It may be believed that cinema makes the urban legend of the ruffian more human—or less so—but Machine Gun Kelly is not true or false to the facts; truth and falsehood are each separate narratives, each a separate detail, subjectivity in links of time and different contexts. For example, Flo did not exist, but the gangster’s wife whose characteristics Florence draws on did exist. So Flo, like Schrödinger’s cat, existed and did not exist. I could start by stating that Machine Gun is a construct of cultural memory, but who doesn’t appreciate a good complex bourbon? Kathryn Thorne gave him his first Thompson submachine gun. There is also no evidence (Not True) of Machine Gun Kelly’s fear of death, but there is evidence (True) of the rumour and even cartridges that Kathryn scattered in bars and the underworld to justify her husband’s fighting in the First World War (Not True)… and so on.

This film is a cult classic, which is what you call works that are followed contrary to logical reasoning, but I like it among other things for Gerald Fried’s soundtrack, made especially for this film. I repeat, even though it is not by any means a good work. Regarding Machine Gun Kelly, or rather my words, more or less persistent patterns can be recognised in my reviews because the standardised model of villainous or crooked personalities used by Hollywood modifies very little the variety of criminal and/or pathological profiles for the bulk of its plots.

Here, for example, the myth about Machine Gun Kelly’s recklessness is shattered, and it cannot be hidden that he is a coward, cowardly enough to hit women as an instinctive animal reaction. Certainly, his Freudian superego, understood as guilt, is not very well developed. But what flesh-and-blood individual bears the epithet Machine Gun Kelly for carrying his Thompson submachine gun and yet trembles with fear before a caged lion, even if it looks like an American puma?

First, a chase with 41,000 pounds from the Lebanon bank from the city to the highway, then to the petrol station to drink a Dad’s Old Fashion beer even though he doesn’t pay the 200-pound bill, but the devilish puma has fun spitting out his root beer because he’s caged. His pretty girlfriend Florence idealises a gun-toting fool who respects no one, and who also hits her when she slaps him for insulting her mother.

From beginning to end, he does nothing but justify his manhood by challenging and intimidating others to hide his fear, as Flo’s mother eloquently perceives in her den of girls. Machine Gun Kelly doesn’t pay Harry the petrol station attendant the 200 dollars he owes him and takes revenge on his ex-partner Howard, whom he abandoned during the second bank robbery, leaving the driver to die. Oh, and by the way, as every cult fan of noir and gangster films knows, he never kidnapped this girl.

In real life, he kidnapped the millionaire oilman Urschel, holding him captive on a farm in Texas provided by his wife’s family. Let’s enjoy the jazz and the delightful photo of Floyd Crosby and the beauty of Cabot. You couldn’t ask too much of Bronson because Corman gave him his first leading role. That said, as Gustavo Cerati said, ‘may it last as long as fiction lasts’.