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Post by Mattsby on Jun 4, 2017 2:17:35 GMT
Thoughts on the man? Thoughts on his filmography? Rank/rate?
Fuller became a crime reporter at 17y/o, a novelist, then fought (a lot) in WWII, then got into movies as a screenwriter and, shortly thereafter, director.
I've seen Pickup on South Street - a heated little noir elevated by Richard Widmark's violent, curiously intense performance as well as Thelma Ritter who's excellent. The very interesting Shock Corridor. And my favorite, the trashy, thrashy, at times brilliant The Naked Kiss.
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Post by stephen on Jun 4, 2017 4:48:57 GMT
The Big Red One is his masterpiece. Be sure to watch the Reconstructed Version. I also own his self-penned novelization, which feels so much like a memoir. Definitely recommend it.
I also really dig The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets!, Shock Corridor and I Shot Jesse James.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 5, 2018 20:25:09 GMT
One year later bump!
Here's a loose ranking of what I've seen now:
The Naked Kiss
Pickup on South Street
The Crimson Kimono
I Shot Jesse James
Shock Corridor
Verboten!
Park Row
Run of the Arrow
Forty Guns
I pretty much like 'em all, but what interests me most is how Fuller never-minds production limitations and uses it to spur his brisk, exciting style (Orson Welles said "the enemy of art is the absence of limitations"). His films are typically about 80 minutes, lean - his trademark I guess are these turbulent low budget genre pieces that evince controversial themes. And he'll often jolt you in his opening scenes: see Forty Guns, Run of the Arrow, Park Row, Crimson Kimono, and most memorably in Naked Kiss. And were other filmmakers of the '50s tackling interracial relations as often as he was?
Filmmakers nowadays could learn a good deal from his films: they're all flawed, yes, but they're also always visually interesting and energized in the edit (OK sometimes sloppily so, but still): movies have to move. And the strength of his themes.... the tension and hypocrisy of new and unforgiving territories, personal triumph marred by societal shame, the strain and ultimate irony of vocational duty, etc...!!
Also: still gotta see The Big Red One and others !!
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Post by stephen on Jun 5, 2018 20:33:55 GMT
One year later bump! Here's a loose ranking of what I've seen now: The Naked Kiss Pickup on South Street The Crimson Kimono I Shot Jesse James Shock Corridor Verboten! Park Row Run of the Arrow Forty Guns I pretty much like 'em all, but what interests me most is how Fuller never-minds production limitations and uses it to spur his brisk, exciting style (Orson Welles said "the enemy of art is the absence of limitations"). His films are typically about 80 minutes, lean - his trademark I guess are these turbulent low budget genre pieces that evince controversial themes. And he'll often jolt you in his opening scenes: see Forty Guns, Run of the Arrow, Park Row, Crimson Kimono, and most memorably in Naked Kiss. And were other filmmakers of the '50s tackling interracial relations as often as he was? Filmmakers nowadays could learn a good deal from his films: they're all flawed, yes, but they're also always visually interesting and energized in the edit (OK sometimes sloppily so, but still): movies have to move. And the strength of his themes.... the tension and hypocrisy of new and unforgiving territories, personal triumph marred by societal shame, the strain and ultimate irony of vocational duty, etc...!! Also: still gotta see The Big Red One and others !! Yeah, you're missing out on his war films, which I consider his milieu the way gangster films are for Scorsese or heist films were for Dassin. His 1951 double-helping feel very raw and personal, whereas The Big Red One is his magnum opus and feels like everything he ever wanted to say about war writ large. It also helps to have a career-best Lee Marvin running the show. |
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 5, 2018 20:50:45 GMT
Brian De Palma... :  |
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Post by Martin Stett on Jun 5, 2018 21:36:16 GMT
Brian De Palma... : I've only seen a few of his films, but White Dog alone is more than enough for me to be very, very interested in his work, at they very least. Still missing The Big Red One and The Naked Kiss. |
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 6, 2018 0:24:12 GMT
I sorta love Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor is one of those fascinating weirdo films of the 60s - that early to mid-60s period is fascinating to me and that one has got lots of interesting shots and style in it (Scorsese must have thought so since he used some of it for Shutter Island inspiration) - I like all his stuff really but that was quite a 1-2 punch.
Love him as an actor in Wenders State of Things too and he was almost your Hyman Roth
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 27, 2020 19:00:30 GMT
Play it again, Sam. Two years later......
Pickup on South Street
The Crimson Kimono
Shock Corridor
The Steel Helmet
White Dog
Verboten!
The Big Red One
I Shot Jesse James
Park Row
Fixed Bayonets!
Forty Guns
The Naked Kiss
Thieves After Dark
The Baron of Arizona
Run of the Arrow
House of Bamboo
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
I like/love all except the last two. Some catch up what I've seen recently: Dead Pigeon a German production from 1972, as usual with Fuller has a fascinating opening scene (set to Can's Vitamin C), and some awesome visuals, but becomes a really leaden movie with iffy perfs.
His other late-career Euro pic, Thieves After Dark, made after his White Dog self-exile, is better despite a crazily improbable plot and broad perfs, it's a sardonic take off from the nouvelle vague, but it's kinda fun with, again, a brilliant opening scene. As Truffaut once said "Fuller doesn't fool around when he's making movies." Here, he's fooling around, with Claude Chabrol in a supporting role as a gnomish voyeur nicknamed Tartuffe, and a Fuller cameo ("Lady, there's nothing rude about money") as a fence obsessed with Huppert's acting talent. I'm serious! It has a sort of great Ennio score too.
Fixed Bayonets! is a solid war movie that might've been unremarkable if it wasn't set entirely around snowdrifted, frozen tundras. There's a standout minefield scene, and actually a good bit of clever dialogue. “I’d fire just one bullet, and I know the ricochet would do the rest.” Gene Evans did this and Steel Helmet the same year and is a helluva plausible, grizzled-mad war dude. It's a shock to see him all clean and proper and smart in Park Row the year after.
I think there's greatness to some of The Big Red One but it has problems - the weak voiceover, and just how much he steals from himself (the opening of Run of the Arrow, situations, character arcs, and verbatim quotes from Fixed Bayonets, Steel Helmet etc). But it has one of my fav endings from him, and a star Lee Marvin turn. In fact, Fuller worked with quite a batch of stars - Marvin, Stanwyck, Steiger, Vincent Price, Widmark, and if they weren't stars he often made his leads feel as if they were - Gene Evans, Constance Towers, James Shigeta.
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 7, 2020 8:14:34 GMT
Sadly I've only seen four of his films so far, but I liked all of them to (slighly varying) degrees.
I liked "Shock Corridor" the most, which is really tense and with some great atmosphere and black-white photography. "Forty Guns" is very good as well, build well around its characters.
"Pickup on South Street" is a fine, well-acted noir, sometimes having a bit flair and the topics of a Simenon novel. "The Big Red One" is still good and some great moments, but the overall product feels a bit callow. But it's still around a (weak) 7 for me.
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