Moving at breakneak pace, Joseph H. Lewis’ film-noir Gun
Crazy (1950) is best known for its stupendous visual flair that’s considered to
have set the platform for Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) and Arthur Penn’s
Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Similar to obscure yet fantastic noirs This Gun for
Hire (1942, by Frank Tuttle) and Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945, Edgar G.
Ulmer), Gun Crazy isn’t much polished or refined like A-list noirs from John
Huston, Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, etc. There aren’t cigarette smokes circling poetically,
no dark alleys, rain-slicked streets, and elaborate sets. But still Gun Crazy’s
exhilaratingly lurid presentation of psycho-sexual themes plus the roller-coaster
ride of plot mechanics makes it one of the unique and compulsively watchable
film-noir.
Gun Crazy was director Joseph H. Lewis’ best work, using
every brilliant visual tricks at his command though working on a very
low-budget. The script was written by Dalton Trumbo (since it was the Hollywood
black-list era, Millard Kaufman was used as his front; the credit restored to
Trumbo long after he died) and MacKinlay Kantor (‘The Best Years of Our Lives’).
There isn’t much when it comes to plot though. It’s a familiar tale of
star-crossed lovers, flaunting guns and on-the-run from law. But Lewis’ vision
had a spectacular gritty tone which tested the limits and taboos of Hays Code
Hollywood - the rigorous censorship guidelines enforced until 1968 which was
then replaced by MPAA film rating system.
Like every
protagonist in film-noir universe, the primary players in Gun Crazy possess an
unhealthy obsession. For Bart Tare (John Dall), guns are the thing he’s got to
have. As a teenager, Bart (Russ Tamblyn) is caught stealing a revolver from a gun shop window display. In the ensuing court
session, we get a glimpse into Bart’s strong fixation for guns. Bart’s sister
agrees that stealing the revolver was a deplorable thing. But she assures the
judge that her brother would never hurt another person or life with it. Bart’s
pals too assert the same, narrating events from past to reminisce the boy’s reluctance
to shoot at a live target. Bart is sent to reform school and later does his
military duty. Now he’s a lanky young man with a great collection of firearms.
Bart shoots at some empty bottles with his boyhood pals – Clyde and Dave – and
they go to a gun show at the local carnival.
There Bart meets the swaggering and
beautiful sharp-shooter, Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins). The carnival
shooting contest between Bart and Annie implies eroticism and a sense of
foreplay. Their love and lust for guns and each other makes them hit the road.
Of course, they don’t live happily-ever-after. The fiery ‘American dream’
catches up with Annie and she wants a life of ‘action and guts’. Annie slowly
persuades Bart to embrace the life of crime in order to make some quick money
(the film’s original title was ‘Deadly is the Female’).
Unlike
Bart, who is psychologically incapable of harming others, Annie wouldn’t think
a minute before shooting her way through obstacles. The sensuous glow in her
eyes gets replaced with wild, manic energy when going through dynamic world of
violence (“I told you I’m a bad girl, didn’t I?” croons Annie). The couple
hold-up banks and soon their infamous legacy catches the attention of every law
official across the nation. Eventually, Annie’s hearty calls for action
transitions from grand larceny to murder. Nevertheless, Bart couldn’t let go of
her and their downward spiral towards damnation is unstoppable.
Gun Crazy must be watched to relish director Lewis’
application of minimal resources to create astoundingly effective set-pieces.
Take the bank heist sequence shot in a single take: the camera stays inside the
car and the robbery happens off-screen. Yet, Lewis pulls off great tension from
the scene. There’s also a sense of spontaneity to the sequence, right from the
couple’s worry over finding the perfect parking space to Bart shooting up the
tires of the police-cars. I also loved the final swamp scene, whose budget
conscious set-up worked more brilliantly than a conventional staging. The
pursuers are cloaked in the mist with only chaotic sounds heard in the
background. It creates a fine sense of discomfort and through mesmerizing
close-up shots of vexed Annie, Lewis strongly spells-out her fate. The
misfortune of criminal life is effectively conveyed in the scene, Bart and
Annie goes dancing. The lovers’ tight embrace in the dancing floor is suddenly
replaced with them running in panic through the dark streets to evade the
lawmen.
The dialogues maintains the hard-boiled tone (“We go
together, like guns and ammunition!”, muses Bart). Thematically, Gun Crazy has
all the generalized form of Freudian psychoanalysis and psycho-sexual behavior. There’s collection of phallic imagery and
implicit erotic displays. It flirts a bit with misogyny, presenting a woman who
actively lures a man and causes his fall. And, all these elements are presented
with a touch of gritty, pulpiness of a B-movie which can either entertain you
or push you to interpret its political incorrectness and ‘vulgarization’.
I was thoroughly engrossed by the imagery and the rapid
pace, despite the supposed thematic flaws. For all the accusation of misogyny,
ultimately bad-ass femme fatale characters of film-noir does have its appeal
more than the idealized or prettified women, played by Greer Garson in ‘Mrs.
Miniver’, Bette Davis in ‘Dark Victory’, etc. Both the central performances
from Dall and Peggy Cummins are riveting and dynamic. Peggy’s Annie is one of
the baddest of all film-noir female characters. There’s something animalistic
and psychotic in her eyes that adds to the allure of this highly stylized piece
of cinema.
Altogether, Gun Crazy (87 minutes) is a bewitching tale of criminal
lovers with a stupendous visual flair that takes us on a roller-coaster ride.
It’s one of the classic works of film-noir, possessing all its gratifying pulpy
sensibilities.
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