Gun Crazy
The screenplay for “Gun Crazy” starts like a number of “juvenile delinquent melodramas” that came out in the 1950s before turning into a hard edged crime drama. The main character, Bart Tare, is first seen in juvenile court as his older sister, Ruby (Anabel Shaw), is in front of a judge, trying to advocate for her brother staying with her. Their parents have passed, and she’s about to get married, but Bart has a fixation on guns that borders on psychosis. He is sent away to boarding school.
As an adult, Bart returns home. He has been with the army, and was doing firearm training, but now, he wants to do something else with his life, and make some money. There’s an effortlessness in the screenplay by MacKinlay Kantor and Millard Kaufman (as well as Douglas Trumbo) in how it moves from being one type of film to another that is impressive. It is, ultimately, a crime melodrama, and that starts to kick in when Bart and his friends go to a carnival that is in town, and they see gun artist Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins), and Bart is fixated immediately. Bart gets a job at the carnival, and he and Annie’s relationship blooms. They quit after an argument with their boss, and have to figure out a way to get money. Robbery becomes their method of cash acquisition.
“Gun Crazy,” directed by Joseph H. Lewis, is another film from “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies,” that I have been wanting to watch over the years. There’s a straightforward nature to this film that a lot of film noir lacks; this feels more like a precursor to films such as “Bonnie & Clyde” and “Badlands” than a successor to “The Maltese Falcon” and “Detour.” Here, the moral lines are pretty plainly drawn, although Bart doesn’t feel as out of control and filled with blood lust as Annie does. Theirs is a relationship drawn on passion and the thrill of the moment, not really a deep affection for one another. We don’t really learn a lot about the characters, and who they are, as their relationship- and crime spree- continues; outside of the first scenes before they meet, we don’t really get to know who Bart as an adult is, and Annie is virtually unknown, other than her being the firecracker between the two. That dynamic is compelling, and the performances by John Dall (as adult Bart) and Cummins are great, and is what drives “Gun Crazy.” Lewis creates some thrilling images, especially as they are chased after one robbery, and then as they escape into the forest at the end. This is a bit of an off-beat example of film noir from the era, but it’s a damn good one.
