White Dog
1982
****
Director: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Paul Winfield, Kristy McNichol, Burt Ives, Jameson Parker, Lynn Moody, Parley Baer
An actress, who lives alone in Los Angeles, takes home a stray White Shepherd, who displays bouts of aggression. She learns that the dog was trained to attack black people. Samuel Fuller's final American film is a captivating allegory about racism. While the dog is being retrained, the authorities do not seem to care that the dog has killed black people. That is either a glaring plot hole or a commentary on systemic racism in policing. The central question is whether the behaviour can be unlearned or is it too deeply ingrained to be cured? Sadly this thought-provoking film only received a limited cinematic release, because the studio considered its subject matter too controversial at the time. Ennio Morricone wrote the beautiful score. The script by Fuller and Curtis Hanson is loosely based on Romain Gary's 1970 novel.
