Bart (John Dall), one of the central characters in 1949’s Gun Crazy, has always been obsessed with guns but horrified of killing.  He begins a love affair with a sharpshooter-entertainer, Laurie (Peggy Cummins), who admits to being “no good,” by which she means she is disposed to steal and, worse, will kill out of fear.  And she does get fearful as the two embark on a life of armed robbery.

The suggestion could be made that the film deals with America’s love for guns except that Laurie is supposed to be from London.  Besides, was there ever any talk of America’s love for guns in 1949?  No, Gun Crazy is a thriller about two individuals who are gun-crazy enough to turn to armed crime.  It is also pretty romantic:  Bart and Laurie genuinely love each other, notwithstanding a quick second of betrayal occurs at the end.

Cleverly directed by Joseph H. Lewis, this noir achievement is riveting and unpretentious.  Absolutely fine in their parts, John Dall has an appealing face a trifle more friendly than handsome, and Peggy Cummins has a face with a schoolgirl charm and an overall gorgeous appearance.

Peggy Cummins (Photo credit: classic film scans)

That it boasts sophisticated dialogue and was filmed in Italy is nearly enough to render the American film, Beat the Devil (1953), by John Huston, an art-house adventure story—or, put another way, a minor work of art.  It stars Humphrey Bogart and, because of its second half, is in my view a failure.  The first half is sparkling and intriguing, the second half thin and trivial.  The only two reasons I watch Beat the Devil is to hear that dialogue (not without plenty of wit) and to see the sheer pulchritude of Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida.  But the genuinely good Huston movies of the 1950s, I say, are The Asphalt Jungle and The African Queen.

A Friend of the Deceased, from 1997, is yet another movie about economic troubles in Central and Eastern Europe, this time in post-Soviet Ukraine.  It has a fairly happy ending, but before we reach it there are messages about the gangster-style cheapening of human life and people living practically for the bare necessities.  There is also one about hopeful living, though.

Directed by a twosome, the film is a trifle unsteady but still smart and involving.

(In Ukrainian with English subtitles)

Image via Wikipedia

The morally healthy Bella (2007), by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, is a charitable failure.  It’s unaccepting of abortion–unlike its pregnant main character Nina, well acted by Tammy Blanchard.

Nina doesn’t want the baby inside her, but receives manly compassion and then some from a chef and ex-soccer star called Jose (Eduardo Verastegui).  The screenplay, I regret to point out–why did it take three men to write it?–is careless, basically ramshackle.  One wonders whether Jose’s accidental killing of a child, wrenching as it is, would actually induce the man to give up a lucrative pro soccer career and become a chef.  One wonders, really, how Nina could have been so feckless as to get pregnant by a fellow she cares nothing about.  I’m not sure I know what’s going on in Monteverde’s film.

Ostensibly Christian, presumably spiritual, Bella is in truth pseudo-religious.  Jose may or may not be a genuine Christ follower; it isn’t clear.  The movie is not exactly a Francois Mauriac novel, or even Au Hazard Balthazar.  If it were, it would possess a brilliance consistently missing from evangelical fiction films.

Lucian Pintilie‘s 1994 comic tragedy, An Unforgettable Summer, begins, or almost begins, with the Romanian commanding officer of Captain Dumitriu (Claudiu Bleont) putting the moves on Dumitriu’s wife, Marie-Therese (Kristin Scott Thomas), before the captain’s very eyes.  Marie-Therese, however, spurns the gent and Dumitriu requests a transfer to a new garrison.  Sullenly the commanding officer dispatches the captain and his brood to the dry, barren and awful Romanian border.  (The time is 1925.)  All in all, the C.O. has coldly bullied Dumitriu.

On the border, by and by, eight Romanian soldiers are murdered by bandits believed to be Bulgarian.  A small group of Bulgarian peasants maintains that the bandits are Macedonians, but the Romanians don’t listen to them.  They know the peasants are not the bandits, but they proceed to beat them in the hope of getting information—even as the odd charade of the peasants’ tending Dumitriu’s vegetable garden (for pay) is initiated.  As it happens, the peasants are intended for execution, which throws Dumitriu into a distressing inner conflict and Marie-Therese into shock and desperation.

So again there is bullying: political and military bullying.  Behind it is lust—for women, for retaliation, for power over others.  A tide of legal aggression can be opposed only with reluctance.

As director and scenarist, Pintilie has adapted a novel titled The Salad.  His direction is terrifically shrewd and ambitious, and, although we don’t need to see the uninteresting body of Kristin Scott Thomas in the nude, Summer is magnificently acted.  It is a film about military violence as dark, I’d say, as our 18-year-old war in arid Afghanistan.

I have seen this film on VHS and, free of charge, on YouTube.

(In Romanian with English subtitles)