darbski
***SPOILERS*** I'm not sure about the spoilers, given as many reviews that have gone before me; what the hey... The first time I saw this was when I was a kid - on the late late show (compared to today, it was tame; about midnight); I remember something just made me uncomfortable. It took quite a while to figure out (I don't think it showed for another twenty five years) what it was. I'll break it now - - It's the concept of Annie Oakley and Frank Butler gone bad. I mean, the what-ifs are a nasty possibility of two expert sharpshooters loose with little conscience. Still pretty spooky, ain't it? Annie Get Your Gun, indeed. deranged murderers as a musical?... It's a 10. p.s. the girl was really sexy; a MUST for a noir film.
rodrig58
An excellent action-love story-drama, with absolutely unknown actors. The only known name is Russ Tamblyn, who has a tiny role as a child, being the main male
character when he was a teenager. Peggy Cummins and John Dall are impeccable.
All the actors are very good, excellent direction, solid script. Filmed very dynamically for the time it was made. Very good!
MissSimonetta
The postwar era was ripe with cinematic outcasts, characters who either struggled to conform to all-American ideals of normalcy or outright rebelled. One thinks of James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, Marlon Brando in The Wild One, or the young lovers in They Live By Night. Gun Crazy (1950) is a great example of this tradition as well, a violent and erotically-charged B-noir about married couple Bart Tate and Annie Laurie Starr who commit serial bank robberies and obsess over firearms.Being a B-noir, Gun Crazy is allowed to be a little more rough and experimental. There is a stunning scene shot from the back of a car, for instance, one that felt like something out of a Tarantino movie. The action scenes are great too. The main couple's obsession with violence and one another has a sense of amour fou; their love is destructive and yet also tragic, despite their unsavory natures.Annie Laurie Starr is about the best example of a femme fatale out there, perhaps because she is the most complex of them during the classic period. She is alarmingly amoral in her regard for human life, yet she is not a simple seductress out to conquer saps. You get the feeling she does love Bart, but neither she nor he can bear the traditional postwar dream of a stable job, three kids, and a picket fence. They are restless rebels, driven compulsively to seek greater and greater thrills. There is a fatalistic bent to their lives, as is common with most noir.The film never suggests that it would have been better for the lovers to live a domestic life. Annie is compared with Bart's hapless sister, who starts the movie as a content young bride and ends up in a dumpy house, burdened by several children and a respectable husband who rarely bothers to come home it seems. She is all but a prisoner in the domestic space, making Annie's revulsion to such a life all the more understandable, even if her attraction to violence isn't.
Michael O'Keefe
Joseph H. Lewis directs this tale of a gun-obsessed twosome. Bart Tare(John Dall)is attracted to guns as a child and ends up stealing one. He loves shooting at targets and not wanting to harm a living thing. But his gun play will end up having him put in reform school. He serves his time and as a young adult, he meets a beautiful sharpshooter Laurie Starr(Peggy Cummins)at a carnival. The two gun freaks run off to get married and then commit a string of daring robberies across the country. The money is good; but the blonde babe with a gun is more obsessed with killing. The couple find themselves in over their heads and forced to stay on the lam. The talk of splitting up and going separate ways just doesn't pan out. It seems only just that Bart and Laurie be together forever. Stark and more than a bit brutal for its time. The beautiful Cummins dominates each scene she is in. Cinematography is marvelous and stunning. Film Noir worth watching more than once.Other players: Berry Kroeger, Trevor Bardette, Harry Lewis, Anabel Shaw, Stanley Prager and a young Russ Tamblyn.
AD
