Recruiting Poster

Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, “I'll never forget escorting the late Samuel Fuller, the much-decorated World War II hero and maverick filmmaker, to a multiplex screening of Full Metal Jacket, along with another critic, Bill Krohn….Though Fuller courteously stayed with us to the end, he declared afterward that as far as he was concerned, it was another goddamn recruiting film--that teenage boys who went to see Kubrick's picture with their girlfriends would come out thinking that wartime combat was neat. Krohn and I were both somewhat flabbergasted by his response at the time, but in hindsight I think his point was irrefutable. There are still legitimate reasons for defending Full Metal Jacket. . . .[b]ut as a piece of propaganda against warfare, it's specious, providing one more link in an endless chain of generic macho self-deceptions on the subject” (J Rosenbaum, Movie Wars, 70-71).

Of course, Fuller himself made numerous war films, from his first big success (The Steel Helmet) to his last picture released by a Hollywood studio (The Big Red One).  In A Third Face, Fuller seems happiest about two films he had been offered but turned down: The Longest Day, and Patton.  In both cases, he was worried about romanticizing war.  Instead, he seems quite happy about a comment George Patton’s son made about another one of his films.  According to Fuller, Patton said “he loved Merrill’s Mauraders, but that, in Pentagonese, “it had no recruitment flavor” (396).