With just three films, Fuller managed to become a writer-director-producer and to receive profit participation, a sort of deal usually reserved for much more experienced directors like Hitchcock and Hawks who worked for major studios and top independent producers. To Fuller’s advantage, he was in the right place at the right time: Lippert was looking to expand slowly into higher-budget programmers, and once Fuller had proven himself, Lippert’s offer of greater control and financial compensation temporarily kept Fuller from defecting to a larger studio.13 The Lippert years turned out to be a golden era for Fuller, a time when he could pursue his interests and try new ideas while facing limited risks and exposure. As was true throughout his career, he made the most of the opportunity he was given.
Early Experiments: I Shot Jesse James and The Baron of Arizona
I Shot Jesse James emerged out of Fuller’s interest in assassins and in what motivates a man to kill someone he loves. Although he first pitched Lippert the story of Cassius, the Roman senator who plotted to murder Julius Caesar, Lippert warmed more quickly to the tale of Robert Ford, the James gang member who killed Jesse with a shot to the back.14 Ford’s story placed Fuller’s first Lippert picture squarely in the genre most associated with the studio, promised enough gunplay to please action fans, and enabled exploitation of the outlaw’s legendary name. Budgeted around $110,000 and filmed in approximately ten days, I Shot Jesse James starred character actors John Ireland, Preston Foster, and Barbara Britton. Part of Lippert’s bid to expand into programmer production, it cost more and ran twenty minutes longer than most Lippert westerns.15 With its name-brand title, recognizable actors, higher production values, and longer running time, I Shot Jesse James contained the potential to play in first-run houses on the top of a double bill. More significantly for Fuller, the film’s emotionally charged narrative provided suitable opportunities to experiment with visual storytelling.
I Shot Jesse James centers on the motivation for—and effects of—Bob Ford’s betrayal of Jesse James. It opens with Fuller’s calling card, a beautifully choreographed James Gang bank robbery, after which Bob (Ireland) loses all the loot and Jesse (Reed Hadley) saves his life. While the gang is in hiding, Bob learns of an amnesty that is offered by the governor to anyone who turns Jesse in, dead or alive, and visits the actress he loves, Cynthy (Britton). Cynthy declares that she wants them to marry and settle down on a farm, but Bob knows that if he turns himself in, he faces lengthy jail time. He concludes that the only way to marry his sweetheart is to kill Jesse, his closest friend, thus gaining amnesty for his crimes, but his obsession with Cynthy prevents him from anticipating the consequences of his actions. Cynthy’s love turns to hate once she learns of Bob’s betrayal, and Bob is haunted in his mind and in public by the cowardly murder. When an honorable marshal (Foster) emerges as a rival for Cynthy’s affections, Bob blames him for Cynthy’s change of heart, forcing him into a standoff that leads to Bob’s death. With his dying breath, Bob tells Cynthy that he’s sorry for what he did and that he loved Jesse.
While Lippert sold I Shot Jesse James as a western, the film does not engage with generic conventions so much as use them to explore Fuller’s own narrative and stylistic interests. The characters, settings, iconography, and situations typical of westerns are all here: dance-hall girls, marshals, and outlaws; saloons and clapboard Main Streets; guns, horses, and cowboy hats; and bank robberies, fistfights, and shootouts. Yet these generic indicators function primarily as narrative devices, efficiently sketching the relationships between characters and their world and conveniently providing motivation for plot points. Fuller demonstrates no interest in exploring the conflict between the “untamed” world and the “civilized” world that is at the heart of the western genre, nor in grappling with the mythic status of Jesse James in particular or of the outlaw-hero in general. Jesse James could just as easily have been Julius Caesar. What excites Fuller is the psychology of his assassin and how Bob Ford’s love of Cynthy drives him to betray and murder Jesse, whom he also loves. The film’s narrative structure highlights the irony of Bob’s situation: Jesse’s death can help Bob marry Cynthy, but murdering Jesse kills Cynthy’s love for Bob. I Shot Jesse James thus introduces themes that will become hallmarks of the Fuller film: as with a love that leads to violence, truth is often contradictory and absurd.
The irrationality of Bob’s emotions and his obsessive fixation on marrying Cynthy propel the story forward, even as digressive subplots threaten to diffuse the film’s narrative focus. Fuller fully immerses the viewer in Bob’s subjectivity, using dialogue to externalize his thoughts and feelings; Bob’s self-interest is so total that even his conversations come across as monologues. Ireland plays Bob as a love-struck dreamer, childishly blind to all but his own desire, making him appear more pathetic than villainous. The actor adopts languid, feline poses, and his line readings, expressions, and movement physicalize his character’s slow-witted single-mindedness. The effect is entrancing, and while viewers are unlikely to identify with Robert Ford—he has few redeeming qualities—Fuller’s script and Ireland’s performance enable us to understand him and to pity him.
Narrative and style work together in I Shot Jesse James both to provide viewers with subjective access to Bob’s thoughts and feelings and to distance us from his pain, producing competing kinds of emotional engagement with the protagonist. One memorable example occurs during the first act after Bob makes the decision to kill Jesse, when sudden tonal shifts emphasize both Bob’s hesitation to strike and the comedic irony of his situation. Following Bob’s declaration that “nothing’s gonna stop me from marrying Cynthy,” the sequence cuts to Jesse bathing in a tub, accompanied by upbeat music on the score. Jesse yells out a cheery, “Hey Bob!” as Ford enters the bathhouse laden with pails of hot water. Although the setup is lighthearted and playfully homoerotic, after Bob pours the water in to freshen Jesse’s bath, the score shifts to a threatening crescendo, punctuating a cut to a medium-close-up of Jesse’s back from Bob’s optical point of view. We remember Bob’s promise and recognize that he spies an opportunity, and as the significance of the moment sinks in—surely Jesse will never be this naively exposed and vulnerable again—Fuller ups the ante, cutting out to a long shot of Bob picking up a Colt 45—a gift from Jesse, and a convenient murder weapon. As the scene cuts between Bob’s point of view of Jesse’s back and a low angle of him fondling the gun and looking nervously at Jesse, the audience is placed in Bob’s subjectivity, recognizing his anxious indecision and how it is heightened by his mentor’s generosity and good spirits. At the same time, however, the clichéd sexual symbolism can’t help but shine through: a naked man has just given another man a gun—in a bathhouse! The dramatic suspense and campy comedy are held in tension as Fuller exerts even more narrative pressure, overlaying a shot of Jesse’s back with his exhortation to Ford: “Well go ahead, Bob. What are you waiting for? There’s my back … scrub it.” And then, given motive, opportunity, and means to shoot, Bob chooses to … scrub.
This scene provides an important moment of narrative suspense—will Bob kill Jesse or not?—while also underlining Jesse’s unquestioning trust in Bob and Bob’s hesitation in murdering Jesse. More significant, however, is how Fuller achieves these narrative goals, placing the viewer in Bob’s subjectivity while simultaneously highlighting tonal counterpoints. Although the bathhouse scene stands alone in I Shot Jesse James as an example of unexpected tonal play, this narrative strategy becomes much more widely used in Fuller’s later work.
As with the narrative, the visual style in I Shot Jesse James reflects Fuller’s search for techniques that will effectively heighten the viewer’s emotional involvement while maintaining production efficiency. The quality of the overall staging is uneven, however, and lays bare both Fuller’s inexperience and production constraints. Dialogue-laden scenes are typically constructed from a master shot and inserts, and the use of optical close-ups attests to the overall lack of coverage. While Fuller often staged scenes this way in his later films, I Shot Jesse James features none of the intricate blocking and camera movement that bring dynamism to his long takes in Pickup on South Street, Forty Guns, or The Crimson Kimono. The lack of camera movement and close angles are also felt in the film’s primary fistfight, captured by a high-angle, extreme long shot that diffuses the kineticism of the characters’ actions. More successful is the short