The Films of Samuel Fuller. Lisa Dombrowski

he finds Sophia and Alvarez waiting for him in the rain, loyal to the end.

      The Baron of Arizona offers more examples of characteristically Fullerian story elements than the writer/director’s first feature, marking it as an early iteration of his emerging narrative tendencies. Here we see for the first time characters named Griff and Gunther; the gratuitous name-dropping of historical and literary figures, such as Pulitzer, Aristotle, and Cain; Fuller’s beloved bust of Beethoven, a signifier of high culture; and a character wielding a cigar. Fuller’s tremendous interest in history and the joy he took in research surfaces in a detailed fashion throughout the film, in scenes concerning the process of document forgery, the significance of the land grants to property holders, and the territory of Arizona. His dialogue writing also becomes more confidently campy, producing such gems as “Your claim is a cheap cigar wrapped in a rich Spanish leaf,” “I feel like Caesar’s wife before he was murdered,” “I don’t want a dead baron, I want a live husband,” and “It is not death but dying that alarms me. It is not your crime but your weakness that alarms me.” And a brief scene of comic relief with a gypsy dwarf presages all the oddball bits Fuller inserts in later narratives that play absolutely no role in advancing the plot.

      Despite its prototypical narrative elements, The Baron of Arizona has received scant critical attention over the years and is among Fuller’s lesser-seen pictures. Combining aspects of a costume picture, crime film, thriller, and romance, the movie is admittedly hard to categorize, and the complexity of Reavis’s forgery plot can leave first-time viewers resigned to confusion. Two aspects of the narrative, the frame story and the characterization of Reavis, pose particular difficulties for the film’s reception, as the first gives the plot away and the second challenges plausibility.

      Griff’s summary of the story in the opening scene and his subsequent voice-overs describing how Reavis falsified history serve as a frame for the primary plotline, helping to clarify the great leaps across time and space in the first half of the film and to explain why Reavis is running about chiseling on rocks and wooing a Spanish marquessa. Yet Griff’s stiff introduction is both pedestrian and overly revelatory, and his voice-overs disappear following the marriage of Sophia and Reavis. The end result is awkward at best and inadvertently highlights that the exposition is half the film’s running length. At the time of the film’s release, the Motion Picture Herald review noted that the opening scene “mitigated against suspense” and “reportedly will be eliminated,” but no such change was ever made.¹⁹ Interestingly, the revised final shooting script contains neither Griff’s initial scene nor his voice-overs; instead, the script begins with Reavis arriving at Alvarez’s house, and Griff first appears halfway through as the government’s investigation gets underway.²⁰ This version appears more typically Fullerian, opening as it does on a scene of confrontation that is rendered in tight close-ups. The revised final shooting script leads one to suspect that the framing scene and voice-overs were added once it became clear to Fuller, Hittleman, or both, that viewer comprehension of the narrative necessitated additional connective tissue to weave together the intricate plot.

      The conclusion of the released film creates additional problems for some critics, who complained that Reavis’s recognition of his love for Sophia and subsequent disavowal of the barony appear undermotivated.²¹ The redemptive power of love is a theme that appears in various forms in a number of Fuller pictures, but rather than figuring as a substantive plotline, here it seems merely tacked-on. Although Griff’s introduction of the story in the opening scene informs us that Reavis has been married for thirty years, as soon as Reavis arrives onscreen the film presents him as nothing less than a cad, an unrepentant liar and manipulator of all those around him. Price’s spirited performance as Reavis, full of raised eyebrows and knowing glances, radiates his character’s delight in criminal activity. His smoldering declaration, “I’ve known many women before, but with you, I’m afraid” becomes a motif, a sign of Reavis’s false nature, as he repeats it first to the gypsy girl Rita, then to the Spanish marquessa, and finally to Sophia. For three-quarters of the film, Reavis’s every onscreen move is motivated by greed; once he appears close to being beaten by Griff, he converts to a repentant husband in only two scenes. But it is hard for viewers to forgive a man they have grown to mistrust; they remember what they have seen (Reavis as a criminal, lying all the way), rather than what they initially heard (Reavis has been married for thirty years). The narrative’s detailed focus on how Reavis attempts to steal Arizona leads viewers to wonder how he almost gets away with it rather than how he is eventually redeemed. Fuller revisits the theme of the power of love to save a criminal to greater effect in Pickup on South Street, with a redemptive woman that is not quite so pure and a criminal who is not so thoroughly redeemed.

      It is in the style of The Baron of Arizona that Fuller makes his greatest advances, as he teams with James Wong Howe to produce the most classically staged and visually striking film of his Lippert career. Most likely through the influence of Howe, who was trained within the studio system to cover scenes with many shots at varied angles, Fuller moves beyond the reliance on master shots plus inserts seen in I Shot Jesse James and organizes scenes in a more complex manner. The vast majority of sequences include full coverage and analytical editing, as shots establish characters within space, highlight actions and emotions, and reestablish space. This exceedingly classical approach to scene construction heightens the clarity and emotional impact of the narrative in a more subtle fashion than other options adopted later by Fuller. During sequences dominated by long takes, Fuller uses character blocking, camera movement, and depth staging to create new compositions within the same shot, renewing visual interest and punctuating plot points in the absence of editing.

      The primary staging strategies in The Baron of Arizona are illustrated by a scene midway through the film when Reavis is confronted in his office first by a railroad executive and then by landowners and a newspaperman. The three-minute, seven-second scene begins with a two-minute long take, as Gunther of Southern Railroad (Joseph Green) arrives to negotiate with Reavis for the right-of-way to run his railroad. Within the long take, five distinct compositions emerge, as the camera tracks and pans to follow the movement of the two characters around the edge of the room and into and out of depth. Pauses in camera movement, positioning of Reavis and Gunther within the frame, and their frontality (or lack of it) mark shifts in the conversation and guide the viewer’s eye within the long take. After Gunther and Reavis shake hands on their financial deal, the long take cuts to a new sequence organized analytically, as a large group of landowners barge in on Reavis and Gunther demanding to know the status of their land rights. The scene ends with a reporter telling Reavis that he is going to be written up as the man who changed geography; the camera tracks in and tilts up to capture a close-up of Reavis’s reaction, as he puts his cigar in his mouth, raises his eyebrow, and beams.

      In a publicity still from The Baron of Arizona, the territory’s men and Gunther of Southern Railroad (Joseph Green, center) question Addison Reavis (Vincent Price, foreground, right of center) about his ambitions. In this portion of the scene, Fuller uses analytical editing to highlight the men’s reactions to Reavis’s growing dominance. Author’s collection

      The completely different staging strategies utilized in the two halves of this scene neatly divide the sequences and function in different ways. The long take that opens the scene captures two businessmen who are financial equals and reveals the breadth of Reavis’s ambition as Gunther roams around the office and explores all of Reavis’s financial interests. The second half of the scene unfolds as a confrontation, and analytical editing enables attention to be appropriately directed across a large number of characters. In this sequence, editing and changing shot scales provide progressively tighter or wider framings depending on the dialogue. Reaction shots are particularly prominent, as characters digest the significance of their situations and what they have learned. Reavis’s location in the center foreground of the wider shots gives him prominence within the frame and emphasizes his position of power, a stature that is reinforced by the track in to his expression of glee in the final shot of the scene. Long takes with camera and character movement and analytically edited scenes form the foundation of Fuller’s visual style in The Baron of Arizona