a commentary by Tony McRae
It's night and raining. A boy Bart
Tare walks up to a store front and looks at the guns in the window(1),
breaks the glass(2), grabs a revolver and ammunition, slips and
falls. When he looks up a cop is towering over him. That
leads to four
years of reform school, a stint in the army (as a firearms instructor),
then back to his home town without a job he's interested in. One night he and his boyhood
friends Clyde and Dave go to a
sharp shooting demonstration at a local carnival where Annie Laurie
Starr (Peggy Cummins) is giving a sharp shooting demonstration(3). Bart's friends
encourage him to accept an offer to challenge the sharpshooter.
Bart (John Dall) finally agrees, and he wins. He is hired by Laurie's manager Packet. The
two become involved, are fired by a jealous Packet and off they go, with
no prospects and little in common but their love for guns.
They get married, have a whirlwind honeymoon. They seem the
stereotypical couple in
love(4), until they blow their money in Vegas and are forced to pawn
what little they have.
No money, no fun. Laurie is restless,
wants excitement. She thought, mistakenly, that with this guy who
knew how to handle guns she could "do a little living."
She needs to push a bit. "If I can't
get it one way I'll get it another." Bart thinks he knows
what she means, and it makes him uncomfortable. "I told you I was no good," she says matter-of-factly. She knows her man, knows how to reel him
in(5), knows how to play on his self doubts(6). The femme fatale is born.
Laurie
convinces Bart to pull a series of small robberies, to get them over the
hump. She uses her beauty
cunningly, and makes sure he knows that if ever he decides to get normal, she will
leave him. "I want a guy with spirit and guts...You better
kiss me goodbye, Bart, because I won't be here when you get
back." She's too much for him. All he can do is go to
her bed and go along(7).
The cut from their kiss to the next scene
is a tour-de-force of editing, at once dramatic and funny. It's a
shot of a gumball machine. We see a close-up of the gumballs, then
the globe explodes(8). Cut to Bart pointing a gun at the store
owner. It's their first robbery. The sign behind the globe
"Travelers Aid" is appropriate since these two crooks will be
taking quite a long journey and will need money, only the money they get
is not much more than the price of candy.
But that's okay for now, at least for Laurie. This is
living, we can see it in her eyes. Only after they begin their
life of crime does she tell him she loves him.
As their robbery spree escalates, they
become more and more reckless. Laurie is alive, she thrives; we
get the feeling she has never been happier, even as they are being
pursued by the police(9). The higher she
gets, the more tentative Bart becomes. At one point he says with resignation
in his voice, "We go together...maybe
like guns and ammunition go together." Whenever they embrace he
is tormented, she revels in their predicament(10).
Laurie seems to be motivated by fear, or
rather fear makes her do crazy things--like killing people. At the
same time she loves the excitement, even the excitement of
killing. She loves Bart only as long as he can provide her with
thrills; it's clear sexual thrills run a distant second to
shooting.
Bart and Laurie are now celebrities, so they have to keep moving, there's no slowing
down. They resort to disguises and stolen cars. Bart does
the driving, she gives him direction. This sequence of going from
one job to another--about forty
minutes into the movie--is at once exhilarating and funny.
Director Joseph H. Lewis is clearly enjoying himself here. We see
them as a couple out of a screwball comedy(11), as a proper military
family(12), and finally, with the authorities closing in, as fleeing
criminals whose car has become a prison(13). When they are
finally forced to abandon their car after a reckless attempt to break
out of the circle the police have set up, they have no place to go but into
the back country, a swamp in fact(14). As pictured in the movie, it's a primordial place that will
work its way into their psyches.
There's no escape. Either they fight it out or
surrender. In his entire life Bart has killed only a baby
chick (with a bb gun) when he was nine or ten. He's shown time and
again that he's no killer. But this is different. As the
police emerge from the heavy fog that encapsulates them, he sees Laurie
stand up, a catatonic, demented look on her face. She shouts with
relish, "One more step and I'll kill
you(15)." Bart shoots and kills her, then stands to go to
her, but just as he reaches her body he is riddled with bullets.
One
explanation for his action is that she's about to shoot his boyhood
friends who have been calling his name. But is this his primary motivation?
Throughout "Gun
Crazy" Bart has agonized over Laurie's power over him. He is
unable to act without her; she
gets her way at virtually every turn. What
he discovers in the swamp is something he already knew but
didn't know he knew. And now he knows. By killing her he liberates
himself, even though he is certain he will soon be killed. And he
liberates her as well.
Do
we know why Bart has been fascinated by guns? As a
youngster he's just a little "off." Shooting seems to be
the only thing he's good at. It does get him Laurie. There is little doubt that Bart has a repressed
personality. His only friendships seem to be with the two boyhood
friends Clyde and Dave. It's likely Laurie is his first and only
girlfriend, and while he is attracted to her sexually and romantically,
he appears more troubled than aroused, even when she comes on to him,
which happens rather frequently. Peggy Cummins' layered
performance makes Bart's helplessness seem almost normal. He never does
figure her out, never does play the same game she is playing. And
it is a game with no winners.
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