The Films of Samuel Fuller. Lisa Dombrowski
during his years at Twentieth Century–Fox.
As with the dialogue scenes, the staging of action-oriented sequences in The Baron of Arizona advances to a new level. The attack of the mob and attempted lynching of Reavis is the visual high point of the film and the most complicated action sequence Fuller had yet directed. Here many of the stylistic strategies utilized in the opening and closing of I Shot Jesse James are further developed, producing a scene of dark chaos and palpable kineticism. As in the opening of I Shot Jesse James, the attempted lynching scene in The Baron of Arizona begins in tense anticipation, as Griff, Alvarez, Reavis, Sophia, and her governess ride into an eerily quiet town square. In a series of quick cuts, Fuller reveals to the viewer what the group is unaware of: a mob of local landowners is hiding in the darkness. Fearing the mob will attack Reavis’s wagon, we wait in suspense, until an offscreen gunshot breaks the silence and changes the entire mood of the scene.
As the mob runs at the wagon from all sides, Fuller orchestrates a rhythmic pattern of graphic contrasts that emphasizes the entrapment of Reavis and his loved ones. The pacing of the editing picks up as the mob runs in low angles first into the right foreground, then into the left foreground, followed by medium-close-up reaction shots of Reavis, Sophia, and Alvarez. The same pattern is repeated again, only this time the mob carries torches: the mob runs to the foreground right, the mob runs to the foreground left, then the three reaction shots. The juxtaposition of contrasting screen direction suggests a clashing of opposing forces, heightening the sense that Reavis, Sophia, and Alvarez are surrounded by danger. Their reaction shots confirm this impression, focusing attention on their fear and bewilderment as the landowners physically attack them. The rest of the scene follows Reavis, Sophia, and Alvarez as they escape from the mob and barricade themselves in Reavis’s office until a battering ram breaks the door down, and the landowners attempt to string up Reavis. James Wong Howe’s chiaroscuro lighting plays a dominant role in creating a mood of terror, as the flames from the torches fill the darkened frame and the shadow of the noose is cast across Reavis’s wall-size map of Arizona. Mob scenes appear in a number of other Fuller pictures (House of Bamboo, Verboten!, The Crimson Kimono, The Naked Kiss, and Street of No Return), providing the local community’s reaction to the central events in the story, although not always in so violent a fashion. This mob scene is strikingly designed to emphasize movement and conflict within in the frame, two stylistic strategies that are central to Fuller’s goal of generating physical and emotional responses in the viewer.
Although The Baron of Arizona was Lippert’s attempt at a “prestige” release, it lacked many of the selling points that helped to insure success for a historical picture at the box office, such as an origin in a successful literary property, star power, or color cinematography. The film followed a similar distribution strategy as I Shot Jesse James, but the difference in the nature of the film and its lack of marketable elements doomed it to a much less successful run. The Baron of Arizona premiered in Phoenix in March 1950 and played first-run houses to fair returns through June, eventually limping toward a disappointing one-week run at the Palace in New York and appearing on the bottom half of first-run double bills by July.22 While reviewers noted that the film was clearly Lippert’s most expensive and ambitious effort to date, Variety suggested that the decision to focus on character rather than action undermined the picture’s potential for success: “In so doing, it defeats its purpose in the market where Lippert releases usually play. Outlook for good returns in the general situation appears slim.”23 The box office mirrored Variety’s prediction, and The Baron of Arizona eventually was outperformed by Lippert’s shorter and more moderately budgeted science-fiction effort of that year, Rocketship X-M (1950).24
Fuller publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the way The Baron of Arizona turned out, especially with the supervision of producer Hittleman. While Lippert clearly intended The Baron of Arizona to be a more prestigious entry than I Shot Jesse James, the decision to distribute the two films in an identical manner failed to capitalize on the former’s higher production values and aspirations as a costume drama; instead, its release pattern virtually guaranteed that The Baron of Arizona would disappoint audiences expecting another rousing adventure film or at least a little action. The high cost and low box-office return of The Baron of Arizona forced Lippert and Fuller to retrench for their next picture together, a decision that resulted in the most critically and commercially successful film of their partnership.
Establishing a Voice: The Steel Helmet
With The Steel Helmet, Fuller had an opportunity to take the lessons he had learned from his first two pictures and apply them to a subject he was intimately familiar with: war. The result is the first picture in which his narrative and stylistic aesthetic fully takes shape. In a retreat from the epic ambitions of The Baron of Arizona, The Steel Helmet featured the faster shooting schedule, lower budget, and shorter length of I Shot Jesse James.25 Fuller capitalized on the recent outbreak of the Korean War, quickly adapting the stories he had gathered in his diary during World War II and readying production within weeks. Rather than shooting for a low-grade A picture, as he did with The Baron of Arizona, Fuller mounted The Steel Helmet as an ambitious B. His star, Gene Evans, was an unknown and was supported entirely by no-name character actors. Without the money to film in any location resembling Korea, Fuller shot the majority of the movie in a rented studio, utilizing two sets (a forest and a Buddhist temple) and adding material from one to two days of outdoor work in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. The battle scenes consist of stock war footage intercut with shots of UCLA students dressed up as North Korean soldiers. Despite lacking anything resembling naturalistic mise-en-scene, The Steel Helmet nevertheless exudes authenticity due to Fuller’s blunt, unsparing handling of the subject matter. Fuller knew full well the limitations inherent in depicting war on celluloid but was determined to convey the details of a footsoldier’s life and the emotions of war as accurately as possible. As presented in the film, war is not noble or glorious but simply fatigue interrupted by death.
Fuller’s approach to the combat film genre was very much a personal one, and he often drew the characters and situations in his war pictures directly from who he knew and what he saw during his time as a soldier. Having spent over fifteen years in journalism by the time he enlisted, Fuller seems to have approached his war service as an opportunity to gather really good copy. Although he was offered numerous opportunities to escape combat, Fuller wanted to be where the action was, on the ground with the “doggies,” and he sought an assignment with the infantry.26 He carried with him a diary that functioned much like a reporter’s notebook, with descriptions of military activities, living conditions, casualties, and vacation leaves, including instructions for how real-life situations might be incorporated into future stories. When it came time to write The Steel Helmet, Fuller’s own war experiences colored his interpretation of combat film conventions, resulting in a picture that invites us not to identify with recognizable Americans fighting for a valiant cause, but to share in the feeling of what it is like to be a foot-soldier. When the seemingly harmless can turn deadly and a sniper waits around every corner, fear, confusion, and exhaustion reign supreme.
The Steel Helmet first introduces us to Sergeant Zack (Evans), a self-absorbed WWII retread who is rescued by a South Korean orphan (William Chun) after surviving a massacre. Initially hostile to the child’s friendly advances, Zack bows to his persistence and allows him to follow behind, giving him the nickname Short Round (“cause you’re not going all the way”). Zack’s emotional detachment protects him from the horrors of war, but he slowly starts to let his guard down and develops a fondness for Short Round. The two eventually meet up with an African-American medic, Corporal Thompson (James Edwards), and a lost patrol. Led by battle-inexperienced Lieutenant Driscoll (Steve Brodie), the patrol is made up of a strikingly oddball version of the generic “mixed platoon,” including Sergeant Tanaka (Richard Loo), a second-generation Japanese-American; Bronte (Robert Hutton), who carries the hand organ of a dead priest; Baldy (Richard Monahan), a hairless radio man; Joe (Sid Melton), who manages the pack mules and doesn’t speak; and a nameless soldier who will soon be blown away (Fuller regular Neyle Morrow). Zack quickly sizes each of them up, defining their competence as soldiers according to their service during WWII: while Tanaka