GUN CRAZY

GUN CRAZY (1949)

Starring Peggy Cummins, John Dall; dir: Joseph H.Lewis

Explosive, breakneck, combustible and sexy, Gun Crazy is a roller coaster ride with more ups than downs - a vicarious dive into sin that crackles with a kinetic energy that grabs you by the throat from the credits and never lets up.

In five decades Hollywood churned out no less than six features modelled on the Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow 'legend'. Fritz Lang got in first with his utterly remorseless You Only Live Once (1937). For whatever reason, the 1940s doubled up with Gun Crazy and 1948's They Live By Night, which inevitably are always compared. There was the little known cheapie The Bonnie Parker Story in 1958 before Arthur Penn's seemingly definitive Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. Then in 1974 Robert Altman added Thieves Like Us - long on period atmosphere, but little else.

Except in the broadest schematic sense - crime as a His-and-Hers partnership - Gun Crazy doesn't echo the svelte cool of the Beatty/Dunaway vehicle that dominates our memories. But it is certainly the best remembered of Joseph H.Lewis' films, including his later The Big Combo.

Gun Crazy is justly renowned for innovation within the constraints of a low budget. The famous scene is the bank heist (later restaged by Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs) which is shot from the back seat of the getaway Cadillac using a then-revolutionary portable sound system throughout its two mile duration! (Interestingly, They Live By Night displayed a similar, but less dramatic, use of in-car camera for a bank robbery scene, possibly inspiring Lewis' more bravura treatment.)

Besides this, there's very effective use of p.o.v. shots from cars throughout, like winding mountain roads which are sensationally vertiginous and dizzyfying! And the scene in the meat freezer warehouse where the camera tracks them as they run through hanging carcasses is a visual classic, redolent of other incongruous noir industrial setpieces like the mannequins in Kubrick's Killer's Kiss (1955).

In the second street location robbery scene (where Cummins nearly guns down an unarmed pursuer) it is clear that the large crowd that has gathered on the sidewalk thinks it's a real robbery they're witnessing, as Lewis didn't bother to get permission or tell anybody! This could almost be a metaphor for the film's stripped down focus on action over motivation.

Peggy Cummins is incredible. As John Dall's character does, you love her despite herself (and her lack of self-control, morals and scruples!) since, despite everything, she seems an angelic kid being naughty, not nasty. Dall provides a counterbalance with his reflective manner and portrays the conflicted emotions of marksman, accomplice, lover and pacifist so well that they breathe with humanity. The scene after the meat packing plant robbery, where they can't bring themselves to drive away in separate cars because their love is too strong, is a corker that's both hilarious and outlandish! Yet by contrast, the tenderness of their doomed finale is quite powerful. But until those final moments Gun Crazy is not nearly as Romeo and Juliet-like as They Live By Night.

Gun Crazy is a film singled out as being a precursor to the French New Wave and an influence on Godard - Breathless especially. Controversy surrounds the film's script, often credited to blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, whose unemployability enabled 'poverty row' producers Frank and Maurice King to hire him at bargain rates. The alternate writing credit to Millard Kaufman is cited by film historians as a 'front' for Dalton, one of the original 'Hollywood Ten' who went to jail under McCarthyism.

Thankfully the (pseudo) Freudian establishing motive reflected in its title (before it was reissued as Deadly Is The Female [!]) is quickly dispensed with in the gleeful, headlong rush into pure mayhem that has made Gun Crazy one of the most memorable B-thrillers ever.

Roger Westcombe's own website is at: http://www.bighousefilm.com/

For additional material on 'Gun Crazy' and the other films of Joseph H. Lewis, the following articles can be found on the 'Senses of Cinema' website:
Adrian Martin, ‘Violently Happy: Gun Crazy’ http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/10/guncrazy.html
Robert Mundy, ‘Joseph H. Lewis Filmography’ http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/10/lewisfilmo.html
William D. Routt, ‘Better than Good – A Tribute to Joseph H. Lewis’
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/10/lewistribute.html
Rick Thompson, ‘Joseph H. Lewis’
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/10/lewis.html
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