Some might regard this as propagandistic, Marxist, a garrulous sermon. I perceive it as one of the creative summits of Samuel Fuller's incomparable career, a masterpiece of subversive and incisive cinema. Here, Fuller transforms a relatively straightforward yarn into a sociological allegory, a violent and Kafkaesque dystopia that threatens to collapse under the strain of seemingly infinite tensions. Above everything, this is a film that attests to Fuller's inexhaustible courage and fidelity to truth, as well as his singularly fierce intellect.
The asylum here, of course, is a thinly-veiled metaphor for America at large, a police state touting phantom ideals of democracy and equality. The inmates are the detritus of the American dream, those rendered unfit for the Darwinist struggle of capitalistic life. Some, like the jaundiced altruist Dr Boden, have opted for a flight from reality, and it's hard to blame him when reality constitutes the absurd oneupmanship of the Cold War. Others have retreated from a climate of hate and xenophobia- African-Americans are driven to self-loathing (one thinks of Fanon and Sartre's "The Anti-Semite Makes The Jew") and wayward Bible Belt youths are unable to reconcile their idealism with the zealotry of Southern fundamentalism and bigotry. Indeed, how "mad" are these folks when juxtaposed against a reality obsessed with nuclear armament, murder, racial purity, sex (Cathy betrays her intellectual aspirations for a well-paying stripper job) and the like? Seen in this light, absconding from reality seems like the only sensible option.
Though Fuller satirizes Freudian essentialism and psychological determinism throughout the film, lampooning the jargon and inauthentic categories that are used to assimilate, institutionalize and dehumanize these wretched victims, he seems to fully endorse the post-Freudian constructivism of psychoanalysts like Erich Fromm and Karen Horney, who further developed Freud's "metapsychology" and theories on neurosis as a social product. The inmates here are the "discontents" of Freud's civilization, the miscreants and deviants expelled from the ratrace.
Fuller has never been shy about his indictments, and the didactic thrust of this film is plain- his America facilitated the production of such "neurotics", and their removal from society was legitimized and justified simply on essentialist myths of perversion and degeneracy. The greatest scene in the film, Johnny's encounter with the haunted Trent, yields a timeless insight (feel free to castigate me for horrid paraphrasing): "I don't blame the white kids, they've been taught since they were toddlers to hate us colored folk". The legacy of the South for Trent is a heritage of brutality, proliferated ad infinitum, to the point where he is turned against himself and consumed in neurotic self-hatred, a stranger to himself.
In characteristically fearless fashion, Fuller debunks and deconstructs madness as a manufactured, socially-enforced mythology- a sane Johnny gradually becomes trapped in his role as madman. Sundered from voices that will affirm/confirm his lucidity, he assumes the identity mirrored to him by his situation. This is Fuller's horrifying commentary on the tentativeness and fragility of identity- social recognition is bestowed and revoked by the society we live in, it is impossible to construct and maintain it without the sanction of everyone else. Our normative notions of "madness" and "reality" do not exist a priori, they are erected and agreed upon by the civilization we inhabit. Each of the characters in this film must grapple with a host of irrealizable chimeras, the mirages of meritocracy and the "self-made man" being but two.
This fluid conception of identity is profound, but what is even more interesting is Johnny's ambiguous character- are we to read him as a man in dogged pursuit of truth in the face of censure and hypocrisy (his loss of voice being yet another bald metaphor on Fuller's part), or as a monomaniacal neurotic whose arbitrary 'truth' (in this case a sordid obsession for murder and making said murderer answer to contemptible 'justice') blinds him to the nightmares that afflict his fellow inmates? One must think of the goal that impels him to this undertaking in the first place- the Pulitzer Prize. Again, Fuller identifies the inadequacies of a society that quantifies success in concrete terms, where all and sundry slave under the yoke of money, titles and awards.
Sure, there are complaints that may be levied against this film. There are no likable characters, for one, unless you take kindly to the maudlin and mawkish Cathy. Yet, the more I meditate on this film, the more I am convinced that it is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. It is decidedly less "pulpy" in feel than most Fuller I have seen, and assuredly one of his wisest productions, one that remains germane to our times as a diagnosis of capitalistic ills. Though the Cahiers crowd revered Fuller, I am certain that this packs more of a punch than Godard's entire corpus of work. Complex, visionary and incredibly rewarding, this one will sear your retina and quicken your pulse.
The asylum here, of course, is a thinly-veiled metaphor for America at large, a police state touting phantom ideals of democracy and equality. The inmates are the detritus of the American dream, those rendered unfit for the Darwinist struggle of capitalistic life. Some, like the jaundiced altruist Dr Boden, have opted for a flight from reality, and it's hard to blame him when reality constitutes the absurd oneupmanship of the Cold War. Others have retreated from a climate of hate and xenophobia- African-Americans are driven to self-loathing (one thinks of Fanon and Sartre's "The Anti-Semite Makes The Jew") and wayward Bible Belt youths are unable to reconcile their idealism with the zealotry of Southern fundamentalism and bigotry. Indeed, how "mad" are these folks when juxtaposed against a reality obsessed with nuclear armament, murder, racial purity, sex (Cathy betrays her intellectual aspirations for a well-paying stripper job) and the like? Seen in this light, absconding from reality seems like the only sensible option.
Though Fuller satirizes Freudian essentialism and psychological determinism throughout the film, lampooning the jargon and inauthentic categories that are used to assimilate, institutionalize and dehumanize these wretched victims, he seems to fully endorse the post-Freudian constructivism of psychoanalysts like Erich Fromm and Karen Horney, who further developed Freud's "metapsychology" and theories on neurosis as a social product. The inmates here are the "discontents" of Freud's civilization, the miscreants and deviants expelled from the ratrace.
Fuller has never been shy about his indictments, and the didactic thrust of this film is plain- his America facilitated the production of such "neurotics", and their removal from society was legitimized and justified simply on essentialist myths of perversion and degeneracy. The greatest scene in the film, Johnny's encounter with the haunted Trent, yields a timeless insight (feel free to castigate me for horrid paraphrasing): "I don't blame the white kids, they've been taught since they were toddlers to hate us colored folk". The legacy of the South for Trent is a heritage of brutality, proliferated ad infinitum, to the point where he is turned against himself and consumed in neurotic self-hatred, a stranger to himself.
In characteristically fearless fashion, Fuller debunks and deconstructs madness as a manufactured, socially-enforced mythology- a sane Johnny gradually becomes trapped in his role as madman. Sundered from voices that will affirm/confirm his lucidity, he assumes the identity mirrored to him by his situation. This is Fuller's horrifying commentary on the tentativeness and fragility of identity- social recognition is bestowed and revoked by the society we live in, it is impossible to construct and maintain it without the sanction of everyone else. Our normative notions of "madness" and "reality" do not exist a priori, they are erected and agreed upon by the civilization we inhabit. Each of the characters in this film must grapple with a host of irrealizable chimeras, the mirages of meritocracy and the "self-made man" being but two.
This fluid conception of identity is profound, but what is even more interesting is Johnny's ambiguous character- are we to read him as a man in dogged pursuit of truth in the face of censure and hypocrisy (his loss of voice being yet another bald metaphor on Fuller's part), or as a monomaniacal neurotic whose arbitrary 'truth' (in this case a sordid obsession for murder and making said murderer answer to contemptible 'justice') blinds him to the nightmares that afflict his fellow inmates? One must think of the goal that impels him to this undertaking in the first place- the Pulitzer Prize. Again, Fuller identifies the inadequacies of a society that quantifies success in concrete terms, where all and sundry slave under the yoke of money, titles and awards.
Sure, there are complaints that may be levied against this film. There are no likable characters, for one, unless you take kindly to the maudlin and mawkish Cathy. Yet, the more I meditate on this film, the more I am convinced that it is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. It is decidedly less "pulpy" in feel than most Fuller I have seen, and assuredly one of his wisest productions, one that remains germane to our times as a diagnosis of capitalistic ills. Though the Cahiers crowd revered Fuller, I am certain that this packs more of a punch than Godard's entire corpus of work. Complex, visionary and incredibly rewarding, this one will sear your retina and quicken your pulse.