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| Raoul
Walsh |
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| Director
/ Screenwriter |
| 1887 - 1980 |
| Born March 11, New
York, New York, USA |
| Key
Production Country: USA |
| Key Genres: Drama, Western,
Melodrama, Romance, Gangster Film, Action, Crime Drama, Traditional Western, Crime,
Adventure, Adventure Drama |
| Key
Collaborators:
Sid Hickox (Cinematographer), Max Steiner (Composer),
Alan Hale (Leading Character Player), Ted Smith (Production Designer),
Errol Flynn (Leading Player),
Henry Hull (Leading Character Player), Barton MacLane (Character
Player), James Cagney
(Leading Player), Ida Lupino (Leading
Player), Jerry Wald (Screenwriter/Producer) |
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Highly Recommended: The
Roaring Twenties (1939), High
Sierra (1941), Pursued
(1947), White Heat (1949) |
| Recommended:
The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Big Trail (1930), They
Drive by Night (1940), The Strawberry Blonde (1941), They Died with
Their Boots On (1941), Gentleman Jim (1942), The Man I Love (1946), Colorado Territory (1949),
Along the Great Divide (1951), The Tall Men (1955) |
| Links: [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [ All-Movie
Guide ] [ Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[ Classic
Film and Television Home Page ] [
Raoul
Walsh at Reel Classics ] [
Classic Movies Page
] |
| Books: [
The
Men Who Made the Movies ] [ Each
Man in His Time: The Life Story of a Director ] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films:
The Roaring Twenties (1939),
They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Pursued
(1947), White Heat (1949) |
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250 Quintessential Noir Films:
High Sierra (1941), White Heat (1949) |
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"Raoul Walsh's extraordinary
career spanned the history of the American motion picture
industry from its emergence, through its glory years in the
1930s and 1940s, and into the television era. Like his
colleagues Allan Dwan,
King Vidor,
John Ford, and Henry King, whose
careers also covered 50 years, Walsh continuously turned out
popular fare, including several extraordinary hits...Raoul Walsh
is now accepted as an example of a master Hollywood craftsman
who worked with naive skill and an animal energy, a director who
was both frustrated and buoyed by the studio system." -
Douglas Gomery (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) |
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"It
is time to consider Walsh as rather more than a tough guy, a
fellow who likes to laugh, a primitive with rough sentiments.
This passionate Shakespearean is a physical film-maker only
because he depicts a world of spiritual turmoil. His characters
are projected on the world by their own energy and committed to
a space that only exists for their actions, fury, spirit, craft,
ambition and unbridled dreams." -
Jean Douchet |
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"'Action!',
the word that starts the cameras rolling, sums up the career of
this American director. Sprawling, brawling, often almost
primitive action, teeming across the screen, marks Walsh's
stories of comradeship and battles against the odds. He had a
talent for making the densest of action sequences seem
uncomplicated and uncluttered and his characters, like the
scenes they distinguished, often have a raw, unfettered power." - David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"A supreme action director, Walsh would be regarded as one of
the greats of Hollywood's golden era if not for a long period in
the 1930s when he languished with mediocre projects. A number of
excellent silent films (What Price Glory?) weren't
followed by work of similar quality until the director went to
Warner Brothers in 1939. Walsh rarely gave in to the psychology
of his characters, but directed on a pure narrative level which
showed what was important without merely telling it in the
dialogue." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"The
transition from silents to sound pictures didn't hit me in any
way. I just kept the thing moving regardless of the sound...Of
course, there was a great upheaval amongst the directors when
talking pictures came in. They called me a renegade because I
was one of the first ones to do an outdoor talking picture. They
said that they'd created such a medium with pantomime, you know,
and now this talking stuff was going to destroy it all. I said
it was going to destroy us if we didn't get along and get with
it. So they finally all came in." -
Raoul Walsh (Directing the Film, 1976) |
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