Gun Crazy.

Review #2424: Gun Crazy.

Cast: 

Peggy Cummins (Annie Laurie Starr), John Dall (Barton "Bart" Tare; Mickey Little as age 7 Bart, Russ Tamblyn as age 14 Bart), Berry Kroeger (Packett), Morris Carnovsky (Judge Willoughby), Anabel Shaw (Ruby Tare Flagler), Harry Lewis (Deputy Clyde Boston; Paul Frison as age 14 Clyde), Nedrick Young (Dave Allister; David Bair as age 7 Dave), Trevor Bardette (Sheriff Boston), and Stanley Prager (Bluey-Bluey) Directed by Joseph H. Lewis (#934 - The Big Combo)

Review: 

"I told John, "Your cock's never been so hard", and I told Peggy, "You're a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don't let him have it in a hurry. Keep him waiting." That's exactly how I talked to them and I turned them loose. I didn't have to give them more directions."

I suppose a weapon like a gun has always been an object of unimaginable desire in our minds for as long as people can remember. Whether to use it for hunting or other methods, there are just some people that have such a reaction to the sight and feel of a gun that likely made it interesting to show what happens when you get a couple of misfits together with a mutual obsession. The basis for the film is a short story ("Gun Crazy", which you can see some of it here if you focus your eyes) originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1940 that was written by MacKinlay Kantor. Kantor wrote the screenplay for the film with Dalton Trumbo (formerly, Millard Kaufman was used as a front for Trumbo due to the blacklist), who crafted it into a doomed romance. For whatever reason, the movie was originally known as "Deadly Is the Female" (yes, United Artists thought that would be a quality title for a quality movie) before it eventually was re-issued with the title you know today. In 1992, a movie inspired by the film came out with Guncrazy, as directed by Tamra Davis. This was the first film directed in the 1950s by Joseph H. Lewis, who had been directing features for over a decade by this point in a variety of genres (Minstrel Man, The Falcon in San Francisco, you get the idea). The New York City native (and son of an optometrist) followed his brother to Hollywood and went up from camera assistant to assistant editor to, well, director of cheap but efficient movies. Apparently, before his death in 2000 at the age of 93, one of his last public appearances was to introduce a screening of none other than Gun Crazy, which he called his favorite film.

It is amazing what you can do with a relatively fast production (shot over roughly 30 days for $400,000), isn't it? There is an electricity here for such a sordid little tale of obsession and desire that is shot and executed with commitment to the material that makes one appreciate the qualities that come with such strange people fit for a confident noir. You've got one person who can stroke the gun but can't quite shoot to go along with someone who can't really control their inner self when shooting a weapon. Dall appeared in a total of eight movies in his career (with a handful of stage and TV work before his death at age 50 in 1971); Gun Crazy was his fifth film, which followed his turn as one of the killers in Rope (1948). Lewis apparently picked him because he knew that Dall would show the "inner weakness" of the character*. Lewis clearly had the right idea in mind because Dall does a tremendous job in showing the vulnerability that comes not really knowing who one is beyond choices thrust upon them (reform school, robbing people, for example). He makes for a quality tragic character to see in all of flaws that come with a lack of general direction beyond being good with a gun. This was actually the last of the movies Cummins made in Hollywood, where she had travelled to from England in 1945, having started acting in films at the age of 15 in 1940. She settled back in England for good in 1950 and did a bit of television to go with stuff that probably is best highlighted with Night of the Demon (1957). She was cast over original rumblings of getting Veronica Lake, and it would seem that Cummins was a solid choice, mainly because her troubling desires and shaky hold on reality is also fascinating to see paired with Dall. Their chemistry is interesting because it really is a clash of energy bursting to come out, one with people that are begging to just be one entity that, well, probably fits exactly with what the director told both of them to do for direction. For such a strong duo, the movie also happens to move with damn-good efficiency in showing the descent into crime (which goes from kid troublemakers to back home again) with such charming execution. The robbery sequence in particular, where it decides to just never enter the bank by just shooting from in the car (which naturally is cheaper to do than building a bank set) is probably one of the most interesting sequences you could shoot for a robbery in terms of fascination with how one could pull it off so smoothly (evidently it took a bit of lighting, fiddling with the back of the car and guys on the actual roof of the car for boom mics). I particularly like the ending in showing the culmination of one's choices not so much in what to shoot but in what to shoot for (obviously crime doesn't pay with the time the film was made in but consider how the movie gets to where it is). As a whole, this is an efficient movie that just exudes energy and curiosity over what could've just easily been a Bonnie and Clyde pastiche and makes it into a fascinating and intriguing feature worth anyone's time in the noir stands.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

*Dall was apparently gay, as referenced several times over such as this: https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/77083/gun-crazy#articles-reviews?articleId=581435

The Life of Emile Zola.

Review #1347: The Life of Emile Zola.

Cast: 
Paul Muni (Émile Zola), Gloria Holden (Alexandrine Zola), Gale Sondergaard (Lucie Dreyfus), Joseph Schildkraut (Captain Alfred Dreyfus), Donald Crisp (Maitre Labori), Erin O'Brien-Moore (Nana), John Litel (Charpentier), Henry O'Neill (Colonel Picquart), Morris Carnovsky (Anatole France), Louis Calhern (Major Dort), Ralph Morgan (Commander of Paris), Robert Barrat (Major Walsin-Esterhazy), and Vladimir Sokoloff (Paul Cézanne) Directed by William Dieterle.

Review: 
"I've never tried to learn the art of acting. I have been in the business for years but I still can't tell what acting is or how it's done"

As redundant as it may sound, one needs a bit of history now and then. Who better to headline a biographical film than Paul Muni? The son of actors, he had started a career in Yiddish theatre in Chicago after emigrating there from Lemberg (a city that was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now referred to as Lviv, Ukraine). He was noted for his makeup skills, appearing as an 80-year-old man to debut on stage while being just 12. He spent three years on Broadway before being signed by Fox Film in 1929, making two films (The Valiant and Seven Faces), but he went back to Broadway before being enticed to return in 1932, with Scarface and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang leading to him being signed by Warner Bros. Muni was noted for his preparation for roles, particularly for biographies, which served him for films such as The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), which won him an Academy Award for Best Actor. Muni made 13 of his 23 films in the 1930s, having script approval over what he wanted to do, a rare thing at the time. He ended his career the same way he started it: with an Academy Award nomination (he had five in total).

Naturally, one is to expect a few wrinkles of inaccuracy, which the film anticipates with a title card stating that the while the production has basis in history, the historical basis was "fictionalized for the purposes of this picture". Relating to that, a cursory search of Zola leads me to a fact I didn't discover in the film: he wrote a cycle of twenty novels named Les Rougon-Macquart, for which Nana (mentioned in the film) was part of. The obvious sticking point with history is how the film deals with the Dreyfus affair when relating to anti-Semitism of the time that was key to the case since he was Jewish (the word isn't even mentioned in dialogue, only shown on screen once), which has been argued to be due to the timidity of studios when it came to dealing with Nazi Germany. There are numerous quibbles that can be freely noted, ranging from how he is brought into the Dreyfus case (not over the tears of the wife) to the fact that his death (carbon monoxide poisoning through a badly ventilated chimney) was not in fact the day before exoneration of said general. But as Zola once said, "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it." The film relies on the sentiment of truth and justice eventually prevailing in the end, with German actor-turned-director Dieterle being the one to help do it, having directed Muni to three biographical films (the aforementioned Pasteur film and Juarez) in a directing run that spanned forty years. The film has a stagy quality to it, where one senses a speech with some sort of platitudes to pop up sooner than later, which can work out well when a moment of dignity is required. In that sense, Muni makes the best of it, where one sees the dedication in bringing an icon of writing to the screen come out without seeming too much like overacting (which Muni has been criticized for, with Dieterle even accusing him of doing occasionally). One can see his conviction on display without hesitation in the monologue scene for the court, a six-minute scene of dedication to making the measure of a man. The rest of the actors (including an Academy Award-winning performance from Schildkraut) do just fine, keeping up with Muni in displaying some dignity in keeping the momentum going without too many bumps in the road, whether as people who stand with Zola for truth or stand among keeping it buried to not have to deal with an army admitting fallibility. Granted, the resulting film that comes from said statements seems a bit long at 116 minutes, but at least one can say that this worked better with being a biography than the previous biographical Best Picture winner in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), even if it is at best a fairly okay experience to spend time with. One can be inspired to inquire further about the famed author than the mild snapshots that this provides. It may not be the most prime material for its decade, but it still finds a way to create curiosity through its attempts at entertainment along the lines of other films of its ilk in most of the right places.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.