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Jacques Tourneur |
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Director |
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1904 - 1977 |
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Born November 12,
Paris, France |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Western, Action,
Thriller, Horror, Drama |
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Key
Collaborators: Albert
S. D'Agostino (Production Designer), Roy Webb (Composer), Joel McCrea
(Leading Player), Val Lewton
(Producer),
Mark Robson (Editor), James
Bell (Character Player), Jack Okey (Production Designer), Walter E.
Keller (Production Designer), Dana Andrews (Leading Player), Ardel Wray (Screenwriter) |
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Highly Recommended: Out
of the Past (1947)*#, Night of the Demon (1957)* |
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Recommended: Cat
People (1942)*, I Walked with a Zombie (1943)*, The Flame and the Arrow
(1950), Wichita (1955), Great Day in the Morning
(1956), Nightfall (1956)# |
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Worth a Look: The
Leopard Man (1943), Experiment Perilous (1944), Canyon Passage (1946),
Berlin Express (1948)#, Stars in My Crown (1950), Stranger on Horseback
(1955) |
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Approach with Caution:
Days of Glory (1944), Anne of the Indies (1951), Way of a Gaucho (1952) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; #
Listed in TSPDT's
250 Quintessential Noir Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Wikipedia ] [
Classic Film and
Television Home Page ] [
Bright
Lights Feature on "Out of the Past" ] [
Slant Magazine Article ] [
Screen Online Biography ] [
Cinematical Article (2010) ] |
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Books: [
Jacques
Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall ] |
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"Jacques
Tourneur, son of the late Maurice Tourneur, brings a certain
French gentility to the American cinema...Tourneur's first films
for Val Lewton - Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie
- possessed a subtler dramatic force than those of
Wise
and
Robson.
Out of the Past is still Tourneur's masterpiece, a
civilized treatment of an annihilating melodrama... All in all,
Tourneur's career represents a triumph of taste over force."
-
Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) |
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"The
best pictures which he directed were those of suspense and
genuine terror, though he also did well with those that had a
great deal of action. He wisely resisted scenes with long
patches of dialogue. When confronted with such scenes, he
typically frowned and said, "It sounds so corny." -
DeWitt Bodeen (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) |
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"Never
a major director, Jacques Tourneur nonetheless possessed an
unassertive and eloquent visual style that enabled him to
transform decent scripts into superior films. Although much of
his work was in the B-movie field, his subtle inventiveness and
unerring taste frequently made for intelligent entertainment." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)
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"Perhaps the gentlest director of action films in Hollywood
history. His early reputation was made with, eerie, subtle,
intelligent, Val Lewton-produced horror thrillers (Cat People,
42; I Walked with a Zombie, 43). He brought out the
little things which add up to humanity in his characters, good
or bad, and knew how to employ expressive lighting and camera
movement when necessary." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939), Phantom Raiders (1940), Easy Living (1949), Circle of Danger (1951), Appointment in Honduras (1953), The Fearmakers (1958), Frontier Rangers (1959), Timbuktu (1959), The Comedy of Terrors (1964), and War Gods of the Deep (1965). |
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