Forty Guns
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Synopsis
Hollywood legend Barbara Stanwyck saddled up with writer-director Samuel Fuller for the pulp maestro’s most audacious western, a boldly feminist spin on the genre that pivots effortlessly between ribald humor, visceral action, and disarming tenderness. High-riding rancher Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck) commands a forty-strong posse of cowboys, ruling Cochise County, Arizona, without challenge. When U.S. marshal Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers arrive in town with a warrant for one of her hired guns, Jessica begins to fall for the lawman even as he chips away at her authority. With astonishing black-and-white CinemaScope photography, hard-boiled dialogue laced with double entendres, and a fiery performance by Stanwyck at her most imperious, Forty Guns is a virtuoso display of Fuller’s sharpshooting talents.
Picture 10/10
The Criterion Collection presents Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns on Blu-ray in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on a dual-layer disc. The 1080p/24hz presentation comes from a new 4K restoration, scanned from the 35mm original camera negative. The restoration was performed by Fox.
The film just looks stunning with the restoration work covering all bases. The image is razor-sharp throughout with nary an instance where I found it to go soft or hazy, extreme close-ups coming off quite staggering and long shots delivering an incredible amount of detail, right down to individual blades of grass and tiny pubbles. Film grain isn’t heavy, but it is there and cleanly rendered without a trace of noise or any sort of artifact. Contrast looks exceptional, with nice looking blacks and strong whites (that don’t bloom) with fine tonal shifts in the grayscale.
I don’t recall a single blemish ever appearing throughout the film, the restoration work looking to have picked off everything, and there are no digital artifacts to speak of: no banding, no ringing, no pixilated moments. Nothing. Even a dust storm that appears well into the film looks clean and natural here. Overall it’s an absolutely gorgeous looking black and white presentation.
Audio 7/10
The monaural linear PCM presentation is another wonderful surprise. Though not overly dynamic I still found range to be decent and fidelity to be impressive. The music sounds really good with no sign of distortion, and there is some nice depth to some of the gun shots, horse hoofs, and other sound effects. For an older monaural presentation it exceeded my expectations by a great deal.
Extras 8/10
There is some wonderful material on here, starting with a 1969 audio recording of Samuel Fuller at the National Film Theatre in London. Taking questions from the moderator and various members of the audience, Fuller covers a wide range of topics about his career and life, talking about his days as a reporter, first getting into filmmaking, his thoughts on violence in his films, controversies around them, films he didn’t get off the ground, and more. He also talks about his disappointments, like his then-recent film Shark. It plays over the film as a separate audio track though has little about Forty Guns itself (which really only gets mentioned) but it’s a wonderful, energetic, and funny conversation.
As wonderful as that feature is, though, the best supplement to be found on this disc is the next one: Fuller Women, a wonderful 20-minute discussion with Fuller’s widow Christa Lang Fuller and his daughter Samantha Fuller. The two talk about the man and his work, Forty Guns in particular, and the common themes. But the feature is at its best when the two are just chatting, sharing stories, or joking around, with my favourite moment being Christa acting horrified at Samantha saying “pussy whipped” in reference to Stanwyck’s character, her whip, and the forty men that follow orders. The two are energetic and fun and I wish they’d show up on other discs to talk about their respective films, and not just Fuller’s work. (Another fun aspect to the feature is picking through their movie collection in the background.)
Woman with a Whip next offers a 34-minute interview with scholar Imogen Sara Smith providing a wonderful analysis of Forty Guns. She talks about the blending of noir and western elements here—though this wasn’t an entirely unique thing for the time—Fuller’s use of guns, the violence, Stanwyck’s character and performance, while also getting into technical details around the use of close-ups, the film’s framing, and execution of specific scenes and shots. It’s an all-encompassing academic feature, wonderfully presented by Smith who packs it with strong insights and keeps it engaging. It makes up for the lack of a commentary track.
The biggest feature on here is easily Samantha Fuller’s 2013 film A Fuller Life. Fuller has a number of personalities (from James Franco to Jennifer Beals to Mark Hamill to Tim Roth to Bill Duke to Wim Wenders to many more) reading from sections of her father’s autobiography, while resorting to film clips, archival footage, and photos for visual aids (as well as footage of the guests reading). The 80-minute film is, at its core, a film featuring people reading from a book, but the director’s personality still manages to come through the readings and the editing is breezy and quick. It’s a lovely and fun love letter to her father.
The disc then closes with a small still gallery featuring promotional material, original music sheets for “High Ridin’ Woman,” photos and various design drawings. The release is also accompanied by a booklet featuring an essay by Lisa Dombrowski, a couple of pages featuring set photos, and then a reprint of a section from Fuller’s autobiography covering Forty Guns. This last part of the booklet is particularly great.
Criterion has released a number of Fuller’s films, all of which featured great material in their supplements, but this is easily the strongest batch of material, getting more in-depth into Fuller’s life and filmmaking style.
Closing
Criterion’s best edition so far for one of Fuller’s films it not only offers a gorgeous and almost immaculate presentation of the film, but it also offers the most thorough collection of supplements around the filmmaker. Highly recommended.
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