Martin Scorsese once said, "If you don't like Samuel Fuller's films, you don't like them." "As a well-known independent director, black director and B-grade film director in the United States, Fuller's works have strong watchability, wonderful stories, tight rhythms, and those very charismatic characters, and at the same time, the creation of tension is also Fuller's best play, all of which will attract people who watch his films to indulge."
At the same time, he focused on anti-war and anti-racism themes throughout his life, which also made his works look good and have a strong depth of thought.
The film is a 1950 black-and-white film directed by Samuel Fuller and based on the story of james Anderson Reeves, a famous 19th-century American con artist. At the beginning of the film, a group of officials in Arizona are discussing the matter. Dressed in evening dresses, white-headed crane hair, they took small sips of brandy and smoked cigars. Among them was a middle-aged man with a stiff expression who appeared as if he were a prominent voiceover on the screen, and his name was Hadley.
As narrator Hadley explains Livs's secrets to us layer by layer, director Fuller takes the audience from 1912 to 1872. As a result of the U.S. government's recognition of the Spanish colonists' land ownership, many ignorant people were given land, and The Santa Fe landowner Livs forged the documents related to the Spanish government's land grant in order to embezzle the entire territory of Arizona, and wrote his own history: he created a man named Miguel de Plata and established himself as the first baron of Arizona.
With his superior camouflage skills, Livs travels to a monastery in Spain, falsely claims that the little girl Sofia is the only descendant of Baron Miguel de Palata, and succeeds in convincing his adoptive father, Pepito Avanets, to accept the truth. Several people returned to Livs's home in Santa Fe and invited Norma, a graduate of Las Vegas College, to be a tutor, and "image transformation" of Baron Sophia de Palata from various forms of etiquette and reading pictures. Sophia, who had just begun to receive enlightenment, was sensitive and studious, and Livs did not forget to instill in her the noble princess's yearning for happiness. He also taught her aristotle in German: "Nobility is not in what you have, but in what you deserve." ”
At the same time, Livs ran to the depths of the mountain to make "cliff carvings", big books. Entering the library to falsify the history of the Palata family, forge the birth records of Sophia de Palata, forge the graves of the Palatas... After the historical imprint of the American continent was completed, he took a boat to Spain, found a monastery where the documents and archives of the king were stored, and spent three or four years practicing ancient writing. Then pretend to inadvertently leave one on the leader's desk, let the family think that he is a talent, and recruit an ancient book scribe and commentator. In this way, he succeeded in tampering with the Emperor's "Oracle" and achieved the well-documented goal of "King Ferdinand VI granting land".
Ten years later, when Livs returned to the United States, Heleves was an adult. Livs tells Avanetz that he is going to marry Sophia, and Avanetz thinks he is crazy, but Sophia actually marries him. This marriage was facilitated not because Livs loved Sophia, but because of his plans to inherit the territory. It was clear that Sophia was in love with the young gentleman, and Livs was only interested in the land and wealth that was to come.
Livs has a saying "I've seen quite a few women." But as soon as I see you, I feel fear." With the exception of Sophia, he had said the same thing to at least three or more women. All the fancy cleverness, embodied in Hadley's narrative, is maintained in Livs's good and rigorous execution.
The story of Livs is not just the ambition of a legendary big liar, and director Fuller shows us more detailed flesh and blood in his narration. Interior Ministry official Griff said, "He's a man who truly loves Arizona," and Livs spent years preparing for the scam. Around 46 minutes into the film, Sophia "Baron" and his wife appear in Phoenix with "documents" and demand legal means to claim their own land from the government, and local officials are helpless in the face of conclusive evidence. Everything is in chaos. The gentle and kind "Baronesses" was frightened, proposing that "no land, just love a stable life", and repeatedly poured cold water on the pursuit of the rights of her husband.
But Livs was very calm, and in the time that followed, he began to collect all kinds of evidence. Our old friend Hadley, a young investigator from the U.S. Department of the Interior, intends to expose Reeves's ruse. So did he succeed? Did Lives, a petty officer in Santa Fe, end up being one of the richest men of the 1880s? Did he succeed in running the scam and surviving in Arizona? In any case, Sophia still shows his unrelenting love for Livs, who has revealed his identity as a "liar", and finally moves the latter, making him make the right choice between "loving his wife" and "continuing to cheat".
In terms of genre, "The End of the Adulterous Male" can be classified as a historical drama, but also contains love elements and western elements. The film's English name is The Baron of Arizona ,and it was introduced to China as The Last Road of adultery. What does "adulterous male" feel like? Sinister and vicious and cunning. What does "the end" mean? Embattled and desperate. After watching the movie, the audience has some admiration and admiration for the male protagonist Livs, who is known as the "adulterous male", and it seems that he is still known as "Baron arizona" objective and fair.
Helmets, Kill Jesse James, and Baron Arizona are the best of four fuller films from the Eclipse series. Unlike the seriousness and profundity of the other two, rigidity and neatness, it does not show much power, but it is full of romance. Fuller, who has always been good at film noir and war movies, is not very good at or likes to depict love, and he rarely sees love passages in his works, even if there are often mutual uses in film noir.
But in "The End of the Adulterous Male", it is a rare romantic love story. "I fell in love with you when you gave me my second candy", "It turns out I was looking for a woman who loved me for my true face". The change of character personality in the final part is also completed with a very touching plot.
Livs's hoax is the main content of the entire film. This conspiracy caught the audience's eye, and unconsciously had a constant interest in the development of the event. Vincent portrays Livs as a complex and captivating character that captures the curiosity of the audience and the deep sympathy for his hard work. The process of setting up the legendary Livs is also a major highlight of this film. It is said that the great theft of the country, Livs also used his ingenuity to play the U.S. government, and even planned to spend tens of millions of dollars from him to buy back Arizona. Livs's success depends not only on layout, but more on his grasp of the hearts of others, and knows how to take advantage of some of the psychological weaknesses of others.
Nevertheless, the film also has some flaws, due to its flashback structure, which seems a bit messy in the first forty minutes, including some film noir interpretations, and Hadley is both a detective and an angry narrator, and the limited performance of one or the other makes the film lose points a little. Of course, leaving these aside for the time being, Vincent Price's performance is still worth watching, and it is very different from his appearance in the rest of the movies, and it is more delicate and pleasing.
Shrewd and intelligent in disguise, everything is a stubborn resistance to self-humility and loneliness. The elaborate scam design, the difficult layout process, the touching inner transformation, the wonderful performance skills, all the bridge sections reflect the personality characteristics of all aspects of the characters, blood and bone, desire and flesh crisscrossing, the truth is confusing, and in the end, it is revealed to the world. This is a flat world of images, but also a deep world of human nature.
The liar Livs is a more three-dimensional image, not limited to the expression of good and evil, but gives more human shining points, of course, and finally, moving love.