It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL | 4:3 | 729x576 | 6500 kbps | 7.1Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: French
01:32:00 | UK | Crime, Drama
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL | 4:3 | 729x576 | 6500 kbps | 7.1Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: French
01:32:00 | UK | Crime, Drama
A married woman shelters her former lover in her London home after he has escaped from prison. Discontented with her dull marriage, she begins to rediscover her former love for him.
Director: Robert Hamer
Cast: Googie Withers, Edward Chapman, Susan Shaw, Patricia Plunkett, David Lines, Sydney Tafler, Betty Ann Davies, John Slater, Jane Hylton, Meier Tzelniker, John McCallum, Jimmy Hanley, John Carol, Alfie Bass, Jack Warner, Frederick Piper, Michael Howard, Hermione Baddeley, Nigel Stock, John Salew, Gladys Henson, Edie Martin, Betty Bascomb, Gilbert Davis, Al Millen, Vida Hope, Arthur Hambling, Grace Arnold, John Vere, Patrick Jones
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
IMDb
Film Noir defies definition, plenty disagree whether its a movement, genre, style. Perhaps its more usefully conceived as a sensibility, a world view, an attitude. In which case the words pessimism, determinism ie characters lacking choice their lives are predetermined, doom, gloom, the past coming back to affect the present all spring to mind. Its possible to see a cycle of films with remarkably consistent features in terms of visual style emerging in U.S primarily and to a lesser extent the U.K and France in the forties and fifties. While most noir films have a male as the central protagonist, a male who is invariably weak and flawed, a number of these films, such as Mildred Pierce, have a female protagonist. Noir manifested itself differently in Britain, combining with elements of what was to become known as kitchen sink or social realism and frequently concerned with social class.
This film uses the claustrophobic interiors of the terraced house to great effect. The noir style of long shadows, oblique angles, becomes more evident in the final climax, not really needed early on since the interiors work effectively without lighting effects. Melancholia drips through this like the rain of the title, Googie Withers is terrific, her face a mask of dreams, desires pushed away, disappointment etched over her features through her hard make up. How different she is in appearance to the femmes fatales of the U.S movies, bustling round the kitchen in her pinafore, then later on the almost military smartness of her utility dress when she attends Tommy. As a character shes every bit as strong however as her American counterparts. Like Mildred Pierce, she's strong in a domestic setting, when the usual convention for women in noir is to take them out of the domestic, placing them typically as nightclub singers or gangsters molls. In details I ll acknowledge this is on occasions cheesy and dated. Scratch at the surface however and its a fascinating exploration of the social tensions emerging after World War Two. How were people to adjust to life in peacetime? Were they able to return to the rigidly prescribed roles they d had prior to the war? Ealing studios produced a number of films which now can be seen to share many affinities with American Film Noir, this is one of the most interesting and rewarding.
~ trpuk1968
Extras:
- Bertrand Tavernier raconte It Always Rains on Sunday et les Studios Ealing (19 min, french, no subs)
- Galerie photo
- Filmographies
- Trailer
- Segment "The Haunted Mirror" from Dead of Night (1945)
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
