Joseph H Lewis's 1949 noir classic Gun Crazy turns pulp into pure gold. Presented at London's BFI Southbank, this is a small but perfectly formed black-and-white masterpiece of flash and trash, unwholesome obsession and criminal daring.

The masters of the nouvelle vague adored it, not least for the bold and brilliant camerawork: there's a tremendous continuous take of a bank job, filmed from one camera position in the back seat of the getaway car. Present and future cinephiles may be tempted to compare it to coups from Touch of Evil and I Am Cuba.

John Dall plays Bart, a guy with a deep and abiding love of guns, but a paradoxical detestation of violence. Peggy Cummins is Annie Laurie Starr, a carnival cowgirl with a burning need for more money than can be obtained through strictly legal means. Psyched up and tooled up, Bart and Annie join forces for a Bonnie-and-Clyde robbery spree across the country, and their episodic adventures are dramatised with flair.

Guns are the most unexamined part of cinema's idiom. They are a casually accepted part of on-screen life: Godard famously said that a girl and a gun are all you need. Here is a rare film that turns the spotlight on guns themselves - and also girls and guns. The result is worryingly addictive.