Shock Corridor

Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor

"Sam Fuller is not a beginner, he is a primitive; his mind is not rudimentary, it is rude; his films are not simplistic, they are simple, and it is this simplicity I most admire."
~Francois Truffaut

To hear Sam Fuller talk is to know what his films are like. First off, he's the roughest, gruffest Jew you'll ever see. A sizable cigar perpetually inhabits his mouth, yet his speech is unobstructed. He speaks with the certainty of a man who isn't going to stop to hear anyone contradict him. A fine oral storyteller, he knows what makes an interesting story, how to strike the right tone at the right time, follow through with the perfect gesture; and not only that, but his style has such bravura, such pure energy and intensity, that the desire to listen is irresistible.
That his films seem like a manifestation of his personality can only be a good thing. Not merely a manifestation either, but an enhancement, or a dense focus of that energy. This vigorous storytelling he infuses with a mythological essence. His films resemble myths in every way: they have moments of rare and strange beauty; characters who at once express an indefinable humanity and an epic grandeur; complex worlds composed of archetypal landscapes (projections of the characters' mental terrain?); and that mythic voice capable of telling such powerful stories with such a simple form.

I recommend watching the film before reading any further.

While Shock Corridor bears all the familiar traits of a Fuller film (everything mentioned above, as well as moments of great emotional and physical intensity, political commentary, and a shade of B movie pulp), it strikes me as Fuller's most surreal and oneiric; all of his films (that I've seen) have traces of that, but this one has an abundance. Of course, setting the film in an asylum lends itself to such an approach, but Fuller manages to work with that boon without cheapening anything. The core of the story is simple, the whodunit plot and the political allegory, but strange moments and startling dream imagery weave through that core so thoroughly that they become indistinguishable from one another. Fuller's choice of imagery and characters elevates the film beyond simple understanding; the emotional grip of the film affects me in a way I can't quite define (its active, brutal power in the madhouse reality and the passive yet intrusive sway of the more somber moments).




Take, for instance, the characters. We have the three witnesses, of course, all of which are remarkably interesting and charged with political undertones (I say undertones, but I could just as well say overtones). They all have some particular nuance that left an impression. For Stuart, although his self-appointed Civil War hero role is entertaining, it's his moment of clarity: the history he reveals, compared to what we'd seen so far, came as an unexpected jolt, profoundly moving and played with earnest. Watching him revert back to his role of Civil War hero, I felt a strange sadness.
For Boden, the genius/child, it's the state he chooses to return to. And the reaction Barrett has to the portrait Boden drew for him: holy crap. But I love the idea there, becoming afraid of your own identity. . . or whatever Boden drew.
And Trent. For most, I imagine, the most memorable part of the film. His (Hari Rhodes) performance is astounding, full of frightening power, and his force only adds to the strangeness of the circumstances. And is it strange. The image of him in the pillowcase Ku Klux Klan mask, orating before he chases the old black man down the hall, it brands itself on the brain.




Also deserving a brief mention, the multitude of peripheral characters (all of varying importance, but all wonderfully conceived): Pagliacci, Barrett's opera-loving roommate; the two orderlies who we suspect; the outright psycho who canoes across the floor and screams "Hallelujah" during Trent's racist spiel; the hilarious and even slightly frightening room full of nymphomaniacs. Fuller peoples his films with memorable characters, full of contradictions and mysteries and personality.

Not to leave out the protagonist, of course. Johnny Barrett. His languid sarcasm and tempestuous attitude (we can never tell if it's him or his feigned insanity or later, his real insanity, as the line is constantly blurred) make a nice mix, especially when confronted with an authority figure; Peter Breck (the actor) jumps from even-handed professional to sarcastic rebel to shuddering lunatic, and the performance is compelling and often hilarious.




The film is filled with its own melange of American mythology and ideology; the asylum's patients represent perversions of the American Dream, of course, but Fuller developed a parallel history to support this idea. We have Stuart's Civil War hero, and the role that Barrett adopts to get closer to him. This is reaffirmed when he speaks to Trent. Their steamboat journey together on the bench speaks of Mark Twain and the Mighty Mississippi, grass roots America and the vast folk history that stems from it. These allusions to a classic America, associated with the devastating problems represented by Fuller in the film, builds a microcosm of America; not only does Fuller point out social problems, suggesting that America is insane, he constructs a society, with a history and culture that parallels America's, for this criticism to inhabit.




Yet we also have, at once distinct and ingrained, these dreams and visions juxtaposed with the naturalistic environment. As naturalistic as an insane asylum gets, anyway, for it's still full of operatic sleepwalkers and catatonics reaching for an invisible infinity. The dreams, those brief and memorable incursions into the minds of Barrett and his three witnesses, are what I speak of. With Barrett we have the sequences where he dreams of his girlfriend Cathy. At first, these sequences didn't do much for me, the simple layering of the girl over Barrett sleeping; but when I saw her sprawled over his shoulder, toying at his ear with her boa, it suddenly gelled. Paired with the striptease we see of her at the beginning (almost as dreamlike as Barrett's actual dreams; the dark isolation, Cathy's head consumed by the boa at the start), the scenes become almost haunting. They give credit to Barrett's decomposing mental state. A fine aural manifestation of the chaos in Barrett's life and mind occurs in one of these scenes, where Cathy's ethereal singing runs into the "la la la" of Pagliacci vocalizing some opera song (I believe from "The Barber of Seville"), creating a muddled cacophony until Cathy's song fades.




It's easy to dismiss the color sequences in the film as memorable only because they provide such a visual contrast to the otherwise black and white cinematography. For me, they're the most deeply probing and lucid moments in the film, giving another dimension to everything. They provide what one might consider the most unhindered perspective of reality we witness, something saner than sane: the clarity of vision one might have if the veil of reality could be lifted without having the comforting mist of insanity descend. It is a metaphysical clarity we see in these sequences.
The first instant of color is completely arresting: the image of a golden Buddha against a blue sky (echoes of another, earlier Fuller film, Steel Helmet). The world of the Orient, with the despairing confession of involuntary bigotry and Communist complicity as the vocal accompaniment. The shots are beautiful (although stretched by the differing aspect ratios between the b&w and color footage, which adds to the distorted atmosphere). We do not see war, or discrimination, or anything he talks about; instead, we see possibly the solitary moments of happiness he can remember, a time unaffected by American prejudice and Communist corruption.
When the color footage reappears, it is no less affecting. Trent speaks, bound to a bed, hysterical and frightened. He shrieks of men in masks, destruction, terror, while a vivid tribal dance dominates the screen. The dark-skinned dancers are masked for the ceremony. The implications are terrible and poignant, in the context of Trent's condition (and the grander social condition he represents). Men become afraid of their own cultural history, of their kinsmen and even of themselves, by the harrowing force of the white majority's will. A psychological study in the fifties or sixties had black and white children choosing whether to play with a black or a white doll; nearly all of the children picked the white doll, even the black children. The tribesmen, visually married to the Ku Klux Klan, become an embodiment of this phenomenon of displacement: the transfer of anger from the aggressor to the self.
And the last color sequence, one of pure Fullerian energy: the rushing torrent of some vast waterfall (I'd say Niagara Falls, except it might be another). This one is reminiscent of another image, where the film seems to find its title. The corridor is suddenly barren, Barrett alone and screaming in a thunderstorm contained within the building. Rain pouring down, water splashing and filling the floor, thunder screeching, lightning striking down at Barrett's convulsing form. Both these scenes shudder with uncontrollable vivacity, trembling force, and both are projections of Barrett's psyche. Interesting, that both should involve torrents of water; it's an apt metaphor for chaos, but plenty of other things are, too: landslides, volcanoes, wars. Why choose water to act as the bridge between sanity and madness? Water fascinates me, and its use here is particularly intriguing. Is Barrett being baptized into a new life, a storm of chaos followed by perpetual calm? I like to speculate, but have no answers. I can only say that Fuller's film assailed me like a thunderstorm, leaving me in a state of contemplative clarity, crisp as the scent of ozone.




Links:

Cinefile - A fine defense of Fuller as a filmmaker, in regards to this film. It's not as eloquent and simple as Truffaut's remark, but it's more disparaging to his detractors, which I fully support.

Criterion Collection essay - Definitely worth reading; short but useful.

Culturecourt - Not a great read, but worth looking into for its occasional insights that I didn't bother to highlight.

Le Sang d'un poète

Jean Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète
or The Blood of a Poet


Cocteau: "a descent into oneself, a way of using the mechanism of the dream without sleeping, a crooked candle, often mysteriously blown out, carried about in the night of the human body."



The second of the four Cocteau films I'll be watching within the next few weeks. This film (his first) differs quite a lot from Beauty and the Beast, which was made fifteen years later. They use the same brand of magic, the trick photography and the surreal environments, but otherwise they are different creatures entirely. Beauty and the Beast is a fairy tale, a strange and possibly subversive one, but a fairy tale nonetheless. The Blood of a Poet revels in its own abstraction, in some cases seems to intentionally alienate the audience, seems anything but the film trying to speak to the child's eyes watching behind our filtering gaze.
So why have I reacted more nostalgically to this film than the fairy tale?

I recommend watching the film before reading any further.

Let me first make it absolutely clear that my childhood was long, blessed, full of fairy tales, but that I was the sort of child that saw the strangeness in things. That not only saw it, but was attracted to that strangeness.
And let's also be absolutely clear: The Blood of a Poet is a strange film. It's the sort of film that annoys most people, because the artist expects us to "interpret it for ourselves". So in the beginning, we could say the mouth coming off on the artist reflects the way a piece of art influences, or perhaps infects, its creator. We could say plenty about him making out with his own hand. We would be overwhelmed by the possibilities once he rubs it off onto a statue and gives it life. The further we make our way into the film, the less footing our explanations have. For the purposes of this write-up, I'm going to avoid explanations and focus instead on reactions. Well, one reaction. Mine.
I read (check the Senses of Cinema link below) that the film "looks more like an animated cartoon then a true live-action film", and while I wouldn't use that term exactly, it's a reasonable description. What impressed itself upon me most about the film was the sense of artificiality. We witness highly expressive and nonrealistic acting, performances that are more allegorical or metaphorical than they are representative of any true persona. Mixed in with the live action we see various paintings, sculptures (wire, stone, stone/flesh), and tableaux which correspond with the action taking place, often involving direct interaction between the two and in some instances even replacing the live action (such as the poet and his mouth-hand being shown as a statue). The settings are unfamiliar, in part because they're so sparsely decorated; there is no sense of trying to convince us of true location, we are in a false world and we know this. Most artificial of all, or most clearly artificial, are the cinematic qualities of the film. The film quality itself is fine, for the time, but the trick photography, the transitions, the use of the medium throughout the film, are all obviously filmic techniques. They don't have the invisible smoothness of special effects today, they don't engage the suspension of disbelief as urgently. Of course, that has something to do with it being a novice effort and the limitations of technology at the time, but that's not explanation enough. Cocteau seems to encourage this sense of fakeness, of something constructed. It certainly adds to the atmosphere of the piece. But it also hints at the essence of imagination, the beauty of poetic observation, and the ways they must be hindered by the failings of established artistic media.
What better way to make something seem alien than to mediate it so heavily that we know, quite consciously, that it is alien. Certainly not natural, not something that can exist outside of the cinematic realm. Film has often been described as the artistic medium that comes closest to the state of dreaming: images, best seen in the darkness, a projection of. . .



(So why did I mention my childhood before? Remember the part where the poet is stalking through the hallway of the hotel, struggling to walk against the bizarre gravity of the place. Walking through the hallway, peeking through the keyholes of DOORS. Doors. With a capital D. It was the name of a game two friends of mine created, a puzzle game that the creator narrated in person while the participant tried to figure it out. It involves a series of hallways or chambers filled with different doors, each hiding a unique and surreal scenario. The Blood of a Poet reminded me of unrestrained imagination, the kind I was free to exhibit and revel in as a child. Beauty and the Beast is nice, and creative, and beautiful, but it still adheres to a story, to characters, to expectations. Watching the poet peek into the keyholes, I am reminded of Wednesday evenings on the branches of the oak near the schoolboard office with Andrew, trying to figure out what to do with the purple lightbulb or that gargoyle. It doesn't seem like a dream to me so much as an adventure one might stumble into, lucid and awake. I can see the Mexican die and fall and rise and fall again and it will not seem strange, because there are worlds where this happens. The poet observes, and poetic observation is often like a dream. The film seems less like a dream to me and more like the waking life of the poet, however dreamlike that might be.)



Should be clear by now, but my favorite part of the film was the sequence within the mirror. Well, I've always liked mirrors, and doors, and that part stood out to me for its own merits and the personal merits it reminded me of. There is the snowball fight, of course, and the card game that follows. These also deal with the essence of the poet, although these deal less with perception and more with the nature of the artist and his struggle. Cocteau, temporarily disengaging his open interpretation, suggested that:

"The poet's solitude is so great, he so lives what he creates, that the mouth of one of his creations lives in his hand like a wound, and that he loves this mouth, that he loves himself in short, that he wakes up in the morning with this mouth against him like a pickup, that he tries to get rid of it on a dead statue-and that this statue begins to live-and that it takes its revenge, and that it sets him off upon awful adventures. I can tell you that the snowball fight is the poet's childhood, and that when he plays the game of cards with his Glory, with his Destiny, he cheats by taking from his childhood that which he should draw from within himself."

Maybe I'm wrong to think of my childhood, then. But I wouldn't call this drawing from my childhood. I'd call it recognizing a common strand of conscious perception running between my childhood, myself, and the ideas that Cocteau suggests in this film. If The Blood of a Poet was meant to portray the struggle of the artist, it didn't work its wonders on me. It achieved something else, which I would consider more admirable.
Either way, it makes me want to play Doors.

(Regarding the links below, I have the regular imdb, the Criterion page (check out the essay, by Cocteau), the Senses of Cinema article, and another blog called the Criterion Contraption; the latter features what basically function as reviews, but I'll give him credit, because it has some interesting stuff and he's more open-minded than most)




Links:
Imdb entry
Criterion page
Senses of Cinema
Criterion Contraption