GUN CRAZY (1950)

“We go together, Annie, I don’t know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together.”

Joseph Lewis’s this exceptional low budget underrated classic deserves a cult status in the genre of film noir. One may put this film to other brilliant B genre noir like ‘Detour’. What is absolutely different and fresh about the film is its representation of two protagonists of opposite sex who’re also on opposite side of their gun fetish. It is also so different for its set up of rural love and crime on-the-run that appears to have little in common with the hard boiled nocturnal urban underworld that sums up noir canon.

The film instantly reminds me of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and it’s loosely based on the infamous real bandits of 1930s. It must be surely remain inspiration for Arthur Penn but what is another striking feat is much before that it would have surely inspired the breakthrough of ‘French New Wave’ films of 60s; especially Jean Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’ or ‘Pierrot le Fou’. The aesthetic and innovative camera shots and angles and Peggy Cummins' psychotic femme fatale are things to notice without fail here. It has a brilliant beginning and shattering end with chase and run action and mad love in between. It has a big goof up looming all over the film but than its surely a noir to catch without fail for number of other inspirational classics that came after.