Deadly Is the Female (1950)

Peter's Nite
Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton via senses of cinema:

Gun Crazy deserves a place by itself. First, because it's a nearly unclassifiable work. Gangster film? But here the gang is reduced to the minimum, to the association of two murderers. Criminal psychology film? It contrasts absolutely with the tone of that genre. Besides, the ambivalence of the story permits two very different interpretations. In effect, it's a question of a man with a mania for guns and his desperate attempts to conquer his virility through means other than murder. His companion, who plays the determining role in their career outside the law, is a splendid specimen of bitch. She has a strong preference for pants or cowboy outfits, and polarizes the aggression of the couple. The final episode, in the marsh, becomes an avenging execution by her lover: he prefers her death to that of the sheriff, his boyhood friend, whom she is about to shoot.

But rather than consider Gun Crazy as a story with an edifying conclusion, supported by pathological causes-as we appear to be invited to do-we prefer to see in it one of the rarest contemporary illustrations of L'AMOUR FOU (in all senses of the word, of course) which, according to André Breton, "takes" here "ALL THE POWER". Gun Crazy would then appear to be a kind of Golden Age of American film noir.

Could one say that the poetry misleads one a little? But everything is done here, visibly, so that the viewer, oblivious of his involvement with murderers, passes to the other side of the barricades with John Dall and Peggy Cummins. The memory of their death immediately joins the recollection of the deaths of other celebrated lovers in cinema and literature. Dall, throwing out his last scruples, becomes an outlaw. This is so as to be welcomed back by a triumphant woman stretched out on the bed, wearing only stockings and a robe. Taken with a veritable frenzy of passion, she waits in silence, nostrils quivering and mouth parted, for the embrace of her lover; their attitude-they seem to want to snap each other up voraciously-shows a singular desire. And one understands, in the presence of such consuming passions, how they could have lost their senses of traditional morality.

Laurie: What a joint! No more hot water.
Bart: Well, it's a roof anyway.
Laurie: Yeah, it's a roof alright. How are we gonna give the room clerk the money when we move out?
Bart: I can still get that job at Remington.
Laurie: Forty dollars a week?
Bart: We can get by on that.
Laurie: Yeah, maybe you can, but not me. It's too slow, Bart. I want to do a little living.
Bart: What's your idea of living?
Laurie: It's not forty bucks a week.
Bart: Tell me, when did you get this idea?
Laurie: Oh, I've always had this - ever since I can remember. If I don't get it one way, I'll get it the other.
Bart: I didn't think we'd had it figured out that way. (She steps into her bedroom slippers.)
Laurie: Well, so I changed my mind. I told you I was no good. I didn't kid you, did I? (She lights a cigarette for herself.) Well, now you know. Bart, I've been kicked around all my life. Well, from now on, I'm gonna start kicking back.
Bart: What is it you want?
Laurie: When are you going to begin to live? (She leans down with her hands on his shoulders from behind, speaking directly into his ear.) Four years in reform school, then the Army. I should think they'd owe you something for a change. What's it got you, being so particular?

Bart: Let's not argue. I'll hock my guns. It'll give us enough dough to make another start.
Laurie: There isn't enough money in those guns for the kind of start I want. Bart, I want things, a lot of things, big things. I don't want to be afraid of life or anything else. I want a guy with spirit and guts. A guy who can laugh at anything, who will do anything, a guy who can kick over the traces and win the world for me.
Bart: Look, I don't want to look in that mirror and see nothing but a stick up man staring back at me.
Laurie: You'd better kiss me goodbye, Bart (she drops onto the bed and reclines back), because I won't be here when you get back. Come on, Bart, let's finish it the way we started it, on the level. (She cooly drags on her cigarette as he nervously clenches his fist.)