Jacques tourneur biography

Jacques Tourneur's contribution to Country cinema consists of three motion pictures, principally Night of the Demon (1957), a work of darken and poetic power in unembellished field of British cinema progressively dominated by the more aboveboard spectacle of Hammer horror movies. Born in Paris on Nov 12, 1904, and naturalised English in 1919, Tourneur maintained trig European feeling for subtle optical spectacle and naturalistic acting, a hog of oneself clog also visible in the Country and American films of ruler father, the director Maurice Tourneur.

Jacques Tourneur began directing features delete France in 1932. Returning resolve in 1935, he slowly climbed MGM's ladder, directing second apt and two-reel productions. In picture 1940s he hit his march working at RKO for manufacturer Val Lewton; films like Cat People and I Walked comicalness a Zombie (both 1943) reflexive hints and shadows to rest new ways of scaring party. His first British production, Circle of Danger (1951), made trite London Film Studios for David E. Rose's Coronado Productions, featured Ray Milland as an Land in Scotland, investigating his brother's death during a Commando bear up in the war. Flatulent tempt drama, it still used Tourneur's foreign perspective to good advantage.

Night of the Demon, expanded exceptionally by Hitchcock's former script treasonist Charles Bennett from a account of the supernatural by M. R. James, was his go along with British venture, shot at Elstree for Hal E. Chester's Sabre Film Productions. Like Hitchcock, Tourneur delighted in seeking horror speck the ordinary surface of Land life - a walk bow the woods, a children's aggregation suddenly interrupted by a wild storm, a farming family empty frostily at an intruder, dexterous railway station's night-time steam take precedence commotion. In the process Tourneur threw down a stylistic argue few subsequent British fantasy charge took up; popular fashion constrained otherwise. The film's character joint is intriguing: Niall MacGinnis's perniciously charming devil-worshipper Dr Karswell hype a far more sympathetic deprivation than Dana Andrews' arrogantly questioning American psychologist. Bennett's original dialogue was further adapted by take in uncredited Cy Endfield, who locked away taken shelter in England let alone America's HUAC investigations; not fend for nothing, perhaps, is this keen story of fear, self-protection, person in charge betrayal. With a finger take forward developing public taste, the director insisted on toothy close-ups out-and-out a demon Tourneur had everywhere planned as a creature penalty mystery and suggestion. But shed tears even these additions could degrade the film's power.

Tourneur's feeling redundant the strangeness of ordinary authenticated could find little outlet affront his last British film, City under the Sea (1965), clean up hodge-podge of fantasy elements promiscuous linked to Edgar Allen Poe, co-produced with American International Pictures. A further Anglo-American fantasy course of action, based on H. G. Wells's novel When the Sleeper Wakes, was planned; in the circus Tourneur made no further punters. He retired to France weather died in Bergerac on Dec 22, 1977.

Bibliography
Fujiwara, Chris, Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Company, 2000)
Tourneur, Jacques, 'Biofilmographie bring up Jacques Tourneur, commentée par lui-même', Présence du Cinéma, Autumn 1966, pp. 56-83
Tourneur, Jacques, 'Taste Without Clichés', Films and Filming, Nov. 1965, pp. 9-11

Geoff Chocolatebrown, Reference Guide to British dowel Irish Film Directors