1001 Flicks

Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

216. Gun Crazy (1949)















Directed By Joseph H. Lewis

Synopsis

They who live by the gun die by the gun.

Review

This is one of those films that works better in concept and on the page than actually in execution. The execution is not bad, mind, but I think the production code kind of curbed it's potential.

This would be rectified later by Bonnie and Clyde which was one of the films to toll the bells for the Code, and it definitely owes a lot to this film. It is all here, the Eros and Thanatos, the love and death intermingled, the being aroused by weapons and the power that you feel while firing them. Feeling power over other human beings as an aphrodisiac.

But then it is always too subtle, too hidden to have the impact it could have, it pulls its punches, but it is not the fault of anyone in the film, it really seems like they wanted to take it further but were not allowed. Still, a very interesting film, right on the border between Film Noir and something else.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Eric Henderson, film critic for Slant Magazine, wrote, "Lewis, through sheer force of will, turns the script's easy ways out ("I told you I'm a bad girl, didn't I?") into the essence of blunt, adolescent sexual flowering. Wild, wam-bam pacing (early heavy petting) eventually matures into the film's most memorable sequence: a one-take robbery sequence taken from the back seat of the getaway car, a stunning tour de force that's Lewis's cinematographic slow fuck."


Some guy's music with a video from Gun Crazy:

posted by Francisco Silva @ 1:46 AM  

2 Comments:

  • At 9:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I really like this film. I think you critisism that it was hampered by censorship is accurate but harsh - I like its eliptical nature. The camera work is great and I think the leads are likeable. The single shot heist scene is fun.

    But there's a scene towards the end, when they're in the hotel room, which looks like it was made by somebody else - I think this was tacked on by the censors, and the film is better if you just ignore it.

     

  • At 9:36 PM, Blogger Francisco Silva said…

    I agree the single shot scene was great, and he is a great actor as he had already shown in Hitchock's The Rope. I didn't she was that great an actress but she was beautiful.

    Well I gave it 8/10 not really a negative mark, it just has some problems which can't make it a 9 or 10.

     

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