WHITE DOG
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1997 Shane R. Burridge
(1982) 90m.
When Julia Sawyer (Kristy McNichol) adopts a stray arctic-white German shepherd she has no idea that it is a trained attack dog. Worse, it has been trained to attack - and kill - anyone with black skin. Examination of racial prejudice by uncompromising director Sam Fuller sat on the shelf at Paramount for ten years because it was considered too racially sensitive for general release and was not shown in U.S. cinemas until it received retrospective festival screenings. It's a shame, because in WHITE DOG Fuller is able to relocate his familiar themes of discrimination and combat into a more intimate and recognizable setting - the transformation of a living being into a killing machine is just as vivid here as in any of his numerous war movies. Film's key line comes, appropriately enough, from Keys (Paul Winfield), the black animal trainer bent on rehabilitating the dog, when he says "Dogs see only in black and white". He is of course speaking metaphorically for the narrow perspectives of the all humanity. While McNichol is sickened and wants the animal destroyed, Winfield instead makes it his mission to reform it, as if he is not just curing one dog, but triumphing over the unreasoning animal nature of all men (or the bigoted ones, at least). He in effect turns the dog into *his* metaphor. Fuller perpetuates this in one attack scene with a shot of a stained glass window depicting St Francis (though he looks more like Christ) standing over a white dog while we hear the sounds of McNichol's dog savaging a black man to death out of frame. It's a cynical, distressing moment that is creepily identical to the pseudo-religious `white is right' doctrine of the Ku Klux Klan.
The use of a dog as the villain is problematical because we are kept aware throughout the story that it is not acting of its own free will. We feel the same ambivalence towards it as the other characters, but by the picture's end you'll feel sorry for the dog, who is in obvious mental torment, and angry at irresponsible owners who make this sort of behavior happen. The dog itself is fearsomely convincing. Its human co-stars, Winfield and Burl Ives, are well suited to their roles, but it's McNichol who gives the most appealing performance. Fuller makes the most of her vulnerable-yet-determined looks by shooting her frequently in close-up. There's irony in her role as a woman putting her pet through extensive therapy when we remember that shortly after this film she herself suffered years of (well-publicized) anxiety attacks. Fuller and fellow director Curtis Hanson wrote the screenplay, based on a story by Romain Gary. Ennio Morricone provided the superb, rather poetic score.
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