Sam Fuller by Luc Moullet

"Surely one of the most unjustly forgotten moments in the history of cinema is the day when Luc Moullet received a plastic leg in the mail from Samuel Fuller. The director of Fixed Bayonets! and Run of the Arrow was so taken with the article 'Sam Fuller sur les brisées de Marlowe' that he sent its author an autographed fake limb in thanks. The gift paid tribute to Moullet's argument, which held that Fuller was a filmmaker obsessed with the human body, and, in particular, with feet. Moullet saw this fascination as neither foot fetish nor Oedipal complex: instead, it exemplified how the plainspoken director's films started from the physical world rather than from preconceived ideas. The feet were the most humble part of the body, the part directly linked to the ground, to movement, to action—in short, to what the critic considered the essence of cinema." - Sam Dilorio

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