A Fuller Life: The Story of a True American Maverick

I'm of the opinion that Samuel Fuller was a national treasure. If that's the case,  his films and autobiography, A Third Face, should be required viewing and reading in every high school and college. After all, his life not only covered most of the twentieth century, but he played an active role in that history, as both witness and participant. Unfortunately, he was never been accorded such accolades, at least not when he was alive.  Hopefully, Samantha Fuller's  heartfelt  hundred and twenty minute eulogy to her father might help change that.

A Fuller Life movie centres on Sam's own words and images taken from his films and personal archive,  including some hitherto unseen footage Samantha discovered after her father's 1997 death at age 87. Sam's words mostly come from his autobiography  read in Fuller's work-room by the likes of James Franco, Jennifer Beals, Buck Henry, Constance Towers, William Friedkin, Monte Hellman, Joe Dante, Wim Wendars and Bill Duke, who reads as though he's channeling his subject.  All, or most all, had dealings at one time or another with Fuller. Also thrown into this mix are a smattering of Sam's cartoons, articles and covers of his long-underrated novels.  

Samantha Fuller's film moves seamlessly from her father's years as a teenage journalist- a protege of Gene Fowler's- mostly as a crime reporter,  onto to Hollywood where he worked as a screenwriter. Only to give it up when the war arrived. Joining the infantry so he wouldn't miss out on "the biggest crime story of the century.", he participated in, and filmed, various campaigns including the Normandy landing ("War itself is organised insanity."), and the liberation of the Falkenau concentration camp where, as Fuller says in his daughter's film, "I made my first movie." Then back to Hollywood and a long career making hard-hitting, and often controversial, films, in some ways the visual equivalent of his populist tabloid journalism, always chasing down a story or pursuing the truth.

My only criticism  is that I would have liked to have had a few more personal asides. As it is only Constance Towers, still alluring some fifty years after appearing in Fuller's Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor, is given sufficient on-screen time to reminisce about working with Fuller. But that's a minor point in what is an extremely watchable and valuable film, whose simplicity never fails to work in its favour. This is a film that will interest all Fuller fans, and no doubt some who have only the vaguest notion of this most formidable of American directors.

An added note:  I thought I'd seen just about every Fuller film out there. But while watching A Fuller Life I discovered I'd actually missed one. Made for TV in 1990, starring Jennifer Beals, The Madonna and the Dragon is said to concern two journalists covering the People's Revolt in the Philippines. It would also be Fuller's final film. How could I have overlooked that one? Though I couldn't find it for sale on-line, the French version is on YouTube.