Verboten!
With James Best, Susan Cummings, Tom Pittman.
US, 1959, 35mm, black & white, 87 min.
Print source: Warner Bros.
Verboten! marks a crucial turning point in Fuller's cinema by focusing at last, and in an unusual way, upon the war in which he had actually played a role, WWII. Fuller chose a radically different kind of film from his previous combat pictures, a story not of the battlefront but of the ongoing and unresolved war that lingered in Germany after the fighting was officially done—in this case, against the fascist element that smoldered unrepentant in the bitter embers of 1945. The late and underrated James Best personifies America's best yet misguided intentions as a wide-eyed GI who breaks Army rules of nonfraternization by falling head over heels for a German fräulein and even joining US occupational forces just to stay with her. Fuller offers a justifiably cynical perspective on the de-Nazification program, and even, in the film's heart-wrenching climax, restages the Nuremberg trials to reinforce his still-urgent warning against the insidious rise of fascist beliefs in Europe. The searing concentration camp footage and voiceover narration is Fuller's own, shot as an infantryman and witness to the liberation of the Falkenau concentration camp.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Pickup on South Street
The Crimson Kimono
The Naked Kiss
Underworld U.S.A.
The Baron of Arizona
Merrill's Marauders
House of Bamboo
Fixed Bayonets!
Forty Guns
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
A Fuller Life
Run of the Arrow
Street of No Return
The Steel Helmet
The Big Red One
Shock Corridor
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
