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“Shore Leave Shenanigans”
By Raymond Benson
British noir is a slightly different animal than American film noir, which began in the early 1940s in Hollywood and lasted until roughly 1958 (if one is considering “pure” film noir and its singular traits). The British version, as well as the French and Italian editions, usually concentrates on a more “straight” narrative form with less melodrama. It is probably more true-to-life, drawing from the naturalism of Italian Neo-realism, than its counterpart across the Atlantic. It is certainly less histrionic and heightened. Nevertheless, British noir contains hallmarks of noir everywhere—black-and-white, Expressionistic photography; cynical and hard-edged characters; femmes fatale; brutality; and, of course, a crime.
Pool of London is a 1951 Ealing Studios crime drama (the studio was still making other genre pictures other than comedies at this time) that takes place in and around that geographical site. The...
“Shore Leave Shenanigans”
By Raymond Benson
British noir is a slightly different animal than American film noir, which began in the early 1940s in Hollywood and lasted until roughly 1958 (if one is considering “pure” film noir and its singular traits). The British version, as well as the French and Italian editions, usually concentrates on a more “straight” narrative form with less melodrama. It is probably more true-to-life, drawing from the naturalism of Italian Neo-realism, than its counterpart across the Atlantic. It is certainly less histrionic and heightened. Nevertheless, British noir contains hallmarks of noir everywhere—black-and-white, Expressionistic photography; cynical and hard-edged characters; femmes fatale; brutality; and, of course, a crime.
Pool of London is a 1951 Ealing Studios crime drama (the studio was still making other genre pictures other than comedies at this time) that takes place in and around that geographical site. The...
- 5/29/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
I’d never heard of this gem of a British production; now it goes on my list of highly recommended titles. A dock area on the Thames is ‘the pool,’ and the sailors that disembark from the cargo ships are susceptible to the temptations of black market trade. A single eventful weekend traces the fates of a half-dozen young people, the women that like the sailors, and the sailor that gets mixed up in a deadly serious crime. Director Basil Dearden’s excellent cast is mostly unfamiliar to us Yanks, but we get really tied up in their problems. This picture should be much better known. It’s the first English movie to depict an interracial romance, and it does so without sensationalism or special pleading. The best new extra is an interview with actor Earl Cameron, who at 103 years of age has his act (and his memories) totally together.
- 5/16/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Mill Creek and Kit Parker have raided the Columbia vault once again in search of Noir Gold from the ‘fifties. Their selection this time around has a couple of prime gems, several straight crime thrillers and domestic jeopardy tales, and also a couple of interesting Brit imports. They aren’t really ‘Noir’ either, but they’re still unexpected and different. The top title is Don Siegel’s incomparable The Lineup, but also on board is a snappy anti-commie epic by André De Toth. Get set for a lineup of impressive leading ladies: Diana Dors, Arlene Dahl, Anita Ekberg — and the great Colleen Dewhurst as a card-carrying Red!
Noir Archive 9-Film Collection Volume 3
The Shadow on the Window, The Long Haul, Pickup Alley, The Tijuana Story, She Played with Fire, The Case Against Brooklyn, The Lineup, The Crimson Kimono, Man on a String
Blu-ray
Mill Creek / Kit Parker
1957 -1960 / B&w...
Noir Archive 9-Film Collection Volume 3
The Shadow on the Window, The Long Haul, Pickup Alley, The Tijuana Story, She Played with Fire, The Case Against Brooklyn, The Lineup, The Crimson Kimono, Man on a String
Blu-ray
Mill Creek / Kit Parker
1957 -1960 / B&w...
- 9/10/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The wonder movie of 1946 sees the Archers infusing the ‘Film Blanc’ fantasy with amazing images and powerful emotions. Imagination and resourcefulness accomplishes miracles on a Stairway to Heaven, with visual effects never bettered in the pre-cgi era. Michael Powell’s command of the screen overpowers a soon-obsoleted theme about U.S.- British relations.
A Matter of Life and Death
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 939
1946 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 104 min. / Stairway to Heaven / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 26, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude.
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff
Film Editor: Reginald Mills
Production Design: Alfred Junge
Original Music: Allan Gray
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger came into their own making wartime movies, most of which steered far clear of the accepted definition of propaganda. After their Anglo-Dutch...
A Matter of Life and Death
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 939
1946 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 104 min. / Stairway to Heaven / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 26, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude.
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff
Film Editor: Reginald Mills
Production Design: Alfred Junge
Original Music: Allan Gray
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger came into their own making wartime movies, most of which steered far clear of the accepted definition of propaganda. After their Anglo-Dutch...
- 7/7/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
To celebrate a brand new restoration of the 1951 Ealing classic Pool Of London on Blu-Ray, DVD & Est, Studiocanal are supplying 3 copies of the Blu-Ray to give away to some lucky winners. Directed by Basil Dearden (The Blue Lamp; Dead of Night) and starring Bonar Colleano (Dance Hall; The Man Inside) and legendary Earl Cameron Cbe (Sapphire; Thunderball), […]
The post Win Pool of London on Blu-ray appeared first on HeyUGuys.
The post Win Pool of London on Blu-ray appeared first on HeyUGuys.
- 10/25/2016
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Theodore Bikel. Theodore Bikel dead at 91: Oscar-nominated actor and folk singer best known for stage musicals 'The Sound of Music,' 'Fiddler on the Roof' Folk singer, social and union activist, and stage, film, and television actor Theodore Bikel, best remembered for starring in the Broadway musical The Sound of Music and, throughout the U.S., in Fiddler on the Roof, died Monday morning (July 20, '15) of "natural causes" at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. The Austrian-born Bikel – as Theodore Meir Bikel on May 2, 1924, in Vienna, to Yiddish-speaking Eastern European parents – was 91. Fled Hitler Thanks to his well-connected Zionist father, six months after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938 ("they were greeted with jubilation by the local populace," he would recall in 2012), the 14-year-old Bikel and his family fled to Palestine, at the time a British protectorate. While there, the teenager began acting on stage,...
- 7/23/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...
- 11/5/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
(Charles Crichton, 1950; StudioCanal, PG)
Made during Ealing Studios's peak period from the early 40s to the mid-1950s, Dance Hall is virtually the only movie produced by that male-dominated studio that might be considered a feminist work. Co-scripted by Diana Morgan, the sole woman admitted by Ealing boss Michael Balcon to his elite creative team, it looks at the world from the point of view of four young working-class women (Natasha Parry, Petula Clark, Jane Hylton and Diana Dors). They live in council flats, work in the same west London factory, and find romance and an escape from their drab lives at the local dance hall. Except for the middle-class accents, the film presents an honest, down-to-earth portrait of Britain in the postwar age of austerity. Typically for its time, Parry (future wife of the director Peter Brook) is torn between glamorous sports car-driving spiv Bonar Colleano and dull,...
Made during Ealing Studios's peak period from the early 40s to the mid-1950s, Dance Hall is virtually the only movie produced by that male-dominated studio that might be considered a feminist work. Co-scripted by Diana Morgan, the sole woman admitted by Ealing boss Michael Balcon to his elite creative team, it looks at the world from the point of view of four young working-class women (Natasha Parry, Petula Clark, Jane Hylton and Diana Dors). They live in council flats, work in the same west London factory, and find romance and an escape from their drab lives at the local dance hall. Except for the middle-class accents, the film presents an honest, down-to-earth portrait of Britain in the postwar age of austerity. Typically for its time, Parry (future wife of the director Peter Brook) is torn between glamorous sports car-driving spiv Bonar Colleano and dull,...
- 4/22/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
British actors sound clearly different at Us award ceremonies but these days you'd never know it on film
You probably won't remember Bonar Colleano (or unmemorable films starring him, like Good-time Girl). He was thin and, well, bony, with slicked-back hair, and just 34 when his car crashed 53 years ago. But he made a good living in British movies for a decade before that because he came from New York City, and was thus available to play GIs and mobsters on demand in a natural American accent Britain's homegrown B-movie actors couldn't mimic for love or for money. But now see how the world has changed.
Here's Christian Bale from Haverfordwest at the Oscars tonight after doing raw Massachusetts to the manner born. And, turning on the television, there's Hugh Laurie from Oxford still playing in House. That drunken McNulty cop in The Wire? Dominic West from Eton. (He could have been David Cameron's fag.
You probably won't remember Bonar Colleano (or unmemorable films starring him, like Good-time Girl). He was thin and, well, bony, with slicked-back hair, and just 34 when his car crashed 53 years ago. But he made a good living in British movies for a decade before that because he came from New York City, and was thus available to play GIs and mobsters on demand in a natural American accent Britain's homegrown B-movie actors couldn't mimic for love or for money. But now see how the world has changed.
Here's Christian Bale from Haverfordwest at the Oscars tonight after doing raw Massachusetts to the manner born. And, turning on the television, there's Hugh Laurie from Oxford still playing in House. That drunken McNulty cop in The Wire? Dominic West from Eton. (He could have been David Cameron's fag.
- 2/28/2011
- by Peter Preston
- The Guardian - Film News
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