Samuel Fuller's "White Dog"
Fuller’s hyperbolic ALL CAPS sensibility, for humor as much as for so-called humanity, saves all this (all his films) from the possibility of devolving into a soapbox statement/thesis. It’s a weird move, really, and tough to pull off with any grace—but that’s just it: Fuller denies grace. The edits and the angles and the performances and the dialogue, all his materials, remain rough to the end. Yet, his vision is not simple cynicism; rather, he sees the world as stew, a bog of trained idiocy, and all we can do is form tactics for survival. It’s all about trying. Try Keys does. After his delayed introduction (about 30 minutes), White Dog becomes his movie, not Julie’s nor the dog’s (as much as the film is always all about the dog), and we watch this strong and contradictory man work to make things right one experiment at a time...
Fuller’s hyperbolic ALL CAPS sensibility, for humor as much as for so-called humanity, saves all this (all his films) from the possibility of devolving into a soapbox statement/thesis. It’s a weird move, really, and tough to pull off with any grace—but that’s just it: Fuller denies grace. The edits and the angles and the performances and the dialogue, all his materials, remain rough to the end. Yet, his vision is not simple cynicism; rather, he sees the world as stew, a bog of trained idiocy, and all we can do is form tactics for survival. It’s all about trying. Try Keys does. After his delayed introduction (about 30 minutes), White Dog becomes his movie, not Julie’s nor the dog’s (as much as the film is always all about the dog), and we watch this strong and contradictory man work to make things right one experiment at a time...