The 1960 avant-garde film used Brechtian naming and race-symmetric structure

Evidence

Guns had Hegelian aspirations—the star of Shadows meets Allen Ginsberg, who, never seen on-screen, declaims a poetic soundtrack as Kerouac had in Pull My Daisy—but it was far more schematic than its models. The movie concerns two young couples. One pair (Stillman and Adolfas) is white and gloomy. The other (Spear Julliard and Carruthers) is Black and life-affirming. As in Shadows, the principal characters are generally named for their actors. Argus is happily pregnant. She and Ben frisk through various locations and make love in what looks like a cold-water loft as militantly sullen Frances rails against the ugliness of the world. Actually, Frances has already committed suicide. The movie is a flashback in which her bereaved lover, the black-clad Gregory (Adolfas), tries to figure out why. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 169