Arquivos da categoria: Noir

24 Frames: O Terceiro Homem (The Third Man, Carol Reed, 1949)

Who was the third man? What man would you be referring to, Mr. Martins? I was told that a third man helped you and Kurtz carry the body. – Do you expect me to give myself up? – Why not? – “It’s a far, far better thing that I do,” the old limelight, the fallContinuar lendo “24 Frames: O Terceiro Homem (The Third Man, Carol Reed, 1949)”

Centenário de Robert Hamer

The output of Ealing Studios tended to be dominated by the house style imposed by its head, Michael Balcon. Occasionally, one or two of its directors broke away from Balcon’s ethos to produce work with a more personal, individual quality. This is certainly true of Robert Hamer, a tragic figure in the history of British cinema whose career ended early due to alcoholism, but who left a small, deeply impressive body of work behind him.
Hamer was born on 31 March 1911 in Kidderminster, son of the actor Gerald Hamer. He was sent down from Cambridge, but subsequently went into the film industry as an assistant editor with Gaumont-British in 1934. From there he moved to Korda’s London Films and then on to Mayflower, the company formed by German producer Erich Pommer and British actor Charles Laughton, where he edited Jamaica Inn (1939), Alfred Hitchcock’s last British picture before departing for Hollywood. After a brief stint with the GPO Film Unit, he was recruited by Ealing where he was employed initially as an editor and then as an associate producer. He made his debut as a director with the ‘Haunted Mirror’ section for the portmanteau horror film Dead of Night (1945). It is one of the most disturbing stories in the film, taking a well-worn theme and investing it with a sense of the danger lying underneath the surface of bourgeois life. His first feature, Pink String and Sealing Wax (1946), again featured Googie Withers as the barmaid trying to lead poor Gordon Jackson astray. The film manages a similar atmosphere to ‘The Haunted Mirror’, portraying a claustrophobic world of Victorian conformity almost undone by unbridled desire.
Set in London’s working-class East End and centring on the story of a bored wife who gives shelter to her former lover (now an escaped convict), It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) might be expected to be a standard piece of Ealing social realism, but Hamer takes it in a different direction. With Googie Withers again in the lead, the film is visually striking with more attention paid to creating a gloomy mood than in naturalistic observation. It scored a considerable commercial and critical success. Hamer’s undisputed masterpiece, voted sixth in a BFI poll of the best British films, is Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). With its witty, literate script and suitably disdainful performance from Dennis Price as Louis, the poor relation of the grand D’Ascoyne family who murders his way towards the family inheritance, the film adopts a uniquely taciturn attitude towards its dark subject matter. Alec Guinness is suitably outlandish playing all eight victims (one of them female) and the film still seems remarkably modern in both its critique of class and its liberated attitude towards sex. After a number of possible projects had been rejected by Balcon, he made The Spider and the Fly (1950) back at the revamped Mayflower. The pessimistic undercurrent in Hamer’s work is most obvious here, with its story of a three-sided relationship (often a feature of his films) set against the backdrop of France just before the outbreak of the First World War. He returned to Ealing for one final film, the disappointingly stagey comedy His Excellency (1951) which, as with his previous film, stars Eric Portman. Unable to gain Balcon’s approval for any further projects, he made The Long Memory (1952) for producer Hugh Stewart. John Mills is slightly unlikely as the ex-convict seeking revenge after serving time for a crime he didn’t commit, but Hamer invests the film with his now familiar fatalism and makes striking use of the setting on a barge and of the dreary mudflats at Gravesend for the final chase. Hamer’s melancholy is even apparent in the understated Father Brown (1954), adapted from GK Chesterton’s short stories. Alec Guinness is the priest turned detective, but the film is as concerned with the moral salvation of his arch-enemy, played sympathetically by Peter Finch, as it is in Chesterton’s hero.
Struggling to find suitable film projects in the mid-1950s – To Paris with Love (1955) is an insubstantial comedy again with Alec Guinness – he turned instead to television making A Month in the Country (1955), a touching adaptation of Turgenev for the independent company Rediffusion. The last cinema film he completed was The Scapegoat (1958), an intermittently fascinating adaptation from Daphne du Maurier with Guinness this time playing a holidaymaker tricked into taking on another’s man’s identity. The film’s potential was certainly hampered by post-production cutting by its American backers, as well as by disputes Hamer had with the author and his star. The break-up of his second marriage and his own confused sexuality may have contributed to his descent into chronic alcoholism; he had to be replaced while shooting School for Scoundrels (1959). There is still much to admire in the film’s comic take on the cruelties of the British class system and the performances by Ian Carmichael, Alastair Sim and Terry-Thomas are perfectly judged. He didn’t direct again, although he completed a couple of assignments as a scriptwriter before succumbing to his addiction. He died on 4 December 1963 at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. It was a tragic end to a career that should have delivered so much more. Nonetheless, the small group of films he directed indicates a film-maker of real substance, typified by his visual panache as well as by a mordantly humorous view of British manners and methods. Even without knowing his life story, there is a detectable strain of melancholy in his work which invests even his comedies with an underlying depth of emotion and pathos.

British Film Directors: A Critical Guide – Robert Shail

O Seu Pior Inimigo (The Small Back Room, 1949)

The Small Back Room é brilhante em sua simplicidade – ao menos no sentido de simplicidade segundo os critérios de Powell & Pressburger, sem os habituais cenários grandiloquentes, technicolor efusivo ou grandes jornadas pessoais com toque no fantástico. É um filme pequeno, com clima e aparência de noir travestido em filme de guerra, mas queContinuar lendo “O Seu Pior Inimigo (The Small Back Room, 1949)”

The Cat Piano (2009)

The Cat Piano by Eddie White Long ago my city’s luminous heart, beat with the song of four thousand cats. Crooners who shone in the moonlight mimicry of the spotlight. Jazz singers. Hip cats that went ‘Scat!’ Buskers with open-mouthed hats hungry for a feed. Parlours paraded purring glamorous songstresses. Smoky hookahs and smoking hookers.Continuar lendo “The Cat Piano (2009)”

Centenário de Dana Andrews

Apesar do nome feminino, Dana Andrews foi um mais inesquecíveis caras durões do cinema, em especial do cinema noir. Provavelmente um dos caras mais subestimados da golden age hollywoodiana, em qualquer filme que esteja presente é o seu magnetismo que se sobressai em relação a qualquer outra pessoa em cena (à excessão de Babs Stawyck,Continuar lendo “Centenário de Dana Andrews”

Cais das Sombras (Le Quai des Brumes, 1938)

Não adianta, não tem para ninguém, nem Bogart, nem McQueen, nem Belmondo (provavelmente me arrependerei de dizer isso sobre Jean Paul), Jean Gabin é rei. Em fins dos anos 30 Gabin moldou boa parte de seus grandes papéis, seja sob a batuta de Jean Renoir com A Grande Ilusão, Bas-Fonds, A Besta Humana, seja atravésContinuar lendo “Cais das Sombras (Le Quai des Brumes, 1938)”

Centenário de Fred MacMurray

Barbara Stanwyck e Fred McMurray em Pacto de Sangue Top 5 MacMurray 1- Pacto de Sangue (Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder, 1944) 2- Se Meu Apartamento Falasse (The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960) 3- Corações Unidos (Hands Across the Table, Mitchell Leisen, 1935) 4- Ela e o Secretário (Take a Letter, Darling, Mitchell Leisen, 1942) 5- Lembra-teContinuar lendo “Centenário de Fred MacMurray”

A Fúria de um Bravo (Never Let Go, 1960)

Por razões mais do que claras isso tudo me lembra Samuel Fuller. Por razões não tão claras um promissor John Guillermin deixou a Inglaterrra e foi dirigir filmes duvidosos nos EUA. C’est La Vie. Nota: O arraso de trilha sonora fica por conta de, para variar, John Barry.

Fritz Lang versus Jean Renoir – 2º Round

Jean Renoir: A Cadela (La Chienne, 1931)E tem início o realismo poético de Renoir na forma que o fez famoso. Ninguém é legal, ninguém é bonzinho, ninguém tem o caráter livre de falhas em A Cadela, mesmo os personagens de boa índole em um momento ou outro se tornarão filhos da puta. Numa visão geralContinuar lendo “Fritz Lang versus Jean Renoir – 2º Round”

Fritz Lang versus Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir: A Besta Humana (La Bête Humaine, 1938) Muitos do filmes com Jean Gabin do final dos anos 30 são taxados de pré-noir, mais uma vez foram os franceses que jogaram a isca para o surgimento de um dos mais admiráveis gêneros do cinema americano, todos os caras durões que se fodem por causaContinuar lendo “Fritz Lang versus Jean Renoir”

Vanity Fair Portfolio 2007: Killers Kill, Dead Men Die por Annie Leibovitz