Sam Fuller S/D

britishers: Hell And High Water on ch4 on friday, 13:00

http://i.imgur.com/bAGD2.png

I went to a screening of Sirk's "Shockproof" last week. Fuller's script is so daffy.

just saw "white dog" and it left me pretty cold. goes for lurid but didn't really gel up i don't think. i don't think fuller really understands racism. or dogs. or dialogue, really.

watched 'the baron of arizona' - not bad, vincent price mostly nails the stoic, goateed villain who wants to steal the whole territory w/o getting his hands dirty

In the Fuller doc on the Shock Corridor disc, Jim Jarmusch tells a story of Fuller winning a "humanitarian" prize for it at some fest, and he took the stage and said "This is not a humanitarian film, it's a hard-hitting action movie! Give your award to Ingmar Bergman."

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:29 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

O wait...

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/s480x480/563044_10152581847030565_1690753018_n.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FqxtRP5.jpg?1

wow

In case you didn't know or I didn't post it already up thread, the book the film of White Dog was based on was written by Jean Seberg's French husband Romain Gary. Used to have a copy but not sure where it is right now.

I watched that last night. For some reason I find the basic premise of a racist dog inherently funny ("dude yr dog is drunk and telling racist jokes you gotta do something""ugh my stupid dog is so racist.") Film does not play it for laughs obviously. I give fuller credit for going all in on the allegory tho.

Shock Corridor is as tawdry and hysterical as I'd remembered. It's like a sledgehammer checklist of the day's big issues: civil rights, the arms race, the pill (translated here as one word: "nymphos"), even a shadowy soldier-turned-Communist-sympathizer (the film actually came out two months before the JFK assassination). I'd have to go back and check, but Hoberman must have spent some time on it in The Dream Life. Funny seeing the Victor Buono-esque guy who plays the gay pimp in Advise and Consent. Larry Tucker--didn't realize he was Paul Mazursky's writing and producing partner early on.

http://content9.flixster.com/photo/11/17/40/11174075_ori.jpg

He's in Blast of Silence as well.

I don't think I'd ever heard of that--will have to keep an eye open for it, looks great. He was also in a Monkees episode.

IIRC there's a good piece about him, maybe on the WFMU website?

i admit I tend like Sam Fuller's less nutty films more, but this film is something special.

I like how they have Shock Corridor on the theater marquee when Constance Towers arrives in the new town in The Naked Kiss.

Fixed Bayonets! (1951)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043540/

not great. but the last shot, the remaining men walking towards the camera in single file, was nicely done.

there's another film set in a similar situation (korean war, snowy mountains. maybe something about a big horn or music used as psychological weapon or a cave that needed attacking) but i can't remember the details.

(maybe Retreat, Hell (1952) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045082/ )

(Pork Chop Hill (1959) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053183/ mentions the speakers)

saw White Dog awhile ago. such a strange movie.

burl ives' best line from white dog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFkvavScBsY

Forty Guns is pretty wild. And wide--very, very wide (shown off most spectacularly via a travelling shot of a dinner table--obviously meant for a theatre, but it starts at 24:30).

Bart Testa, who taught two or three film courses I took in the early '80s, plunked himself down in front of me just before the film started. I thought he'd retired, but no. I pointed out that I'd be eligible for retirement myself in 2019. He didn't indicate he'd be gone by then--"I'm still trying to get it right." Which was funny, because I used the exact same words in something I wrote about teaching a few months ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IPZoZ1vRR0

martin scorsese showed this film to michael powell and powell hated it, said it "wasn't cinema"!

More like it's nothing but cinema--visually fantastic (the one shot through the barrel of a gun seems to be the source of the James Bond logo, unless someone else did it earlier), with the occasional bit of ludicrous dialogue. Not much, though--the audience I saw it with was a little too eager to laugh.

There's a good poll there between Forty Guns, Johnny Guitar, and Rancho Notorious. I'd have to rewatch the other two, but I think I liked Forty Guns the best.

i doubt that's the source for the 007 logo; two people can have a similar idea w/o one influencing the other

i don't agree with michael powell. you'd think one master of stylization would recognize another. but fuller's style is a little out of control (at least in that film) compared to what i associated w/ powell.

i prefer house of bamboo!

I watched "The Steel Helmet" last summer. Its funny how it anticipates every American film made about Vietnam (even though its set in the Korean War).

yeah, that's a good one!

it reminds me of another korean war film, "men in war" (which is less talky/preachy than "the steel helmet," and probably better)

i've still never seen "the crimson kimono," i should rectify that

Miami International Film Festival programmed this movie. Can't wait to see it:

http://meetinthelobby.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/White-God-Movie-Poster.jpg

The gun-barrel shot, it turns out, goes back to William Wellman (Yellow Sky, 1948). I used to get into these disagreements all the time with a former friend (former because we disagreed a little too often and a little too vigorously); I'd say A was influenced by B, she'd automatically say no. I wouldn't doubt at all that whoever devised the Bond logo had seen one or both of these films.

Wellman:
http://fiftieswesterns.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/vlcsnap-4655975.png

Fuller:
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/fortygunsgunbarrel1.jpg

Bond:
http://crackberry.com/sites/crackberry.com/files/styles/w325/public/images/wallpaper_20090810124048_12734562312.jpg?itok=BDI0a0Mv

you can probably find similar shot-through-a-gun-barrel images in other films... i feel like george stevens did one of them in "giant" or something like that.

In his autobio, Fuller has a funny behind the scenes story about 40 Guns: Apparently Marilyn Monroe (who was under contract with Forty Guns-producing Fox at the time) was looking to change her image and wanted to play the Stanwyck part in the film. She'd read the script and loved it, but was never formally considered by Fuller or the studio for the role. After the film had gone into production, Monroe visited Fuller's office to ask him about it. Fuller was good friends with her, so he felt comfortable telling her about the euphemism of the title, about the "40 Guns" represented the "40 Peni" of Stanwyck's lovers who'd become her private army in a form of sexual slavery. With Stanwyck, that was a menacing proposition, but with Monroe, due to her image audiences might find the scenario enticing and funny. Monroe agreed.

You can get Sony's Fuller Box (It Happened in Hollywood / Adventure in Sahara / Power of the Press / The Crimson Kimono / Shockproof / Scandal Sheet / Underworld U.S.A.) Cheap On Amazon.

Some of the sexualized gun-talk was as outrageous as in Red River. (That problem aside, I think Monroe was just too young for that role.)

just got China Gate from liberry

do NOT watch Forty Guns on YouTube

Saw a documentary on him tonight, directed by his daughter. More like a home-movie/essay, actually, with some well-known people reading from his memoir: Buck Henry, William Friedkin, James Franco (the connection there escaped me), Joe Dante, etc. The daughter spoke briefly via Skype before the film. Only about 30 people in attendance, in a theatre that I'd estimate holds 350-400. The film was just okay. (Saw one on Golan & Globus last night--both part of the Jewish Film Festival here.)

William Friedkin sounds exactly like Donald Trump.

i have a sealed restored big red one dvd at the store should i crack it open? i liked the movie when it came out and probably saw it on vhs a million years ago but i've never heard if the restored version makes it ten times better. i was not a fan of the bloated version of apocalypse now.

Orson Welles and Henry Jaglom talked mad shit about Fuller ("that director whom Peter likes" or something).

retro of the war films in NYC

http://www.movingimage.us/programs/2017/09/15/detail/film-is-like-a-battleground-sam-fullers-war-movies/

Something I really appreciate about Fuller is his consistent and effective use of the blow-up. Says something about his kind of economy and his kind of filmmaking, film lots of masters and punch in when needed. It's an appropriate effect, primitive and pulpy, making his images even more saturated and soaked in ink. Usually you see blow ups used for surprise or comic effect or as a Hail Mary fix, but there's tons of really effective cutting with blow-ups in stuff like Park Row and Jesse James.

Shock Corridor is very, very overwrought

By pure coincidence, I have a DVD of Pickup on South Street I got from the public library that's in my viewing queue for tonight or tomorrow night.

Saw it last night. An excellent noir. What really struck me was Widmark's performance. His character was a very tricky role but he carried it off beautifully. Thelma Ritter was another standout in this. Fuller's camera gets in so close that tiny changes in facial expression tell you all you need to know.

Yeah, Widmark's incredible in that movie. "Are you wavin' the flag at me?"

watched The Naked Kiss. there is something very cold about his films

Just saw Forty Guns on DVD last Saturday. My wife and I agreed it was often quite ridiculous without its intending to be.

I've only seen The Naked Kiss, and my main takeaway was that Fuller had a very low estimate for what his audience was able to comprehend without having it spelled out.

Crimson Kimono whips but he really both-sides’ his work in a way that is super annoying because i think his politics and actual beliefs are faaaaaaaar left-er than he presents.