Dog in a Fog
White Dog (1982)
directed by Sam Fuller
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The ex-newspaperman goes for a bit of yellow journalism, sending his white dog on a crime spree that would do a serial killer proud. But the anger beneath the fantastic scenarios - there's a rape attempt the first night Julie brings her new stray home? - is real enough, and Fuller was a decent, honest man. He captures that moment when a casual encounter with a strange canine can go one way or the other well, makes a heartbreaking appeal for no-kill shelters, and is matter of fact in his treatment of racism's beginnings. It isn't innate, it's taught.
The director, who filmed Boyle Heights so gently in The Crimson Kimono, is similarly discreet in the Hollywood Hills. Cars pass carefully on narrow streets, taillights wait in the dark like the next puzzle from Mulholland Dr., and cameras float on cranes to document the roaming beauty of overgrown footpaths through the canyons. But my favorite scene is Julie's confrontation with her adopted shepherd's first owner. Telling him off isn't just an emotional catharsis for the character, but an actualization of every time a woman has felt intimidated by a stranger, wanted to say something, but hasn't. You can almost hear the gears working in Fuller's head as he read Romain Gary's book about Jean Seberg. A movie about race, sure - we can do that - but why not a few screenplay pages about the casual sexism women deal with daily living on their own?
directed by Sam Fuller
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The ex-newspaperman goes for a bit of yellow journalism, sending his white dog on a crime spree that would do a serial killer proud. But the anger beneath the fantastic scenarios - there's a rape attempt the first night Julie brings her new stray home? - is real enough, and Fuller was a decent, honest man. He captures that moment when a casual encounter with a strange canine can go one way or the other well, makes a heartbreaking appeal for no-kill shelters, and is matter of fact in his treatment of racism's beginnings. It isn't innate, it's taught.
The director, who filmed Boyle Heights so gently in The Crimson Kimono, is similarly discreet in the Hollywood Hills. Cars pass carefully on narrow streets, taillights wait in the dark like the next puzzle from Mulholland Dr., and cameras float on cranes to document the roaming beauty of overgrown footpaths through the canyons. But my favorite scene is Julie's confrontation with her adopted shepherd's first owner. Telling him off isn't just an emotional catharsis for the character, but an actualization of every time a woman has felt intimidated by a stranger, wanted to say something, but hasn't. You can almost hear the gears working in Fuller's head as he read Romain Gary's book about Jean Seberg. A movie about race, sure - we can do that - but why not a few screenplay pages about the casual sexism women deal with daily living on their own?
posted by NPK at 12:10 PM
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