Dir. Joseph H. Lewis, US, 1950, 87 mins
Cast: Peggy Cummins, John Dall
Review by Chris Regan
‘I've been kicked around all my life, and from now on, I'm gonna start kicking back.' These are the words of Annie Laurie Starr (Cummins), a carnival sharpshooter who falls for local gun enthusiast Bart Tare (Dall) and turns him to a life of crime in Joseph H. Lewis's cult masterpiece Gun Crazy.
Based on a short story by MacKinlay Kantor Gun Crazy follows the two outlaws on a crime spree that rapidly spirals out of control. As the authorities start to close in, Bart and Laurie realise too late the consequences of living outside the law and plan one final heist to set them up for life.
Much of Gun Crazy's reputation comes from Lewis's well-documented technical innovation, the most famous example being the bank job shot entirely from the back seat of a car. Lewis removed seventeen pages of script which detailed the robbery step by step and took a chance on a new technique that enabled him to film it in one single, four-minute take. It remains one of the most tense and well-executed heist scenes in cinema history despite the fact that we never set foot inside the bank. Instead we sit in the car with Laurie, experiencing the suspense and excitement of the robbery first-hand.
The second major heist in the film, a payroll robbery at a meatpacking plant, is equally well executed but here it is the script that makes the sequence work. There is a realism to Bart and Laurie's lifestyle not usually found in crime films of this type. Each job is meticulously planned in a way that makes practical sense, but no matter how much they steal they cannot escape the fact that swapping working for a living for a life on the run is not everything they wanted it to be. The planning and build-up to the payroll heist, with the two of them taking regular jobs in the plant, gives us a glimpse of how things could have been for Bart and Laurie – one of many visual and narrative juxtapositions Lewis gives us throughout the film showing just how fragile the concept of a normal life can be.
Gun Crazy is certainly enhanced by the performances of the two leads who manage to make the characters likeable whilst also highlighting the more ambiguous elements of both. On the surface, this does appear to be a story of a vulnerable young man led astray by a woman who wants the world and is happy to kill to get it. But despite the original title of the film, Deadly is the Female, and Cummins often abrasive performance there is a raw, uncompromising love story at the heart of Gun Crazy. As Bart says ‘We go together, Annie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together.'
Much more than a cult oddity or lesson in cinematic innovation, Gun Crazy is an ambitious road movie that takes us through the small towns and lonely roads of post-war USA in an exploration of what happens when you try to steal the American dream. As effective and powerful today as it always has been, Gun Crazy is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in crime cinema.
|
