Is That A Gun In Your Pocket? Gun Crazy 1949

I watched Gun Crazy the other night with a friend who had never seen it. This had to be my 5th time viewing this great classic film noir couple on the lam movie that was made in 1949. Over the credits we see an empty back lot street in the rain. Soon a young boy enters the scene, and what do you know it’s a young adorable Russ Tamblyn (credited here as Rusty) who throws a rock through the window of a pawn shop window and steals a gun. This is a nice way to open a film. Its both beautiful and odd because of the strange perspective that makes Tamblyn appear bigger and out of proportion with the set. The director Joseph Lewis also slips in a subtle crucifixion image of him with his arms outstretched and his back against the broken store window as the cops approach. Then things move quickly. A court scene where his sister, teacher and chums testify about how good rusty really is accompanied. by flashbacks showing Rusty’s “unnatural” attraction to guns but also his aversion to hurting anyone after he kills a little chick when he is really very young. The kindly judge played by Morris Carnovsky feels for the kid, as we all do but still sentences him to 4 years in reform school. Time really does pass quickly especially in the movies and the young Bart has soon grown up, and is now played by John Dall who gives a fascinating performance. Back home he soon meets up with his old chums and they go out for a couple of brewskis and to a carnival, (there is a lovely traveling shot of them moving along viewing the side show attractions) and Lewis nicely fills his scene up with lots of extras also taking in the shows. The friends soon wind up in a sharp shooting gun show where the star is Annie Laurie Starr played by Peggy Cummins who gives an amazing performance as the tough gun toting wild gal with a past who quickly entrances Dall with her shooting skills and her sexiness. He decides to enter a shooting contest against her, which is part of the show, and wins. Sex and guns and guns and sex come front and center, and soon Dall has joined the show and falls strong and fast for Cummins. At first It’s hard to read her character, because she’s tough as nails, but also has a gooey soft center. They quit the show over quarrels with the manager of the act and they quickly decide to marry and a hurried honeymoon montage soon follows with B movie inventiveness that might bring giggles to some viewers. Somewhere along the way, they run out of money, and out of the blue Annie Laurie brings up the idea to Dall that they should become cheap thieves and bank robbers. Bart hems and haws and Dall plays him somewhat weak and tentative, which he is throughout the film. Supposedly Lewis said that he cast Dall in the role because he wanted a homosexual to play him, which Dall was. I don’t know why the actor cast had to be “homosexual” was it because Lewis perceived gays as being weak and passive? Bart who is head over heels in love with Annie Laurie (and Dall is very good and believable conveying this) soon gives in to her crazy scheme when Annie Laurie threatens to leave him high and dry if he doesn’t go along with her plans. Now we come to the first of two superb sequences that rank very high in cinema B movie/Film Noir history. Lewis puts his camera in the car with them as they drive in to a small town to rob a bank, and keeps it there as they make their botched getaway. Done in one take, improvised and filmed pretty much on the fly with no one except the principals in on it. This is a sequence that everyone talks about when discussing the film along with the other famous robbery scene, the Armour Meat packing plant robbery, which has influenced countess heist films since. Planned down to the tinniest detail by Annie Laurie and Bart, (this is another terrific sequence, that Lewis shot from above as Dall & Cummins go over the layout of the plant that is drawn on an open newspaper page). This is the turning point of the film and their lives and it’s also where I stop writing about the plot. The script was taken from a short story that was published in the Saturday Evening Post by MacKinley Kantor and the credit for the screenplay is by him and the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo who was the front for Millard Kaufman. Also superb is the cinematography by Russell Harlan and the full supporting cast is rich with many familiar character actors. The best film of 1949.