Dead of Night

Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child, and by the age of 15 was studying law at university. Following an argument with a professor he was... expelled. His father sent him to Geneva, Switzerland on condition that he did not study law or politics. Cavalcanti chose to study architecture instead. At 18 he moved to Paris to work for an architect, later switching to working on interior design. After a visit back to Brazil he took up a position at the Brazilian consulate in Liverpool, England. Cavalcanti corresponded with Marcel L'Herbier, a leading light in France's avant-garde film movement. This led to a job offer from L'Herbier for Cavalcanti to work as a set designer. In 1920 Cavalcanti left his job at the Consulate and moved back to France to work for L'Herbier; he was to be involved in the making of numerous films the most notable being L'Inhumaine.
more

Charles Crichton was an English film director and film editor. He became best known for directing comedies produced at Ealing Studios. Crichton enjoyed an extremely long career, editing and directing many films and television programmes over a period exceeding 40 years. Crichton gained two Academy... Award nominations for A Fish Called Wanda; one for Best Director and the second for Best Original Screenplay .
more

Basil Dearden was an English film director. Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor. He first began working as a director at Ealing... Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out and My Learned Friend . He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night and directed the linking narrative and the "Hearse Driver" segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp , probably the most frequently shown of Dearden's Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of Dock Green television series. His last Ealing film, Out of the Clouds, was released in 1955.
more

Robert James Hamer was a British film director and screenwriter. He was the son of the actor Gerald Hamer . Hamer won a scholarship to Cambridge University but was sent down from Cambridge, and began his career in 1934 as a cutting room assistant and from 1935 worked as a film editor involved... with such films as Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn co-produced by Charles Laughton. At the end of the 1930s, he worked on documentaries for the GPO Film Unit. When his boss at the GPO Alberto Cavalcanti moved to Ealing Studios, Hamer was invited to join him there. He gained some experience as a director by substituting for colleagues and contributed the 'haunted mirror' sequence to Dead of Night . He followed this with the three Ealing films under his own name for which he is best remembered: Pink String and Sealing Wax , It Always Rains on Sunday , both featuring Googie Withers, and the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets , with Dennis Price and Alec Guinness. Hamer died of pneumonia at the age of 52 at St Thomas's Hospital in London.
more