Word: fullers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Fuller's boys manage to turn up everywhere that's anywhere in the war--we're almost surprised that they don't show up on the outskirts of Hiroshima in August, 1945--but a sequence inside a Nazi concentration camp is certainly not a Hollywood war movie cliche. And while Fuller's treatment of the episode is painfully simplistic, it is also simply painful. Hamill discovering a room of ovens filled with human skeletons, Marvin silently baring his heart to a little boy whom he has just liberated--these are moments that we have seen in other films; but Fuller...
...sequence in the concentration camp occurs on a bright, unclouded day, a detail that clashes with a common notion associating Hitler's victims with overcast skies. Fuller's vision is probably truer. He never shies away from color, and enjoys cutting from a crisp shot of blue sky and gold sand to the dull greys and greens of the infantryman's daily existence. Yet the colors never disappear; when there are no more flowers or there is no more blood, Fuller closes in on Lee Marvin's face, a rough-hewn palette of balanched hair, amber skin and watery eyes...
...that a lesser actor would choke on. The paternal affection he bears his men never conflicts with his silent passion for killing the enemy and getting through the war alive. Hamill and the others are also nearly perfect--Carradine stands out because he has all the best lines--and Fuller leaves us wishing we knew more about his young heroes...
...SAMUEL FULLER has been making war movies since the year the Second World War ended. In Hollywood, he became know as the King of the B's, a patriotic writer/director with a tin ear for dialogue but a sharp eye for combat detail. In 1950, he made America's first Korean War movie, The Steel Helmet, a popular cult film that was "Shot in 12 days. cost, $104,000. Locations: Griffith Park....a cardboard tank was painted, a pole slammed into its face for a gun....Twice the goddam cardboard tank fell on its face...
...Fuller's hardline anti-Commie stand lost favor after the McCarthy era. For nearly two decades, he has been noisily chomping his ever-present cigar in frustration, desperate to make the war film he always wanted to make, to prove that he had survived the roller-coaster life in Hollywood as well as the battles in Europe...