Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller, 1957)
Possibly my favourite Fuller, with Barbara Stanwyck as Jessica Drummond, the "high riding woman with a whip", and Barry Sullivan as Griff Bonnell, a self-diagnosed anachronism, the lawman whose time is passing before his eyes and whose regrets about his killing past weighs heavy. The melancholy of this Western narrative is keenly captured by Fuller and his leads (Stanwyck, especially, is amazing), as they lie in the barn, and she says "This is the last stop, Griff. The frontier is finished. There'll be no more towns to break, no more men to break. Time you started to break yourself." Time is slipping by for both of them, and the decisions they have made through their life bear heavily. There is love between them, but there is also family. Great stuff.
Then there's the brilliant flipside. A song sung about the "high riding woman with a whip", the singer walking into an open bath house full of bathing cowboys. The phallic psychology and symbology of guns constantly referenced. Even better is the typically perverse and lewd Sam Fuller talk that runs as a cheeky, camp, crazy undercurrent. The men are well and truly whipped by this woman, with the sheriff breaking down, giving a heartfelt, soppy, emasculated speech, as he realises who she really loves. Then there's the beautiful daughter of the gunsmith (herself a gunsmith, too), of whom Griff's brother, Wes, admiringly says
"She even looks good in overalls. Built like a 40/40. I'd like to stay around long enough to clean her rifle." Then, when they canoodle,
"I never kissed a gunsmith before." She replies:
"Any recoil?" Or, between Jessica and Griff, about his infamous gun:
J: I'm not interested in you, Mr Bonnell. It's your trademark. May I feel it?
G: Uh uh.
J: Just curious
G: Might go off in your face.
J: I'll take a chance.Or:
G: Can you spare the time?
J: I want to see if you find him on my land
G: You wanna spank him?
J: I just want to see if you can take it.The thing is, it all works. The psychological insight, the lewdness. That's Sam Fuller. No wonder the New Wave adored him.