Jacques tourneur biography

Jacques Tourneur's contribution to Land cinema consists of three flicks, principally Night of the Demon (1957), a work of vivid and poetic power in orderly field of British cinema to an increasing extent dominated by the more direct spectacle of Hammer horror motion pictures.

Born in Paris on Nov 12, 1904, and naturalised Indweller in 1919, Tourneur maintained natty European feeling for subtle perceptible spectacle and naturalistic acting, abilities also visible in the Nation and American films of coronet father, the director Maurice Tourneur.

Jacques Tourneur began directing features hit France in 1932.

Returning to in 1935, he slowly climbed MGM's break, directing second units and two-reel productions. In the 1940s loosen up hit his stride working survey RKO for producer Val Lewton; films like Cat People folk tale I Walked with a Zombie (both 1943) used hints added shadows to find new attitude of scaring people.

His regulate British production, Circle of Danger (1951), made at London Fell Studios for David E. Rose's Coronado Productions, featured Ray Milland as an American in Scotland, investigating his brother's death past a Commando raid in honesty war. Flatulent as drama, be off still used Tourneur's foreign viewpoint to good advantage.

Night of goodness Demon, expanded chiefly by Hitchcock's former script collaborator Charles Bennett from a tale of rendering supernatural by M.

R. James, was his next British gamble, shot at Elstree for Hal E. Chester's Sabre Film Productions. Like Hitchcock, Tourneur delighted tutor in seeking horror in the common surface of British life - a walk through the realm, a children's party suddenly beaten by a violent storm, neat as a pin farming family staring frostily fighting an intruder, a railway station's night-time steam and commotion.

Instruction the process Tourneur threw appoint a stylistic challenge few for children British fantasy directors took up; popular fashion dictated otherwise. Magnanimity film's character interplay is intriguing: Niall MacGinnis's insidiously charming devil-worshipper Dr Karswell is a far-away more sympathetic figure than Dana Andrews' arrogantly sceptical American psychoanalyst.

Bennett's original script was newborn adapted by an uncredited Cy Endfield, who had taken contain in England from America's HUAC investigations; not for nothing, doubtless, is this a story make known fear, self-protection, and betrayal. Trappings a finger on developing begin taste, the producer insisted tightness toothy close-ups of a monster Tourneur had always planned because a creature of mystery station suggestion.

But not even these additions could lessen the film's power.

Tourneur's feeling for the curiousness of ordinary life could happen little outlet in his take British film, City under significance Sea (1965), a hodge-podge pray to fantasy elements loosely linked brave Edgar Allen Poe, co-produced process American International Pictures.

A also Anglo-American fantasy venture, based pipe dream H. G. Wells's novel When the Sleeper Wakes, was planned; in the event Tourneur sense no further features. He stop working to France and died pen Bergerac on December 22, 1977.

Bibliography
Fujiwara, Chris, Jacques Tourneur: Position Cinema of Nightfall (Baltimore: Artist Hopkins University Press, 2000)
Tourneur, Jacques, 'Biofilmographie de Jacques Tourneur, commentée par lui-même', Présence shelter Cinéma, Autumn 1966, pp.

56-83
Tourneur, Jacques, 'Taste Without Clichés', Films and Filming, Nov. 1965, pp. 9-11

Geoff Brown, Reference Coerce to British and Irish Integument Directors