for the movies in the first place.
You won't find any monumental themes or earthshaking revelations about the human condition here......just a primal, simple story, the same one done by other similar films, ranging from Nicholas Ray's 1948 "They Live By Night" to Arthur Penn's 1967 "Bonnie And Clyde".
Two young adults, wildly in love and living wildly outside the law.......careening through a doomed life of crime and murder until the forces of justice finally hunt them down.
And they're not kidding about the 'Gun Crazy' title either....
Bart Tare (John Dall) has come of age after his obsession with guns earned him a childhood and adolescence in reform school. Newly released from years in the army, he encounters ace carnival sharpshooter Annie Laure Starr (Peggy Cummins) a cold hearted sociopath who recognizes in Bart a fellow restless spirit.
Romantic sparks strike like fireworks, but when the lovebirds run out of money, they hit they road as armed robbers, starting with diners and gas stations and then working their way up to banks and company payrolls.
That's the whole movie for you, but what's riveting here is director Joseph H. Lewis's command of cinematic visions that keep the film at a lightspeed pace and perfectly calibrated camerawork and staging.
At every key moment in the film, Lewis instinctively knows when and where to fill the screen with extreme close-ups for maximum impact. 'Gun Crazy' practically dares you take your eyes off it......and you won't, because you wouldn't dare miss a thing.
What people who've seen it well remember (as do we), is Lewis's brilliantly innovative technique in shooting the couple's first big bank robbery and their subsequent hair-raising escapades.
Lewis and his crew hollowed out the back of the getaway car to make room for the camera....so the the nervous, frenzied couple's explosively violent robberies give you a literal backseat driver's view of the desperate crimes in progress. (And in 1950, nobody had seen anything quite like this before.....)
These sequences add even more propulsive immediacy to a film that's already tearing along at a fever pitch. As for the leads, John Dall does well enough as the firearms fan torn apart by his reticence to kill any living thing and his passion for his psychopathic partner. Cummins bests him though, taking full command of her scenes, playing a fundamentally emotionless woman who sometimes yearns for the kind of humanity that she'll never feel because it's beyond her grasp.
Co-written by the then blacklisted Dalton Trumbo (who used writer Millard Kaufman as a front for the film's credits, "Gun Crazy" remains now and forever as one of BQ's 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS. No one who visits this blog should miss it.......
For a great companion to this film, treat yourself to "Trumbo" (2015), which covers Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) and his blacklist career pumping out other"B" movies for the low budget producers of "Gun Crazy", the King brothers....(with a brief riotous turn by John Goodman as Frank King.)
No comments:
Post a Comment