Originally published at Bagatellen upon release of the Criterion transfer to DVD, December 2008

Samuel Fuller’s White Dog is Criterion’s recent endeavor to rescue an otherwise worthy film from relative anonymity. Few have had the opportunity to see Fuller’s tense drama until now. Outside of video boot owners, past audiences include those of a few feature runs overseas, a 1991 New York theater screening, and the handful of latchkey kids who caught it back in the heyday of cable television, when the service was unmolested by commerciality and programmatic overkill.

Over 25 years later, Criterion’s slick transfer retains the “B” quality that is far more pronounced than the film vibe we want such a story to have. There is professionalism in the narrative that contains equal parts Fulleresque pulp, horror segues, and canvassed exploitation, all from an aerial view of the human condition. White Dog is a deceptively tough picture that explores race, and does so mercilessly by not providing the viewer with answers or solutions. It’s doubtful that Samuel Fuller had any hesitation with such a project, so unapologetic he was in his attitudes on race and human relations.

Following an 8-year hiatus from filmmaking, Fuller enjoyed critical success with his gutsy WWII drama, The Big Red One (1980), enough that would make the aging director an easy pick to handle a controversial story that was having a tendency to slip out of others’ capable hands. Fuller signed on to White Dog and helmed a tight project. He shot and wrapped on schedule, but a storied yet submissive battle between Paramount and nonpartisan social organizations ultimately asphyxiated the film, revealing the predictable hypocrisy and shallow politics of the US studios. Sickened by the experience, Fuller relocated indefinitely to France and White Dog would be his swan song for Hollywood.

Screenwriter Curtis Hanson joined the film for the opportunity to work with Fuller, and though he wanted to remain as true to the novel as possible, he found himself with a story more complex than he may have assessed. Any incarnation of a White Dog script is incapable of doing justice to Romain Gary’s incredible semi-autobiographical book. In a brief examination, the opening premise of the 1970 story is easy enough to tackle. Gary’s then wife, actress Jean Seberg, brings home a loving dog to which she grows immediately attached. The two soon find out that they have a trained attack animal on their hands, one that has been conditioned by Southern police to attack black people. Gary commits to rehabilitating the dog through de-conditioning at the hands of a skilled black trainer. This, the rising action upon which Gary’s story builds, is roughly the extent of the abbreviated script. It can be assumed that the director committed to the picture with an extra layer of passion – he and the author (who had died only a year earlier, at his own hand) were once close friends and he’d always been fond of the book. In lieu of translating its full scope to the screen, Hanson and Fuller moved forward with their own lighter version, leaving some room to improvise.

Underway, there were no logistical or artistic setbacks, but midway through production Paramount began to have certain political reservations about the film. Unweighted rumors circulated that Fuller was making a racist film, and studio heads showed serious concern for such a risk, whether or not the speculation would result in truth. Adding to the churn, inside screeners deemed some of the scenes and techniques too artsy. They wanted to leave a rash without moviegoers having to think about how it was contracted. Although the pervading sense was that the project was ethically important, timely, and profitable, the marketability of the gritty story was not enough.

Paramount shelved the film as controversy peaked late in production, most notably in the form of continued questioning and campaigning from the NAACP. (Ironically, animal rights activists evidently did not deter, as an SPCA equivalent was on set for the duration of filming.)

Given a fresh look at the film, Fuller’s story doesn’t resonate in 2008 quite as well as it might’ve from a proper 1982 release in the US (the French response in the same year was quite favorable) – we are not in a time where animals are known to be trained for the express purpose of harming a target race. But today’s world is still not without its share of racist charges; the question of skin appeared fervently throughout the last half of the US election year, after all. If White Dog has anything to offer in social commentary, it is that racism can materialize in many forms, even by extension to animals incapable of reason.

The story was effectively reworked for concision and to trim the fat off some of Gary’s more complex, “unfilmable” thematic material. This included a principal shift in the main character. Julie Sawyer (Kristy McNichol) is neither French consul, nor closet expatriate. She is a working actress living alone, nestled away high in the valley from LA’s bustle, often in the company of companion Roland Gray (Simon & Simon’s Jameson Parker). Late at night, Julie accidentally hits a dog with her car and takes the animal to a vet for treatment. Not wanting to release the dog to the pound, she opts to take him in for herself, and a relationship develops.

In one of the many liberties Fuller takes with the story, the director uses a hollow but effective ploy that involves the dog saving Julie from a rapist. Here the film establishes an integral layer of loyalty between man and dog that will serve to reinforce later plot developments. This emotional bond additionally confuses Julie’s own moral obligations. During a filming sequence in a Hollywood studio, White Dog – inexplicably hanging out on the set – attacks a black actress to the degree that hospitalization is required. While apologetic, it does not occur to Julie that her animal should be turned over to the authorities, nor is there an instance of protest from witnesses to the incident. Only Roland offers common sense, suggesting that his girlfriend has a trained killer dog on her hands. She responds with belligerence in this scene, and here we can see Fuller’s interest in casting the sophomoric McNichol in such a challenging role (Jodie Foster was the director’s first choice).

In White Dog McNichol finds herself prematurely involved in the best film she’d ever make (acknowledging some may favor her remaining flick in dire need of reissue, Little Darlings). Her portrayal of Julie Sawyer is passionate, yet empty. As the plot tragically develops, somewhere in her character we know she’s feeling rage, hatred, embarrassment. Yet rendered on the screen is the flatness of a person who is intent on doing right, but in execution confuses her own manners of expression. McNichol transitions through these scenes effortlessly, and we’re meant to understand Julie Sawyer is equal parts humane and naïve.

In searching for a “cure” for White Dog, Julie calls on Carruthers & Keys, partners and managers of a Hollywood animal training facility. Carruthers (Burl Ives) is the first character to articulate what White Dog really is: an animal trained to attack black people. Keys puts it rather differently, suggesting that the animal is conditioned to hate black skin. This is the closest Paul Winfield’s character comes to resembling the Keys of Gary’s novel. In the book, the trainer was a militant activist with a hidden agenda that would not come to fruit until the story’s end. Winfield portrays him as enlightened, at the forefront of humanity, and as someone who sees the dilemma in terms of a larger problem, one that he intends to crack at the roots.

Julie frequently visits the facility to check Keys’ progress in reconditioning her beloved pet. It is evident she has emotional stock in correcting the moral wrong embodied in White Dog, but at the same time she evades her own responsibility in his attacks. On separate occasions, there is undeniable evidence that her dog has gravely injured two or more people, yet informing officials that her animal is suspect does not broach possibility. Carruthers and Keys are complicit in this, the three agreeing that pushing on with White Dog’s training is the “humane thing to do.” The attacks that occur in the film (including a grisly church sequence) and the human dialogue are delivered with the sense that both conscious intentions and natural fallout are independent of one another – that the two can only be inclusive of another through a deliberate marriage of resolve. While the dialogue is comparatively sparse, the exchanges between the central characters provide the film’s depth; Fuller and Hanson are content to submit their message without shoving it in the faces and ears of viewers.

Like the frightening attacks, the training sequences – which take place in a dusty sanctuary – are startlingly real. In addition, the occasional bonding that takes place between White Dog and Keys are merits of Fuller’s conviction in getting his own version right. Five white German Shepherds were used interchangeably throughout filming, and through varying shots employing close-ups and the crafty manipulation of light, Fuller gives us a seamlessness that might have failed in the hands of another. The scenes with greatest effect are Keys’ interactions with the dog, when his conviction is so evident as to take culpability away from the animal, allowing innocence to eclipse fault.

For its simplicity, the story remains a powerful work — borrowed, manipulated, and rethreaded for Reagan-era consciousness. The original White Dog was less a symbol of detestable social issues than a vessel through which humans share ownership in their inherited (or hereditary!) hatred. Although Fuller wants us to understand that racism is learned, this is also the film’s singular contextual fault. Viewers may be duped into thinking that White Dog is in fact a racist dog, through learned actions, and thus the film fails to truly explore the multiple sides of the problem, instead settling for the translation and execution of simple behavior. Ultimately, Fuller succeeds with his own artistic liberties, and is able to retain a fraction of the original premise: White Dog is meant to make us all feel ashamed, like it or not.

Special features include interviews with Hanson, producer Jon Davison, Christa Lang-Fuller, and dog trainer Karl Lewis-Miller | 1.78:1 | 90 min. | Criterion spine #455

~Alan Jones, Maryland, December 2008