RARA-AVIS: Re: Gun Crazy (1950): Where is This Line of Dialogue?

From: kellistanley83 ( kelli@kellistanley.com)
Date: 21 Feb 2008


Mark, I recently watched Gun Crazy again on the big screen (at Noir City) and I don't think this line or the other scenes were actually in the film. Plenty of terrific dialog, and some great, feverish direction with a definite neo-realist influence, but no treeless, sun-drenched shopping center for Cummins or anyone else.

The traveling circus/carnival scenes are followed by a montage of high-living while they blow through their money ... then a series of cheap rooms, hold-ups (including the memorable bank getaway) and the Armor factory.

They go out dancing at a ritzy joint on a coastal city, but the cops are on to them by then. No shopping centers. Plenty of memorable lines, though: "Two people dead, just so we can live without working!" is one of my favorites.

If you find out the solution to the mystery, please post, because I don't want to start doubting my memory. :)

Also, wanted to extend an invitation to any Rare Birds near Denver to come on out for Left Coast Crime. I'm on a noir panel--"Shades of Black: Noir at 50 Paces"--with Jason Starr, Con Lehane, and Cornelia Read, moderated by Ken Kuhlken. It's Saturday, March 8, 3:45-4:30 ... and there will be plenty of other avians at the conference -- it's worth a peek.

Kelli

-- 
Kelli Stanley
NOX DORMIENDA (A Long Night for Sleeping)
July, 2008
www.kellistanley.com
http://kellistanley.blogspot.com/

Welcome to Roman Noir.

> "There's no message, really, or if there is one it's delivered by > Cummins in a jolting line spoken while she's wandering around a > treeless sun-drenched shopping center: "Hey, it hurts me here! > **Everything in these forty-eight states hurts me!**" Yet the line > is nearly lost under the blasting of horns, the idiot yells from a > nearby fun house." > > Now, I totally missed this line in the DVD (which clocks in at the > standard stated running time of 87 minutes), and do not recall any > scene approximating what the Times describes. Can any expert on the > film tell me what gives here? I am wondering about the accuracy of > the Markfield piece in general and whether it was a source for > Peary, who repeated the error. Markfield goes to write: > > "Scene after scene abounds in similar tiny, tossed-away triumphs > that are never underscored or overworked. Among these triumphs: a > pump-jockey deliberately and with utmost delicacy cutting through > the fan-belt of an out-of-state Cadillac; an expensively-dressed > matron unloading the contents of a supermarket shopping cart, then > the shopping cart, into her car; a pair of object-hungry young > marrieds fondling pressure cookers in a department store and > shivering orgiastically while a hold-up goes on." > > I don't remember any of that either (and I went through the DVD > again in fast-forward mode to look for these bits). Am I > unobservant? Was Markfield, a novelist, making it all up, or mis- > remembering, or conflating Gun Crazy with some other film? >



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