Verboten! (1959)

One of the best films i have seen

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

There is Only One Sam Fuller and His Detractors might say that was Certainly Enough. But No One can Argue that Sam Fuller made Boring, Uninteresting, or Common Movies. He was Anything but Common.While watching a Fuller Movie one is Struck by the Audaciousness as it Unspools with the Usual Low-Budget and Barely Professional Actors. For His Films are all about the Subject. Be it War, Western, Crime, or any Number of Odd Stories He chose to do, Sam Fuller always gave His Heart and Soul.In this WWII Movie it is the Very End and Post War Germany that is the Setting and the Nazis have been Reduced to Nothing More than a Street Gang and the Occupiers are Struggling to keep all the Threads of Society from coming Unraveled. The Most Basic Things like Food and Medicine are in Short Supply and there is Never a Shortage of Suffering People.This is just some of the Layers that Fuller Uses here to Elicit a Template of Surreal Cynicism. The Claustrophobic Sets and the Dense Lighting also Manage a Meilu of a Hell on Earth. Posters and Leaflets are Wallpaper and Signposts and the Love Story is not only Edgy but Verboten. This is the Writer/Director's Vintage Heavy Handedness that is a Delight to Watch and is Another Example why there is Only One Sam Fuller.

"House of Bambou": a man infiltrates into a bunch of former GIs turned criminals."Run of the arrow":a confederate ,after the fall of the south ,leaves his people and wants to live with the Indians."The naked truth" : a prostitute tries to join the "respectable" world and works with disabled children."Shock corridor" : a journalist ,dreaming of a big scoop ,gets admitted in a mental hospital to unmask criminal but is slowly losing his mind....There are more Fuller movies which deal with the "intruder" subject ,the "hero" who wants to get out of his world ,and "Verboten" is one of them.An American sergeant fights in Germany;a young girl saves his life and he falls for her .The war comes to an end ;not only he wants to marry her ,but he also wants to live in Germany where an embittered youth is dreaming of another "Reich" -a burning subject even today-He has to cope with angry starving Germans who want to get rid of the Americans whose help is humiliating.In spite of unbearable pictures (Nuremberg),the movie is not as convincing as the five movies I mention above .The part of the girl is underwritten and it's difficult to understand her motives.Maybe Fuller wanted her to be an ambiguous figure.Like this? try this...."The big lift" George Seaton,1950

I enjoyed this for a couple of reasons. The emotional tangle was at times confusing and imperfectly resolved, but the blend of newsreel footage with the film's narrative was often compelling. The other element that I appreciated was the depiction of the Werewolves, the fanatical Nazis who continued the fight after the formal surrender. I don't know of another film that deals with them. They assassinated Burgomaster Oppenhoff of Aachen on Palm Sunday, 1945, for example, and did create problems for the occupation. The film, then, challenges the sanitized version of victory and occupation with some gritty realities. The "human issues" are presented not so much through the characters here, but through the historical reality that was gripping those who had survived Hitler -- both conquered and victors.

***SPOILERS*** One of director's Samuel Fuller's lesser known movies that watching it now, over forty years after it's release in 1959, strikes a cord in it's uncanny similarity in what's happening in Iraq/Afghanistan with the US Military engaged in guerrilla war-fear with local insurgents.Basically a love story between a GI and German woman the movie goes a lot deeper into the disenchantment of the German people back in 1945 who felt that their being slowly driven to mass starvation by the occupying US military. Being saved from being shot on the spot by the advancing Waffen SS by a German girl Helga, Susan Coming, GI Sgt. David Brent, James Best, later marries her after the war; even though it's forbidden by the US Military Occupying Gvernment for Americans to fraternized with the local German population.David getting a job in the food distribution section of the US 45th Infantry Division which incidentally had an Indian Nazi-like swastika as it's combat symbol, until 1940 when it was changed to a Thunder-bird, has no trouble getting his wife and her infirmed mother Frau Schiller, Anna Hope, and younger brother Franz, Harold Daye, all the food and medicine that they need. But the other Germans in the little town of Rothbach are on the brink of revolt due to the corruption and black-market racketeering by Americans and their hand-picked Germans employees handling the desperately needed supplies.With the defeated and disbanded Nazis seeing a chance to regain power they start to form guerrilla-like units, among the German Hitler youth and Army POW's, called werewolves that create havoc, much like whats happening today in Iraq, among the US forces in the German Bavarian province where Rothbach is located. The head of the local werewolf unit is Helga's childhood friend Bruno, Tom Pittman, who's both a fanatical Nazi as well as working undercover, for the werewolves, for the US Military Government in town.Bruno recruits young Franz into the werewolves who at first is very eager to fight for his country against the hated occupying US military. Later when his older sister Helga takes Franz to the Hall of Justice in Nuremberg to see the top Nazis standing trial, and films of what their accused of doing, he quickly changes his mind and turns against Bruno. Bruno who seemed to care even less about his fellow Germans then US military is exposed as a ruthless exploiter of his own people by fellow werewolf Helmuth, Dick Kallman. Thats when Helmuth found out that Bruno was using the werewolves to pompously, by blowing up supply trains, keep much needed medical equipment and drugs from the people in Rothbach. Thus making it look like the US was doing it in order to get them to revolt against the Americans.Having Helmuth, on the orders of Bruno, beaten tried and executed for treason right in front of him has now the very troubled, as well as enlightened, Franz decide to get a hold of the secret papers that Bruno has that are plans to take over Germany through a nation-wide werewolf guerrilla war. With all this going on Bruno also takes the time to break-up Helga, who's now pregnant, and Davids marriage by telling David that Helga doesn't love him and only married David to get him to give her and her mother and brother free food and shelter.A bit uneven in parts with the movie trying to balance a love story with a post-war thriller. For a time you almost forget that Helga is even in the movie with it totally focusing on the werewolf movement and when Helga later takes young Franz to Nuremberg it took a while to realize just who she was, David's wife, since you had the impression that she was somehow killed off earlier in the film. James Best as Sgt. David Brant was by far the best actor in the movie, with Tom Pittmans Bruno Eckart a close second. Bests confrontation with Helga towards the end of the film over her taking advantage of him, which turned out to be a big lie made up by Bruno, was as effective emotionally charged and on par with Marlon Brando's electrifying performance in "Streetcar Named Desire".