Sam Fuller S/D

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.

Haven't seen Naked Kiss but baffled at the idea of thinking of Pickup On South Street, Fixed Bayonets, House Of Bamboo as "cold". Unsubtle, sure.

often quite ridiculous without its intending to be

I think that film's very explicit intentional camp.

Naked Kiss is my favorite Fuller. Finally caught up with Park Row (now on Criterion Channel) and while I understand how Fuller himself could find it his best movie and it's whip-quick, that's the epitome of a movie that explains everything to its audience in no uncertain terms.

More than Shock Corridor? (Also Fuller's best)

I think that film's very explicit intentional camp.

I'm willing to consider any argument along that line, but if Forty Guns was intentionally 'camp', such as Rocky Horror Picture Show and many other clearly 'camp' films, then it misses the mark more often than not. otoh, watching Fuller talk about his movies and his methods on the video interview included on Criterion's Pickup on South Street DVD, he struck me as decidedly not the sort of director to openly embrace a 'camp' sensibility. He seemed more of the proud tough guy to me.

By way of comparison, Duel in the Sun, another overly stylized western, is considered high camp these days, even though it was never directly conceived or promoted as such.

There's a whole cycle of these melodramatic campy 50's westerns - Johnny Guitar would be another clear example, there was just something in the air. I think there's a lot of queerness in Fuller - House Of Bamboo has a lot of it - and considering his egalitarian stance on much else it makes sense. Also think that in his era that could co-exist with being a "proud tough guy" to some extent.

OTM

Eddie Muller claims all of Sam Fuller's films are at heart war movies, focused on the local equivalent of the grunts in the foxhole and with a certain contempt for the commanding officers and gloryhounds. That would be consistent with emotionally deep brothers-in-arms type relationships.

The Naked Kiss was just so tough and lurid, and the characters seemed to want to exit from it and go into another film altogether. It was memorable though

My first viewing of Forty Guns. My god! A helluva picture. Aimless, what makes you think this is camp or like Johnny Guitar? While it's hyperrealist in moments, there's nothing phony about the emotions. When Bonnell guns down his own brother on his wedding night, Fuller fades to his bride in long shot standing mute beside the funeral train next to the chansonnier singing a ballad. It's so austere that I teared up.

When packing up books recently I discovered I still have Fuller's autobiography. When I unpack the boxes again I'm gonna reread it.

Um, I was explicitly quarreling with Daniel Rf's idea that Fuller intended the film to be 'camp'. I used Johnny Guitar as a counter-example, not as a complementary one.

Actually, it was Daniel who cited Johnny Guitar. I cited Rocky Horror Picture Show and Duel in the Dust. I think Fuller knew he was making a highly stylized film. The cinematography and staging are not reaching for realism. Your terms were hyper -realism and austere. I'd agree with that.

Sure! I wasn't quarreling. I wondered what you found ridiculous. Like I wrote, much of the film Fuller pitches at an operatic level to match its wide compositions, but I didn't laugh.

Characters and plot raised to an operatic pitch can easily be viewed as ridiculous if you aren't feeling in synch with it.

Every Fuller movie I've ever seen has gotten the tone exactly right. Lurid but never so over-the-top that it breaks the mood.

I think my favorite might be House of Bamboo. It's amazing-looking.

I think the fourty gunmen parading in front of Stanwyck is pretty high camp, yes.

^

Well, wouldn't you have volunteered?

Who do you think you are, Houdini?

Some very Lynchian moments in "The Naked Kiss"

Finally got around to watching Dead Pigeon On Beethoven Street - the made-for-German TV movie Fuller made in 1973. It's...well - directionless French new wave. There is a plot about a international extortion gang who funds political black mail traps, but it's mostly us (via the anonymously acted american PI) vicariously surveilling Christa Lang (a.k.a. the future Mrs. Samuel Fuller) around 70s West Germany. Co-stars include a very obviously placed Zappa 200 Motels posters. Objectively, it's not a good movie, but it is a weird one (MST3K would never have the guts).