Gun Crazy
From Free net encyclopedia
Current revision
Gun Crazy (originally released as Deadly is the Female) is a 1949 film noir film that is considered the forerunner to the film Bonnie and Clyde. It stars Peggy Cummins, John Dall and Berry Kroeger. The B-movie was directed by Joseph H. Lewis.
Contents |
Plot
A wild young couple with a love of guns (she was a trick shooter in a Wild West show) and a knack for violence go on a crime spree. Image:Guncrazy.jpg The movie was written by MacKinlay Kantor and, in the credits, Millard Kaufman, who is in fact Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo. In an interview with Danny Peary (Cult Movies, New York: Delacorte Press, 1981), director Lewis revealed his instructions to actors John Dall (Bart) and Peggy Cummins (Laurie Starr):
I told John, "Your cock's never been so hard," and I told Peggy, "You're a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don't let him have it in a hurry. Keep him waiting." That's exactly how I talked to them and I turned them loose. I didn't have to give them more directions.
The bank heist sequence was shot entirely in one take, with no one outside the principal actors and people inside the bank aware that a movie was being filmed.
Critical reaction
The film today, although a B-movie, is considered a classic film noir. Eddie Muller writing in the book Dark City praised the films pace:
"Joseph H. Lewis's direction is propulsive, possessed of a confident, vigorous simplicity that all the frantic editing and visual pyrotechnics of the filmmaking progeny never quite surpassed. Bonnie and Clyde may have been a better movie than Gun Crazy, but nothing in it matched the breathtaking four-minute single take in which Cummings and Dahl rob a small-town bank."
The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
External links
Reference
- Muller, Eddie, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir