Book Review: The Films of Samuel Fuller by Lisa Dombrowski

Sam Fuller with ever present cigar

Lisa Dombrowski's The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I'll Kill You! left this Fuller fan deflated. Dombrowski is a Wesleyan University professor who wants to balance auteurist enthusiasm for the director and writer with recent academic scholarship on film production; most significantly David Bordwell, et al's The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. This she does, so if you are looking for a book on the difference between Fuller's work for 20th Century Fox and his independent work or the average shot lengths of Fuller's films, then this is the book for you. Dombrowski's visual analyses of the films are an almost unreadable thicket of academic jargon that end up obscuring rather than revealing Fuller's pungent personality. I largely agree with Dombrowski's opinions, but felt so depleted by the end of this short book that I cannot recommend it. 

There are always the films themselves. The first fifteen I recommend wholeheartedly, but even Street of No Return has moments that could have come from no one but this very singular filmmaker.

1. Shock Corridor                                    1963
2. Pickup on South Street                       1953
3. The Naked Kiss                                   1964
4. Merrill's Marauders                             1962
5. Underworld USA                                  1961
6. Forty Guns                                           1957
7. Run of the Arrow                                 1957
8. The Crimson Kimono                          1959
9. The Big Red One                                  1980
10. The Steel Helmet                                  1951
11. White Dog                                             1982
12. House of Bamboo                                1955
13. China Gate                                            1957
14. Verboten!                                               1960
15. Park Row                                               1952
16. The Baron of Arizona                           1950
17. I Shot Jesse James                               1949
18. Street of No Return                               1989

          Haven't Seen: Fixed Bayonets (1951), Hell or High Water (1954), Shark! (1969)

                                 Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1972), Thieves After Dark (1984)