SAM FULLER
MAY 12-JUNE 10, 2007
The tough-talking, cigar-chomping Sam Fuller defined his approach to cinema with the line, "Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word... emotion." A newspaper copy boy at age twelve who became a tabloid reporter, pulp-fiction novelist, World War II soldier, and maverick filmmaker, Fuller made fierce movies that sharply critiqued many aspects of American society.
All films are directed by Sam Fuller unless noted.
The Steel Helmet
Saturday, May 12, 2:00 p.m.
1951, 84 mins. 35mm. With Gene Evans, Robert Hutton, James Edwards. Fuller's first war film, about a sergeant rescued from the North Koreans by a South Korean orphan, was a critical and commercial success, but its progressive political attacks on war crimes, Japanese-American internment during WWII, and American racism also made the director the subject of an FBI investigation.
Falkenau, Vision of the Impossible
Saturday, May 12, 4:00 p.m.
1988, 52 mins. 16mm print from the Academy Film Archive. Directed by Emil Weiss. Fuller's powerful footage of the liberation of a Nazi death camp, filmed when he was a corporal, is the basis of this gripping documentary. Followed by the first public screening of a 38-minute reel of Fuller's Falkenau footage, preserved by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Pickup on South Street
Saturday, May 12, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 13, 6:30 p.m.
1953, 77 mins. 35mm. With Richard Widmark, Thelma Ritter. A petty thief is caught between FBI agents and Russian spies in this classic noir, which subverted the anti-Communist fervor of the day.
Preceded by The Typewriter, The Rifle, and the Movie Camera 1996, 55 mins. Directed by Adam Simon. This documentary portrait includes Tim Robbins's memorable interview with Fuller, and homages from Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino.
I Shot Jesse James
Sunday, May 13, 2:00 p.m.
1949, 81 mins. 35mm print from The Museum of Modern Art. With John Ireland, Barbara Britton, Preston S. Foster. Fuller's gritty, imaginative debut feature finds emotional complexity in the story of Jesse James's murder, and Robert Ford's struggle to live with his guilt and fear of retribution for his betrayal.
The Baron of Arizona
Sunday, May 13, 4:00 p.m.
1950, 99 mins. 35mm print from The Museum of Modern Art. With Vincent Price, Ellen Drew. Fuller's second feature, strikingly shot by James Wong Howe, is a western starring Vincent Price in what he called his favorite role—a 19th-century con man plotting to claim the entire Arizona territory for himself.
Fixed Bayonets
Saturday, May 19, 2:00 p.m.
1951, 92 mins. 35mm. With Richard Basehart, Gene Evans. In his first big-budget production and second film about the Korean War, with Basehart as a novice corporal forced to learn to kill, Fuller blends dramatic tension with a powerful political stance. Look for an uncredited James Dean in his first onscreen role.
Hell and High Water
Saturday, May 19, 4:00 p.m.
1954, 103 mins. 35mm. With Richard Widmark. A mercenary submarine captain brings a scientist to a remote Pacific island, where they are attacked by a Chinese nuclear submarine—and discover a dastardly communist plot. Fuller's characteristically cynical anti-war film is shot dynamically in CinemaScope.
House of Bamboo
Saturday, May 19, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 20, 6:30 p.m.
1955, 102 mins. 35mm. With Robert Ryan, Robert Stack, Shirley Yamaguchi. In the first Hollywood feature shot on location in postwar Japan, Stack plays an undercover Army investigator in postwar Tokyo who falls in love with the widow of a slain gangster.
Park Row
Sunday, May 20, 4:30 p.m.
1952, 82 mins. 35mm print from the Harvard Film Archive. With Gene Evans. Fuller put up his own money to finance this blisteringly paced drama about the early days of the New York newspaper business. Inspired by his early newsroom memories, Park Row was Fuller's favorite of his films.
China Gate
Saturday, May 26, 2:00 p.m.
1957, 90 mins. Archival 35mm print from Paramount Pictures. With Gene Barry, Angie Dickinson, Nat "King" Cole. This war film features a typically compromised Fuller antihero: a racist American leading a band of mercenaries on an anti-Communist mission in Vietnam.
Run of the Arrow
Saturday, May 26, 4:00 p.m.
1957, 85 mins. 35mm Technicolor print from the University of Miami. With Rod Steiger, Brian Keith, Ralph Meeker. A precursor to the revisionist Western, this hard-edged film stars Steiger as a Confederate soldier who joins the Sioux to battle the white man rather than surrender to the Union.
Forty Guns
Saturday, May 26, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 27, 6:30 p.m.
1957, 78 mins. 35mm. With Barbara Stanwyck. Like Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar, Fuller's dazzling widescreen western subverts gender roles, casting Stanwyck as a ruthless land baron whose thugs control Cochise County—until a U.S. Marshall comes to town.
Verboten!
Sunday, May 27, 2:00 p.m.
1958, 87 mins. 35mm. With James Best, Susan Cummings. In one of Fuller's most personal projects, set in postwar Munich, a GI falls in love with the German woman who saved his life; her brother belongs to a neo-Nazi group. Fuller incorporated newsreel footage of Nazi atrocities into this powerful work.
The Crimson Kimono
Sunday, May 27, 4:00 p.m.
1959, 81 mins. 35mm. With Victoria Shaw, Glenn Corbett, James Shigeta. Fuller challenges racial preconceptions in this complex crime drama about two L.A. homicide detectives whose friendship is threatened when a female murder suspect comes between them.
Underworld, USA
Saturday, June 2, 2:00 p.m.
1960, 98 mins. 35mm. With Cliff Robertson. Robertson delivers an intense performance as a near-psychotic Fuller protagonist; driven beyond all reason, he takes on the mob to avenge his father's death. Beyond his cooperation with the FBI, he is hell-bent on delivering his own brand of justice.
Merrill's Marauders
Saturday, June 2, 4:00 p.m.
1962, 98 mins. 35mm. With Jeff Chandler. In a tragic echo, Chandler, who stars as a general leading a commando unit on a desperate, dangerous mission through Burma, suffered a back injury during shooting and died after a botched operation.
Shock Corridor
Saturday, June 2, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, June 3, 4:00 p.m.
1963, 101 mins. 35mm print from UCLA Film and TV Archive. With Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans. A reckless reporter has himself committed in order to investigate a murder at a mental institution in Shock Corridor, a film whose lurid storytelling and stylized visuals exemplify Fuller at his best.
The Naked Kiss
Sunday, June 3, 2:00 p.m.
1964, 93 mins. 35mm print from UCLA Film and TV Archive. With Constance Towers. With its shocking violence, this film, about a reformed prostitute who discovers the corruption and depravity of the "straight" world, is one of Fuller's most disturbing works.
The Big Red One
Sunday, June 3, 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 9, 6:30 p.m.
1980, 158 mins. Restored 35mm print. With Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine. The most autobiographical of his war movies dramatizes the exploits of Fuller's own lauded unit, with Marvin as a gruff commander and Carradine as a cigar-chomping aspiring novelist. Originally released at a truncated 113 minutes, the film was restored by Warner Bros. in 2001.
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
Saturday, June 9, 2:00 p.m.
1972, 103 mins. 35mm print from the Harvard Film Archive. With Glenn Corbett, Christa Lang. This off-kilter, colorfully titled noir includes a shoot-out in a maternity ward. Corbett stars as a private eye on a mission to break up an international blackmail ring, and Lang, Fuller's wife, plays the femme fatale.
White Dog
Saturday, June 9, 4:30 p.m.
1981, 90 mins. Archival 35mm print from Paramount Pictures. With Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield, Burl Ives. Fuller's last American production is a potent examination of racial hatred: the story of a dog trained to attack blacks. Because of its controversial subject matter, Paramount did not release the film upon completion. Co-written by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) and scored by Ennio Morricone, White Dog is now considered one of Fuller's most powerful works.
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
Sunday, June 10, 4:00 p.m.
Finland, 1994, 75 mins. Imported 35mm print. Directed by Mika Kaurismäki. With Sam Fuller, Jim Jarmusch. In this unusual documentary, Jarmusch and Fuller travel to Brazil, where Fuller once planned an adventure film with John Wayne and Ava Gardner. There, Fuller re-connects with Karajá tribe members, and shows them 16mm footage he'd shot forty years earlier.
Street of No Return
Sunday, June 10, 6:30 p.m.
France, 1982, 90 mins. Imported 35mm print. With Keith Carradine, Valentina Vargas, Bill Duke. Loosely based on the dark novel by David Goodis, Fuller's last feature re-examines themes of racism, rage, and jolting violence in the story of a pop singer (Carradine) whose life is destroyed when he meets a dancer and descends into the criminal underworld.
