Shock Corridor

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #19: Samuel Fuller’s Shock Cor­ri­dor.

It was nice see­ing this film again. Samuel Fuller has that pecu­liar posi­tion that only seems pos­si­ble in the world of film; a mas­ter of cin­ema, but also a pro­ducer of schlock. Shock Cor­ri­dor is a per­fect exam­ple of this sort of dou­ble­think. It most cer­tainly is a piece of exploita­tion cin­ema, meant to bring peo­ple to the the­ater through its overblown and seedy por­trayal of the men­tally ill, but it also sup­plies the spec­ta­tor with thorny polit­i­cal ques­tions in a dis­tinc­tive, mas­ter­ful and lurid style.

The actors are no-names and the act­ing is blunt. So is the edit­ing. So is the dia­logue. Fuller has no patience with flair in this film. Although there are parts that seem quite styl­is­tic, they were not done for styl­is­tic rea­sons. Each choice is made for prac­ti­cal util­i­tar­ian effi­cacy and it is from this focus that the style derives. This is very dif­fer­ent from The Sword of Doom, where mad­ness is sub­servient to its por­trayal. In Shock Cor­ri­dor, mad­ness points to its own causes as, in brief moments of lucid­ity, the patients explain and inher­ently crit­i­cize the social stresses which drove them mad.

Fuller uses these moments to make his great polit­i­cal points. One patient, a sort of Manchurian can­di­date trai­tor who thinks he is a Con­fed­er­ate gen­eral explains that Com­mu­nism offered him what his own upbring­ing never could, edu­ca­tion and open-mindedness, at the cost of his loy­alty to his coun­try. An infan­tile ex-Manhattan project sci­en­tist preaches of the evils of Cold War men­tal­ity arms-racing, and most dis­turbingly the first black stu­dent to attend a white uni­ver­sity tells how the racism of the South drove him mad, ulti­mately con­vinc­ing him that he is the founder of the Ku Klux Klan and a white suprema­cist. [See the YouTube clip linked at the end.]

In another vein, Johnny the reporter, who has infil­trated the asy­lum in order to deter­mine which of the three char­ac­ters above can iden­tify a mur­derer, is slowly dri­ven mad by his prox­im­ity to the patients and the treat­ments admin­stered to him by the staff. The destruc­tion of his per­son­al­ity due to an excess of ambi­tion becomes the basis by which we can empathize with the plights of the other patients. The scene with the nymphos [Result­ing in one of the best VO nar­ra­tion lines ever: “Nymphos!!”] is exploita­tion cin­ema at its best, but is a nec­es­sary step for Johnny’s road to madness.

There are aspects of noir to this film that can be exam­ined in com­par­i­son to Fuller’s Pickup on South Street, but since that is also a Cri­te­rion film, I’ll do that then. I’ll sim­ply say now, that a reporter pro­tag­o­nist and his strip­per girl­friend are the arche­typal seedy char­ac­ters for noir.

This is another film where the cin­e­matog­ra­phy is out­stand­ing. Stan­ley Cortez’s cam­era move­ments and fram­ing invite the viewer into each patient’s sub­jec­tiv­ity. These sequences are the films most blunt and most effec­tive. The viewer is star­tled by abrupt switches to color stock footage when the patients hal­lu­ci­nate and the scene with Paliacci’s singing is jaw-dropping in terms of both cin­e­matog­ra­phy and post-production. [See the YouTube clip linked at the end.]

For those who find grace and style to be insep­a­ra­ble and any art that is not “high” to be no art at all, this film will seem like so much trash. For the casual viewer the film will offer enter­tain­ment but its angry tone and sug­ges­tion that mad­ness is the only escape from a world gone mad will not res­onate. The result is a film that demands an open mind and broad taste for true appre­ci­a­tion of all its aspects. Just like every­thing else ever, really.

• Cri­te­rion Essay by Tim Hunter
• Cul­ture Court essay by Rick McGrath.
• The Guardian review.
• Many stills and cap­tions from the film.
• YouTube clip fea­tur­ing the black white suprema­cist.
• YouTube clip of one of Johnny’s dream sequences fea­tur­ing Pali­acci.
• The Cri­te­rion Contraption’s review.