The Films of Samuel Fuller. Lisa DombrowskiЧитать онлайн книгу.
as Sergeant Zack in a publicity still from the opening scene in The Steel Helmet. Fuller heightens the suspense by intercutting shots of Zack’s slow crawl forward with images of an advancing Korean boy holding a gun. Note the hole in Zack’s helmet—where he was shot but unharmed—and the knife in the foreground, which will be activated at the end of the scene. Chrisam Films, Inc.
Although the film’s omniscient narration and Zack’s off-putting personality mitigate against viewers identifying with his character, Zack’s central role within the narrative and his emergence as the most experienced and combat-smart member of the platoon position him as the hero of the film. We root for him to survive and to protect the platoon, and as he grows closer to Short Round, we thrill to see his awkward expressions of sentiment. In a cruelly ironic twist characteristic of Fuller, however, Short Round’s merciful rescue of Zack at the beginning of the film proves to be the downfall of both characters. The introduction of the two in the opening scene highlights their significant differences: although both characters have experienced the horrors of war, Short Round remains generous and spiritual, while Zack is self-interested and suspicious. Zack’s single-minded approach to survival proves necessary in the jungle and on the road in the first act, but upon the platoon’s arrival at the temple, Short Round’s devotion to prayer highlights the basic human feeling that has been absent in Zack for so long. Zack’s attitude toward Short Round softens, and as he slowly turns the prayer wheel, one wonders if Zack is beginning to take seriously the spirituality he has thus far ridiculed. At the beginning of the third act, Zack and Short Round are alone together as the boy writes yet another prayer. Rather than making fun of Short Round’s belief in divinity, as he has consistently throughout the film, Zack now pins the prayer on Short Round’s back, a marker of his growing respect for the boy. After Short Round leaves the room, Zack crafts “dog tags” for him, an additional sign of his growing love. Despite his earlier aloofness, Zack has finally accepted the spiritual basis of Short Round’s loyalty to him and wants to adopt the boy into his own world—that of the U.S. Army.
Making the dog tags is the first act of kindness and generosity committed by Zack in the entire film, and his newfound emotions prove to be his undoing. When Short Round is shot in the subsequent scene and the POW laughs at the remnants of the boy’s prayer, Zack kills the POW in a fury, breaking the Geneva Convention and prompting the lieutenant to challenge him, yelling, “You’re no soldier!” Recognizing his mistake, Zack calls for the medic to save the POW’s life and threatens his victim, “If you die, I’ll kill you!” The paradoxical nature of Zack’s order underscores the ironic situation he finds himself in: his affection for Short Round caused him to forget what it means to be a soldier; now he must save the man he most wants to see dead. With both Short Round gone and his identity as a soldier in question, Zack loses his mind in battle. Without the protection of his hard-won pragmatism and emotional isolation, he leaves the temple a broken man.
The potential in the combat film for the activation of ambiguity, contradiction, death, and despair make it one of the genres most compatible with Fuller’s brand of storytelling. By setting the relationship of Sergeant Zack and Short Round against the ordeals of the platoon, the narrative of The Steel Helmet highlights the conflict experienced by Zack between his growing humanity and his desire for self-preservation. As with most Fuller films, the construction of the narrative suggests this is a conflict that cannot be resolved. In a state of war, emotion is weakness, and compassion begets death. The killing of Short Round and the reduction of the film’s hero to a mere shell of a man are shocking reminders to viewers that no one escapes unscathed from war, even those who manage to walk away.
The Steel Helmet establishes the character types, themes, and situations that Fuller will revisit in his four subsequent combat pictures: Fixed Bayonets, China Gate, Merrill’s Marauders, and The Big Red One. All focus on a small group of soldiers rather than attempting to provide an overview of the war, and each eschews triumphalism in favor of emotional authenticity. Another Korean War film made quickly on the heels of The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets takes the mixed platoon of its predecessor into the winter mountains and isolates the group in a cave. Fuller again utilizes unexpected violence to produce tension and surprise, as the protagonist watches his commanding officers die one by one, deeply fearing his eventual assumption of command. Produced while Fuller was under contract at Twentieth Century–Fox, Fixed Bayonets lacks the loopiness and ideological exchanges of The Steel Helmet, but these characteristics return in China Gate, written by Fuller as an independent Globe Enterprises release. The first American combat picture set in Vietnam, China Gate is also the only Fuller war film whose protagonist is motivated by something other than survival. Lucky Legs, the film’s Eurasian hero, agrees to undertake a search and destroy mission in order to ensure a life for her child in America. Fuller exploits her mixed ancestry and love affair with a Communist leader for extended discussions of race and politics, making China Gate the most didactic of his combat pictures. Based on real events and shot on location with relatively large casts and crews, Merrill’s Marauders and The Big Red One expand the scope of Fuller’s combat sequences at the same time as they focus more narrowly on a single topic: staying alive. Stripped of any significant female presence or discussions of why we fight, their narratives abandon the romantic plotline and didacticism of China Gate to craft repetitious scenes emphasizing the unmerciful nature of war and the simple triumph of survival; in doing so, they offer perhaps the most distilled representation of Fuller’s worldview. In its redirection of genre conventions, alteration of suspense and surprise, emphasis on paradoxical situations, and attempt to suggest the anxieties experienced by soldiers in war, The Steel Helmet anticipates aspects of each of Fuller’s later combat pictures.
The topicality of The Steel Helmet, widespread critical praise, and its distinctly different distribution strategy helped it to attain greater financial success than Fuller’s first two Lippert pictures. With its lack of stars and minimal production design, The Steel Helmet relied on the timeliness of its subject matter to sell the film. Newspaper advertisements exclaimed, “It’s the real Korean story!” next to an image of Sergeant Zack’s eyes peering out from below his bullet-ridden helmet. Variety predicted “a sure money film,” and Boxoffice pegged it as a potentially lucrative programmer, noting the flexibility of the film’s eighty-four-minute running time to play either side of a double bill.33
The Steel Helmet debuted in Los Angeles with a two-week run in mid-January 1951, topping a double bill with the Lippert western Three Desperate Men (1951) at the 2,100-seat United Artists theater downtown and at four smaller first run houses.34 Strong returns, including the best trade in two years at the UA, generated momentum for the film’s booking at the end of the month in New York City’s Loew’s State, a 3,450-seat theater that had never previously played a Lippert film. At the State, The Steel Helmet scored a “smash” $26,000 in its first frame, the theater’s best in many weeks, and was held over for ten additional days. When the film opened in first-run theaters in five major markets at the beginning of February, it emerged as the seventh highest grosser for the week. Despite controversy surrounding the film’s depiction of Sergeant Zack shooting an unarmed prisoner of war, The Steel Helmet eventually generated over $2 million in ticket sales and earned Fuller an award from independent exhibitors for the top-grossing drama from 1948 to 1953.35 The film’s low cost and high gross made it a model for the potential profitability of a programmer. Opening the film first in Los Angeles and New York enabled it to generate positive critical attention and to illustrate the box-office draw of its timely subject matter; during its subsequent rollout, these two factors maintained the film’s status as a headliner capable of filling large houses.
Following the release of The Steel Helmet, Samuel Fuller was in high demand. Fuller’s work at Lippert, and particularly the success of The Steel Helmet, demonstrated his ability to shoot quickly and cheaply and still churn out a profitable film, and soon the majors came calling. In interviews, Fuller claims to have been wooed by production executives from most of the big studios, including MGM, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century–Fox, Universal, and Columbia. Eventually he settled on Fox. Although he could not hope to gain the creative and administrative control he eventually enjoyed at Lippert from a larger studio, working for a major provided Fuller with access to