NFR Project: 'Gun Crazy' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Gun Crazy”

Dir: Joseph H. Lewis

Scr: Dalton Trumbo, MacKinlay Kantor

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Harry Gerstad

Premiere: Jan. 20, 1950

87 min.

Joseph H. Lewis was a talented director who came up the hard way. He made “B” pictures – those films that were cheap and created to fill out a double bill at a theater with a more prestigious “A” picture. He worked in practically every genre – Westerns (he was known as “Wagon Wheel Joe” for shooting scenes through that object to vary up the look of things), comedies, horror movies, costume dramas, and musicals.

It wasn’t until 1945 that he really hit on his strength, when he made the excellent film noir My Name is Julia Ross. Other fine examples of his work in this genre are So Dark the Night (1946), The Big Combo (1950), and this film, largely regarded as his masterpiece.

This screenplay was written by MacKinlay Kantor and the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, working under a pseudonym. It’s the story of the love between two disturbed people. Bart (John Dall) grows up obsessed with guns – although he is averse to killing. He gets in trouble with the law, serves in the Army, and comes back after his service to his hometown.

At a carnival he meets sharpshooter Laurie (Peggy Cummins), whom he beats in a shooting contest. They fall for each other, and run off together. Laurie wants to get money the quick and easy way, and she handily gets Bart to join her in armed robberies. Their crime spree gets them in the sights of the law. Laurie advocates one more big heist to set themselves up. They pull it off, but Laurie kills two people in the commission of the crime.

Laurie is trigger-happy, and unconcerned about committing murder. Pursued by the police, the two run into the mountains. Lost in the fog, surrounded by police, Laurie intends to kill in order to escape, but Bart balks at this and kills her, only to be killed himself shortly after.

The movie is enlivened by unique and innovative filming techniques. Lewis places close-ups off-center, to disorient and throw off the viewer, perhaps echoing the skewed perspective of the criminals. Notably, he directs the commission of a robbery from the back seat of a car in a continuous, 10-minute take (he repeats this back-seat filming a few more times in the film).

At the end, the two are lost in the (moral) fog they find themselves in. Bart is lured to his death by a femme fatale; he does the right thing in the end, but too late to change his fate.

Lewis makes a mean, lean picture that’s entertaining and thoughtful.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Heiress.

NFR Project: 'All the King's Men' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “All the King’s Men”

Dir: Robert Rossen

Scr: Robert Rossen

Pho: Burnett Guffey

Ed: Al Clark, Robert Parrish

Premiere: Nov. 8, 1949

110 min.

This adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Proze-winning novel is a story of corruption, based on the sketchy career of Louisiana politician Huey Long (1893-1935). Long was governor of the state, and was a powerful demagogue who was assassinated.

Such is the case with the film’s fictional Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), an idealist who gets involved with the political process and who starts to make back-room deals and gathers damaging information on his opponents. He wins the governorship, and continues with his corrupt ways.

He is aided and abetted by the film’s narrator, the journalist Jack Burden (John Ireland). Burden begins by covering the failures of the idealistic Stark, but soon grows into the position of being his campaign advisor (and the keeper of his opponents’ dirty secrets). As Stark becomes more and more powerful, principled others start impeachment proceedings against him. Stark survives impeachment, but is shot to death by a doctor who’s outraged that Stark is having an affair with his sister.

The film won Best Picture. Broderick Crawford won Best Actor, and Mercedes McCambridge won Best Supporting Actress. The axiom that power corrupts is thoroughly explored here.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Gun Crazy.

NFR Project: 'Adam's Rib' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “Adam’s Rib”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin

Pho: George J. Folsey

Ed: George Boemler

Premiere: Nov. 18, 1949

101 min.

When last we saw Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn on film together in this series, it was in their first collaboration, Woman of the Year (1942). Over the next eight years, they made seven more pictures together. Their chemistry was perfect – he, the wry average guy, her the rapid-fire overachiever.

This onscreen relationship was accompanied by an offscreen relationship, one that was deeply loving. Tracy, a Catholic, wouldn’t divorce his wife, so he and Hepburn lived a life together as much as they could, maintaining separate residences and keeping their relationship an ill-kept secret. Tracy also struggled with his mental health and with alcohol. It was not all peaches and cream.

Still, what made them compatible offscreen manifests itself in their films together. Each one had a characteristic persona, and these two types played off each other with grace and wit. Here in Adam’s Rib, their verbal exchanges chase one another across the room, and frequently dissolve into talking OVER each other, a comic dividend.

This is their second film together under the direction of George Cukor, and the first comedy essayed by the three of them. Cukor’s urbane, understated style lets the actors act their way through a philosophical debate crossed with a slapstick bedroom comedy. Cukor gazes on contentedly as a parade of distinctive character actors crowd the screen carrying on the nonsense in the background. Cukor and Hepburn wound up making 10 films together over a span of 50 years.

The extremely sharp script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin casts them as lawyers. He, Adam, an assistant district attorney; she, wife Amanda, an attorney for the defense. Their New York apartment is comfortably grand; they bought a farm upstate as well. They are both extremely good at what they do.

The crux of the plot is this: a daffy housewife (Judy Holliday in a career-making performance) trails her cheating husband (the great Tom Ewell) to the apartment of his girlfriend (a young Jean Hagen). She pulls out a revolver, emptying it blindly. She wounds her husband. She is arrested of course.

However, Amanda asserts that, if the sexual roles were reversed, the shooting would be seen as justified, a defense of the home. She represents the housewife. Unfortunately, Adam is the prosecutor assigned to the case. The two must negotiate their relationship away from the court, just as they indulge in heated debate within it. As the trial progresses, Amanda goes to extreme lengths to bolster her client’s case; Adam, riled up and outraged, chuffs along steadily.

In the end, Amanda wins the case – but Adam moves out. Beset romantically by their neighbor, songwriter Kip (David Wayne), Amanda nearly falters when Adam appears, gun in hand. Amanda shields the diminutive Kip. “You have no right!” she exclaims. His point is proven. Adam puts the gun in his mouth – and bites it. “Itth licowice,” he explains. The three then do battle.

A divorce seems inevitable. The two meet at their tax accountant’s office. They begin to reminisce, Adam cries. Amanda relents. They go up to the farm. Adam announces that he is the Republican candidate for County Court Judge and then demonstrates that he can cry on command. They are together again.

It’s lovely late screwball comedy, wherein everyone is intelligent and reasonable; their senses of honor and propriety are in opposition, not their feeling selves. So the personal and the professional get mixed up until the woman wins and the roles reverse themselves.

Tracy takes (almost) everything with a skeptical glint of humor. Hepburn dashes madly about him, dynamic and stunningly articulate. Like Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies, Adam and Amanda embody the ideal of two uniquely matched people filling a need in each other’s lives, beyond the concept of winning and losing. They communicated. They got along well. We felt we knew them. That’s a pretty stellar achievement.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: All the King’s Men.