Verboten! (1959)

Director:

Samuel Fuller

Guionista:

Samuel Fuller (writer)

Release Date:

25 marzo 1959 (USA)

Genre:

Thriller | War | Drama

Frase comercial:

A MAD GENERATION... Spawned In Lust... Consumed By Hate!

Plot:

A young American serviceman, stationed in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, jeopardises his...

Plot Keywords:

Nazi

Comentarios de los usuarios:

might be Fuller's most underrated (and one of his most under-seen) films; a great work merging pulp post-war drama and documentary

Cast

James Best	...	Sgt. David Brent
Susan Cummings	...	Helga Schiller / Brent
Tom Pittman	...	Bruno Eckart
Paul Dubov	...	Capt. R. Harvey
Harold Daye	...	Franz Schiller
Dick Kallman	...	Helmuth Strasser
Stuart Randall	...	Colonel
Steven Geray	...	Mayor (Burghermeister) of Rothbach
Anna Hope	...	Frau Schiller
Robert Boon	...	SS officer
Sasha Harden	...	Eric Heiden
Paul Busch	...	Gunther Dietrich
Neyle Morrow	...	Sfc. Kellogg
Joe Turkel	...	Infantryman (as Joseph Turkel)
listado alfabético del resto del reparto:
Paul Anka	...	Vocalist behind opening credits

También conocida como:

Forbidden! (International: English title) (informal literal title)

Duración:

93 min | USA:87 min (TCM print)

País:

USA

Idioma:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sonido:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Clasificación:

Finland:K-16

Company:

Globe Enterprises

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera (1996)

Soundtrack:

Verboten!

might be Fuller's most underrated (and one of his most under-seen) films; a great work merging pulp post-war drama and documentary

Samuel Fuller knows war, and is one of the only directors in American movie history who could accurately portray the horrific experiences of it in a form like the motion picture. His pessimism and idealism, if that sounds a little odd to mix together, work for him as a storyteller, and at the same time he's always out to tell the truth, however brutal (or put into melodramatic constructs) it can get. Verboten, however, deals with the post-war experience, as we only get in the opening scenes the big boom of WAR- in bold for a point. The opening shot is like one big exclamation point that seems to continue on into the rest of the scenes: a dead soldier on the ground, the camera pans up, we see another soldier shot down in war-torn terrain. Simple, direct language. Then Fuller punctuates the intensity with something interesting: the title song played over the opening credits as both irony and sincerity, and then Beethoven music over a shoot-out between Americans and the Nazis. Sgt David Brent (James Best) is shot, the battle goes on, and then it transitions to him being treated for his wounds.

It might lead one to believe that this will be a somewhat conventional WW2 flick (somewhat in that one usually wouldn't find Beethoven and, later on to an extent, Wagner put into these images), but this isn't the case. Instead, Fuller makes this a 'Coming Home' kind of movie, though not at all in the sense that 'this soldier comes home injured and so on and so on'. Instead of really going home, Brent stays on in Germany, as he's fallen head over heels for the woman, Helga (Susan Cummings, pretty good at pulling off the German accent), and wants to work in a smaller capacity in the military so he can marry her. What he doesn't realize is that a) she wants him more for money so she can get food for herself and brother, however this gets complex emotionally at the point of revelation to the slightly naive but heartfelt Brent, and b) there's an underground Hitler youth sect called the Werewolves, who want to pick right up off where Hitler ended- starting small, despite argument within the group- by attacking the very government that's now embedded in Germany to give them, as Brent describes, a "blood transfusion." With this, plus footage from the Nuremburg trials, and (as narrated, I think, by Fuller himself) a quick, no-punches-pulled history of the Nazi war crimes piece by piece, we get a multi-faceted look at a society in the dire straits of an immediate post-war environment. While Rossellini handled it his own way with Germany Year Zero, Fuller tackles it with layers: first there's the love story, or what is the tragic downfall of a man who can't see anything past what he thinks should be reasonable, that it's his wife and a child on the way that he can't leave, until the revelation that he's (partly) been swindled. Baker and Cummings, along with Harold Daye as Helga's young, confused brother, perform at with the utmost detail to emotions; these aren't very easy B-movie parts, though they could've been that. Then another layer is the political one, the struggle of a society to come to grips with being conquered, and a mentality which is made sensationalized, to be sure, by Fuller, in respect to making the Nazi's a total no-gray-area thing: they're evil, particularly when they cancel out reason to meet their ends.

And finally there's the layer of style, which is strangely absorbing. This is probably one of Fuller's 'talkiest' films, which isn't a bad thing considering it's one of his best written scripts, as the characters don't talk simply or in too many platitudes (with the exception of a small scene where two characters talk about the Hitler youth as juvenile delinquents, which is actually, according to Fuller's autobiography, probably another layer to consider in the subtext and the 50s period of movies). And Fuller shoots this almost in a real European style, when he's not going for fight scenes or battles, as the editing isn't always very fast, and sometimes a cut won't happen for a full minute, or longer. There's an odd tension that grows out of this, especially when there's something said by a character that gets another one wild-eyed or suspicious; Fuller could easily go for a big close-up, but there's a more sinister, cold quality to not moving away from two people in a conversation without a simple over-the-shoulder deal. But when it requires it, like the big brawl outside the American military office, or the Nuremburg footage spliced into Franz's memories of the Werewolves, Fuller can be as stunning stylist as ever.

Very hard to find, but extremely worth it if you'r either a fan of the director's or of WW2 movies set in Germany- or even just a history-buff- Verboten! is an intellectual experience and a strong emotional one, with a cast that is better than expected from a B-movie, and an attitude towards the 'other' that is equally damning and thought provoking.