Joop van den Berg's 1929 poster for AtlanticE.A. Dupont achieved early fame for Varieté (1925), a grimly saucy slice of Weimar doom and spiciness, and followed it up with prestigious British productions Moulin Rouge (1928) and Piccadilly (1929), the latter starring Anna May Wong—but just as his career was on the upswing he fell prey to the advent of sound, producing a big-budget version of the Titanic disaster in English and German versions.Atlantic, or Atlantik, became something of a laughing-stock in Britain, owing to Dupont's unfortunate combination of Teutonic tendencies and technical trepidation. The actors were directed to communicate as slowly as possible, perhaps so that Dupont could follow what they were saying. His desire to inflect each syllable with suitable weight and portent robbed the film of any sense of urgency, despite it being set on a ship that starts sinking around twenty minutes in (none of the ninety-minute time-wasting...
- 3/31/2016
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
E.A. Dupont had perhaps the most precipitous career trajectory of any German filmmaker of the silent years, plunging from the pinnacle of his native industry to the stinky depths of The Neanderthal Man (1953) in Hollywood. Supposedly the secret of his lack of success was an incident in 1939 when he was fired for slapping a bit player on the set of a Dead End Kids picture, and he spent a decade working as a talent agent (helped no doubt by his obvious sympathy for performers, ahem). It might be observed that if you're directing a Dead End Kids picture your career has already descended a few notches since your Ufa heyday.
Varieté (1925) was Dupont's breakthrough film, and today it's remembered more in film histories than it is actually seen: there's never been a DVD to my knowledge, and the copies drifting about in cyberspace are patchy and aged off-air recordings with...
Varieté (1925) was Dupont's breakthrough film, and today it's remembered more in film histories than it is actually seen: there's never been a DVD to my knowledge, and the copies drifting about in cyberspace are patchy and aged off-air recordings with...
- 9/19/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Liam O'Flaherty's novel The Informer, in which an Ira man rats on a comrade for the reward money and endures a night of agonizing guilt, punishment and redemption, has been filmed thrice, and all three versions are of interest. Jules Dassin's proto-blaxploitation version, Uptight! (1968), is the least impressive, but does boast fine performances by screenwriters Jason Bernard and Ruby Dee, who take lead roles, and the always imposing Raymond St. Jacques and Roscoe Lee Browne. The climax, scored to Booker T. and the M.G.'s "Time is Tight" (a.k.a. The Blues Brothers' theme) is pretty exciting, once you get over the shock.
John Ford's 1935 The Informer is the most faithful and famed, though its reputation is not as high as it once was. At times the Rko production, with its Max Steiner score and hulking performance from Victor McLaglan, recalls King Kong (McLaglan...
John Ford's 1935 The Informer is the most faithful and famed, though its reputation is not as high as it once was. At times the Rko production, with its Max Steiner score and hulking performance from Victor McLaglan, recalls King Kong (McLaglan...
- 6/13/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
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