Equilibrium

SemiNoir is a continuing series of short academic essays dealing with film noirs watched and reviewed in the seminar 'Film Noir and American Culture' at the University of Tuebingen.

The movie starts. We only see the dark setting: a street, some houses, a shop window, some street lights and a lot of rain coming down from above. And altough the music plays in the background it is a very calm scene(ry), one with no persons around, no public life and therefore no living at all. The whole setting looks a little bit odd, altough the rain does not make it only some kind of 'epic', but also there are no signs of a b-movie production (otherwise the streets would be foggy and the whole setting smaller). I really liked this beginning, because it draws suspension only from its scenery and its music – considering the other noirs we always had to wait a few minutes in order to get the first real 'action' (in addition, most of our noirs played with shadows in the opening credits – only Out of the Past gave us this bright and endless seeming landscape/mountains). But then, they little boy enters the scenery, and suddenly makes the whole setting look like it was a prop mainly used in theaters. Nothing seemed to work anymore as soon as the young protagonist entered: the sclae of the whole setting now seemed to be unproportional, because at first you are of the opinion that this is a huge city (and, of course, the rain plays a big role, too) and then, after the boy enters, you recognize that this is a cheesy setting of a city street. On the other hand, it almost seems like some kind of comic relief (which would fit your premise that Gun Crazy is all about mocking the noir). It is even a doubled comic relief, because the first comic relief would be the boy entering and the setting suddenly becoming 'unreal'. The second one would be the whole scene itself when the boy breaks the window, takes the gun and falls just in front of the officer's feet. However, the darkness to some extent remains – the rain, the music, the boy falling (hints to the term 'the fall guy'?), these are all underlining the darkness of film noir. Or they just mock this fact …

Furthermore the whole premise of the noir is some kind of comic relief. A boy, who loves guns, has a trauma and becomes a gangster? This clearly does not sound as 'serious' as the premises of the other noirs. Well, it could be considered a mockumentary of the American dream, especially since the boy – and the girl – are dressed like cowboys while being introduced. We all know that this is one of the most common exemplifications of the American dream/the American itself. Altough for most noir filmmakers the American dream became true, they did not like the way the government portrayed it (even in today's movies it is portrayed as being pretty cheesy and clichéd). So why not simply make fun of it? Furthermore, most of the American intellectuals respectively Hollywood are left-wing, so they do not appreciate guns in the way right-wing people do …

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