Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950)
Sex, danger, rebellion, phalluses - a perfect articulation of rock & roll from a time when it was restricted to the Chitlin’ Circuit. Weird, old, mid-west America. Boners for guns, aka boners for boners. Noir has, on occasion, disappointed me. Too often I’m more transported by the poster art than the film itself. But not this time, Gun Crazy is what young mañana thought all films from that era were like. Movies of my dreams, as Doug Martsch sang. So many great moments; the action sequences crackle (the long take!), and the courting foreplay scene at the carnival, so perfect. The beginning reeks a little like a moral panic thing with Bart’s psycho-sociological background accounted for, but all is forgiven because the take away isn’t “think of the children!”, it’s “Bart has a raging gun fetish, watch how bananas things get when he gets horny”. Cummins’ performance is a marvel. That woman can rock a hat. She nails the requisite archetype demands placed on her, but also has an unexpected tone and physicality. She bullies Bart into not being such a p-ssy and making something happen. Like a loaded pistol, a woman will corrupt you, but it’s worth it because when she goes off it feels good. And besides what’s the alternative, get a job and go to bed early? In the end Bart regains some control and strikes a blow for frightened men. Whatever, dude, she made you a man.