Samuel fuller

When Godard asked Fuller to play himself in Crazy Pierrot (1965), he instructed Belmondo to ask him “What is cinema?” Fuller improvised the perfect definition of what is, at least, ‘his’ cinema of him: “A movie is like a battle. Love, hate, action, violence and death. In a word, emotion.”

A newspaper salesman in his native Worcester, Fuller became passionate about journalism when he went to New York with his mother and brother, after his father died. There he was a ‘copy boy’ and chronicler of events, a rich experience: he developed his writing, and in the future he would write novels and screenplays; he met ‘the boys from the press’, honored in Park Row (1952), a New York street for newspapers, and in Corridor of No Return (1963), in which a journalist pretends to be crazy; and moved through the underworld, with a masterful reflection in Dangerous Hands (1953), Underworld USA (1960), The Bamboo House (1955), Death of a Pigeon (1973) or Thieves in the Night (1983).

Fuller managed to make the movies he wanted in the gear of the ‘majors’, in an atypical way. He rolled fast – sometimes in 10 days – and cheap, under the protection of series B. He didn’t ask for stars, but he worked with Widmark, Stanwyck or Marvin. Because of his image as a rebel who evades the servitudes of the system, he was a favorite of Cahiers du Cinéma. Robert L. Lippert produced his first films: the story of the murderer of Jesse James ( Avenging Bullets , 1949); The Baron of Arizona (1950); and Steel Helmet (1951), about the Korean War, where the helmet of the title surprises when it moves in the foreground of the film. Then came the relationship with Darryl Zanuck, excellent, at Fox. The producer saw the potential in him, and let him do it. This is how A fixed bayonet arose(1951), again in Korea, but mostly Dangerous Hands , where Fuller’s style is as subtle as pickpocket Widmark’s fingers; the subway scenes are sensational.

Fuller viewed himself as a liberal Democrat, but was reviled by the left for the anti-communism of Dangerous Hands , The Corridor to China , and The Devil in the Troubled Waters ; as if the Soviet tyranny, his excesses, were not notorious. He clarified: “A political theme in a film is nothing more than one of the elements of the complex matter that it exposes, which allows defining a character, making the action move forward, setting a precise environment; but politics should never be the purpose of the work, rather it should be integrated as a whole.”

Male types dominate in her cinema, but with exceptions such as Constance Towers in A Light in the Underworld (1964). And the violence stands out, dry and abrupt, without sensationalism, which also seems to hit the viewer. Although the director knows how to use offscreen, as in the murder of Thelma Ritter in Dangerous Hands . He ‘paints’ his films with firm strokes, his camera movements, sequence shots, extremely close-ups, and even blurs, are never gratuitous.

Among his westerns, and despite the suggestive drawing of racism in Yuma (1956), 40 pistols (1957) stands out, in cinemascope, with the theme of the border, and a portrait of a woman that proves his superiority over Barry Sullivan , because he forgives. He frequently visited war movies, his participation in World War II had an influence. Uno Rojo shock division (1980), where the protagonists represent, according to the director, “the survivors of all the fucking wars that nations have ever waged” stands out due to its autobiographical character and its long production process .S