Sam Fuller Overview

"Film is like a battleground," Sam Fuller once said. Although he was speaking not as himself but in a cameo role as a filmmaker in Jean-Luc Godard's "Pierrot le Fou," the comparison applies perfectly to his own directorial work. Cigar firmly... [more]

"Film is like a battleground," Sam Fuller once said. Although he was speaking not as himself but in a cameo role as a filmmaker in Jean-Luc Godard's "Pierrot le Fou," the comparison applies perfectly to his own directorial work. Cigar firmly planted between his lips, Fuller has been getting tough in the American trenches since the late 1940s. Whatever the source of Fuller's cynical views -- perhaps his experiences as an infantryman in World War II or his stint as a tabloid crime reporter -- the battleground he plays on does not allow for simple fights between good guys and bad guys. In Fuller's films, good and evil blur and shift, and moral value is never absolute. In "Underworld USA" (1961), the crime fighters are as dirty as their criminal counterparts. Even the central character, who pursues the drug lords responsible for his father's death, is driven more by bloodlust than a desire for mere revenge. In "Shock Corridor" (1963), a journalist enters a mental institution, posing as a psycho in order to solve a murder. But as he grows obsessed with winning the Pulitzer Prize, his own sanity comes ironically into question. Many of Fuller's films explore the tension between group mentality and individual identity. While social groups in Fuller's world, be they families or nations, are supportive and comforting, they are often corrupt or perverse as well, threatening the emotional and ideological autonomy of the individual. Faced with this duality, characters discover that neither independence nor collaboration comes without cost. Fuller seems to delight in letting his characters stumble through these contradictions on the way to their own demise. Fuller's preoccupation with conflict is reflected in his style: abrupt, startling montages and close-ups alternate with intricate camera movement and long takes. Although his shocking, low-budget melodramas did not earn him the great esteem of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Fuller is now highly regarded for his thematic and visual complexity. Critic Andrew Sarris crowned the director "a true American primitive" -- perhaps the truest praise Fuller could wish for. [show less]