Forgotten B&W Movies #2: SHOCK CORRIDOR
A primitive, angst ridden allegory, fusing a noir inflected style with intense psychodrama which is still shocking and relevant today.
Now I realise that this film is not exactly forgotten, indeed it has just been re-released by the Criterion Collection in a lavish DVD/Blu-ray edition, but it isnt an Easy Rider or Bonnie and Clyde, its not a picture that comes straight to mind when one thinks about 1960s American cinema, but it should be. Samuel Fullers Shock Corridor is a primitive, angst ridden allegory, fusing a noir inflected style with intense psychodrama which is still shocking and relevant today, it has to be seen to be believed wrote Andrew Saris in the American cinema, such a phrase is simply apt. With a performance as smouldering as hot coals, Peter Breck plays investigative journalist Johnny Barrett, an ambitious and daring reporter with his eyes on a Pulitzer Prize. Johnny envisions his prize winning piece as an exposé on a recent murder at a local mental hospital, to get the inside track Johnny has himself committed. With a false story of sexual deviance in place Johnny enters the asylum hoping to uncover the truth, believing there to be three witnesses to the crime he must balance his investigation with the shocking and disturbing behaviour of his interviewees and of life inside. 
Although Fuller has been the darling enfant terrible of cinéphiles the world over for decades, he is a director that has never been assimilated into the mainstream. His work is too much of its time to be seen as timeless, and he has the unfortunate honour of making some of his best work during the downfall of the classical studio system, which paved the way for New Hollywood movie brats like Coppola, Lucas and Scorsese, ultimately leaving him overshadowed. Though French critics have spouted of his genius since the early 50s, this American master simply does not get the attention he deserves outside of the critical establishment. If one film of his should bring him to a wider audience it is this one. From its caustic opening moments to its unhinged crescendo of an ending Shock Corridor is a revelation. A deft combination of cutting social critique and bravura performances, it lifts the lid on American society, equating all of its ugliness: institutional racism, unfounded hyperbolic fears of invasion and unquestioned conformity, with madness. As Johnny is slowly but surely absorbed into the fabric of life inside, the inmate witnesses he questions expose him to a series of gruelling and unpleasant realties. The street (the eponymous corridor of the films title) becomes a performance space for their fantasies and their delusions, a blank canvass on which to project the fears and anxieties of 1960s America. One of the most daring and shocking of these comes towards the films close as Trent (Hari Rhodes), the first black student to be admitted to an all-white southern university, has become convinced that white is superior to black. Morphed into the archetypal southern racist, Trent marches the corridor complete with Klan mask in tow, calling for the expulsion and execution of niggers, that have polluted life in a pure traditional America. It is testament to Fullers daring as a filmmaking that the scene still shocks, in the sanitised world of early 60s Hollywood convention, this scene sticks out like a sore thumb. But there is more hear to recommend than a sheer distortion of convention, to view Shock Corridor today is to see a filmmaker at the height of his craft, a perfectly pitched level of melodrama and astute eye for claustrophobic composition give the film its real power, such contentious issues in the wrong hands would be rendered cumbersome and overwrought, but Fuller pitches his film perfectly. As a B-movie stylist he was innovative and incomparable, bringing an inventive frankness to bear on all of his subjects, in short he was one of the great post-war directors and is defiantly deserved of any film fans attention. Previously; Forgotten B&W Movies #1: KING OF THE ZOMBIES