Noir Friday Night Fair: On Turner Classic Movies - Gun Crazy (1950) - Nov 7, 10:45 PM EST (alternate title: Deadly Is The Female) Gun Crazy is an extraordinary film. I dont mean good, although it is that. Lets take good as a given. Critical raves are attracted to it like flies. It has been repeatedly hailed as a film noir classic, singled out for revivals and retrospectives. In 1971 Paul Schrader called it one of the best American films ever made. The authors of Alternate Oscars argue it should have won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1998, Congress placed it on the National Film Registry, an honor given only to those films deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. In 2006, Film Comment included it among the magazines 60-picture canon. Richard Schickel of Time Magazine named it one of the All-Time 100 Movies. The list goes on-you get the point. By extraordinary what I mean is that it does something that it shouldnt, something beyond the ordinary. It is a meticulously engineered work of cinema that is nevertheless remembered as being a raw pseudo-documentary. It stars two actors whose nervous tics and unusual faces denied them stardom, but who deliver career-best performances here. The script is a bundle of familiar clichés, assembled by one of the eras most accomplished screenwriters. It was filmed by a brilliant cinematographer, yet looks nothing like his work. It was made under the thumb of repressive censorship, but is as transgressive and audacious as anything today. It sank at the box office, but became a cult favorite more beloved than its contemporaries. In sum, Gun Crazy is more than the sum of its parts. (TCM)
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 19:08:52 +0000
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