Jacques Tourneur

One of the most unique and fascinating swashbucklers of the studio era stars a commanding Jean Peters as a notorious pirate who captains a ship of plunderers terrorizing the West Indies, duels with Blackbeard himself, and exacts ruthless revenge on any man who double-crosses her—“the vilest-hearted she-monster that ever came out of the sea,” according to the suave French officer Pierre (Louis Jordan). Throughout, Tourneur fills every inch of the frame with teeming action and movement, emphasizing both the dreamy beauty of the Technicolor images and, as the proceedings turn increasingly lurid, the savage darkness at the story’s center.Read More »

Folks in Walsburg may want to pay heed to the brace of pistols holstered onto Josiah Gray’s hips. In time, they may want to pay even more heed to the Bible in his hand. Gray (Joel McCrea) is the newly arrived parson in the woodsy post-Civil War Tennessee town. And the true test of his strength will come when, during his greatest and most dangerous challenge, he sets aside his six-shooters and relies on his faith. McCrea brings a quiet resolve to this touching tale burnished through the recall of the pastor’s impressionable nephew (Dean Stockwell). Based on the novel by Joe David Brown (who would later provide the source novel for Paper Moon), Stars in My Crown shines with a powerful, simple dignity.Read More »

Is it man, beast or both behind a string of savage maulings and murders? An escaped leopard provides the catalyst for a foray into fear in which a cemetery is the rendezvous for death and love, and a closed door heightens rather than hides the horror of a young girl’s fate. The Leopard Man once again teams producer Val Lewton with director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People). This thriller stars Dennis O’Keefe (T-Men, Raw Deal), Margo (Lost Horizon) and Jean Brooks (The Seventh Victim).Read More »

PLOT: Former buffalo hunter and entrepreneur Wyatt Earp arrives in the lawless cattle town of Wichita Kansas. His skill as a gun-fighter make him a perfect candidate for Marshal but he refuses the job until he feels morally obligated to bring law and order to this wild town.Read More »

Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur elevated the horror film to new heights of poetic abstraction with this entrancing journey into the realm between life and death. When she takes a job caring for a comatose woman on a Caribbean island, a young nurse (Frances Dee) finds herself plunged into a mysterious world where the ghosts of slavery haunt the present and Vodou priests have the power to summon the living dead. Sugarcane swaying in a moonlit field, the hypnotic beat of ceremonial drums, the relentless pull toward death—the otherworldly atmosphere of this bold reimagining of Jane Eyre is as close as studio-era Hollywood ever came to pure dream-state surrealism.Read More »

Synopsis:
Carey Wilson attends a party where he knows no one. Among those at the party is the young and gay Mary Dosier. But he learns from another guest that a year earlier, Mary was in the deepest despair. This phase of her life started three years earlier. She had just gotten married to her husband, the gifted but shy concert violinist and composer John Dosier. No one was happier for them than John’s mother, who gave them a year long vacation as a wedding gift. On their first anniversary in Venice, John played for her “A Sonata to a Kiss”, a composition he wrote dedicated to her and which has since become a worldwide sensation. The sound waves from that private performance shattered a champagne glass in their room, which Mary felt to be an ominous sign. Indeed, John was shortly thereafter stricken with an illness and died. Mary could not overcome her grief, but an incident while she listened to a recording of “A Sonata to a Kiss” played by John may have saved her life and given her new…Read More »

Carefully constructed in Tourneur’s typical style – akin, as Chris Fujiwara put it, to a Chinese-box structure – this first in the series What Do You Think? (Tourneur directed the third as well) plays on one of his favorite themes: the attempt to rationalize a series of extraordinary things that happen to the main character.Read More »

This Sports Parade series entry follows the life of Dixie Dan, a harness racehorse, from birth through age three.Read More »

Quote:
Serbian national Irena Dubrovna, a fashion sketch artist, has recently arrived in New York for work. The first person who she makes a personal connection with there is marine engineer Oliver Reed. The two fall in love and get married despite Irena’s reservations, not about Oliver but about herself. She has always felt different than other people, but has never been sure why. She lives close to the zoo, and unlike many of her neighbors is comforted by the sounds of the big cats emanating from the zoo. And although many see it purely as an old wives’ tale, she believes the story from her village of ancient residents being driven into witchcraft and evil doing, those who managed to survive by escaping into the mountains. After seeing her emotional pain, Oliver arranges for her to see a psychiatrist to understand why she believes what she does. In therapy, Dr. Judd, the psychiatrist, learns that she also believes, out of that villagers’ tale, that she has descended from this evil.Read More »