The Open Road: Gun Crazy (35mm)
Opens September 21, 2026
“Everything’s going so fast, it’s all in such high gear.”
Bart Tare (John Dall) has an all encompassing obsession with firearms dating back to his childhood, a mania so intense that it resulted in him lifting a pistol from a local shop and a subsequent reform school stint. Returning home from the army hoping for a fresh start, Bart crosses paths with Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummings), an arousingly talented carnival sharpshooter. He simply doesn’t stand a chance. Bart joins their troupe, eager to be hitched to the girl of his darkest dreams, but a quick dismissal by their lusting employer finds the couple embarking on a tumultuous cross country crime spree. Going together “like guns and ammunition,” their ardor explodes on screen as one of the most emblematic amour fous of the cinema. An outlaw B-film scripted by blacklisted Dalton Trumbo that heavily influenced Godard’s feature film debut, Gun Crazy remains shockingly modern in its fatalistic sensibility and form, all while pushing the illicit passions of film noir to the limits as the beating heart of erotic devotion accompanies our doomed lovers on the road.
35mm print courtesy of Park Circus.
- Director: Joseph H. Lewis
- Principal Cast: Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Berry Kroeger, Morris Carnovsky
- Country: USA
- Year: 1950
- Running Time: 86 min.
- Producer: Frank King, Maurice King
- Screenplay: MacKinlay Kantor, Dalton Trumbo, Millard Kaufman
- Cinematographers: Russell Harlan
- Editors: Harry Gerstad
- Music: Victor Young
- Filmography: Terror in Texas Town (1958), The Halliday Brand (1957), 7th Cavalry (1956), A Lawless Street (1955), The Big Combo (1955), Cry of the Hunted (1953), Desperate Search (1952), Retreat, Hell! (1952), A Lady Without Passport (1950), The Undercover Man (1949), The Return of October (1948), The Swordsman (1948), So Dark the Night (1946), The Jolson Story (1946), My Name is Julia Ross (1945), The Falcon in San Francisco (1945), Minstrel Man (1944), Secrets of a Co-Ed (1942), Boss of Hangtown Mesa (1942), The Silver Bullet (1942), Bombs Over Burma (1942), The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942), Arizona Cyclone (1941), Criminals Within (1941), Invisible Ghost (1941), Pride of the Bowery (1940), That Gang of Mine (1940), Boys of the City (1940), The Return of Wild Bill (1940), Texas Stagecoach (1940), The Man from Tumbleweeds (1940), Blazing Six Shooters (1940), Two-Fisted Rangers (1939), The Last Stand (1938), Border Wolves (1938), The Spy Ring (1938), The Singing Outlaw (1937), Courage of the West (1937), The Gold Racket (1937), Navy Spy (1937)
- Language: English