Alberto Cavalcanti

Alberto Cavalcanti

Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti (born February 6, 1897 in Rio de Janeiro , † August 23, 1982 in Paris ) was a Brazilian film director and film producer. He worked mainly in Europe.

Live and act

Cavalcanti was born the son of a mathematician and was considered to be above average intelligent. At the age of 15 he began studying law at the university, but broke it off again after a short time. His father sent him to Geneva , where he decided to study architecture. At the age of 18 he moved to Paris and worked there for an architect and later for an interior designer. After a visit to Brazil, he accepted a position at the Brazilian consulate in Liverpool .

Cavalcanti was in contact with the avant-garde French film director Marcel L'Herbier . This offered him to work as a production designer for him. Cavalcanti left his job at the consulate in the early 1920s and went back to France. He was involved in the production of L'Herbier's films Die Inmenschliche (1924) and The Two Lives of Mathias Pascal (1925). In 1926 he made his first own film, the experimental documentary Rien Que les Heures about a daily routine in Paris. The following year he worked with Walter Ruttmann on a similar project ( Berlin: The Symphony of the Big City ). With the beginning of the sound film era he was employed by the French studios of Paramount and experimented with the possibilities of sound. However, he gave the job in 1933 due to artistic differences again and went to England .

From 1934 Alberto Cavalcanti worked for John Grierson's documentary film group at the GPO Film Unit . There he worked over a period of 7 years on numerous documentaries as a sound engineer, but also as a director and consultant. In 1937 he was briefly interim head of the studio for Grierson, who had migrated to Canada. He was refused permanent acceptance of the post because he was unwilling to take on British citizenship. Cavalcanti left the GPO Film Unit and joined producer Michael Balcon's Ealing Studios in 1940 , where he held various positions. He began making propaganda films such as Feiger Caesar (1941) - a compilation film that strings together scenes by Mussolini with the aim of denigrating and ridiculing. Cavalcanti's most important works at Ealing include the 1942 propaganda film Went the Day Well? , Dead of Night ( Dead of Night ) (1945) and Nicholas Nickleby (1947). Cavalcanti left Ealing over money disputes and returned to Brazil in 1950 after directing three more films in Great Britain.

There he worked as a producer for the Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz , which eventually went bankrupt. Branded as a communist, he found it difficult to find work in Brazil and returned to Europe in the mid-1950s. In 1955 he directed the film adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti in the Rosenhügel film studios in Vienna . He worked as a traveling director in several European countries in the 1960s and 1970s.

Filmography

France

• 1926 Le Train Sans Yeux
• 1926 Nothing but Time (Rien Que les Heures)
• 1927 Berlin: The symphony of the big city
• 1927 En Rade
• 1927 Yvette
• 1927 La P'tite lily
• 1928 La Jalousie du Barbouille
• 1929 Le Petit Chaperon Rouge
• 1929 Le capitaine Fracasse
• 1929 Vous verrez la semaine prochaine
• 1930 Toute sa vie
• 1930 A Cancao do Berco
• 1930 A Mi-chemin du ciel
• 1930 les Vacance du diable
• 1931 Dans une ile perdue
• 1932 En lisant le journal
• 1932 Le jour du frotteur
• 1932 revue montmartroise
• 1932 Nous ne ferons jamais du cinema
• 1932 Le Truc du bresilien
• 1933 Le Mari Garcon
• 1933 Plaisirs defendus
• 1933 Coralie et Cie
• 1933 Tour de chant

GPO Film Unit

• 1934 Pett and Pott: A Fairy Story of the Suburbs
• 1934 The Glorious Sixth of June: New Rates
• 1935 Coal Face
• 1936 Line to Tcherva Hut
• 1937 We Live in Two Worlds
• 1937 Who Writes to Switzerland?
• 1937 Message to Geneva
• 1937 Four Barriers
• 1938 Alice in Switzerland
• 1939 Men of the Alps
• 1939 A Midsummer Day's Work

Ealing and Great Britain

• 1941 Yellow Caesar
• 1942 Film and Reality
• 1942 Went the Day Well?
• 1943 Watertight
• 1944 Champagne Charlie
• 1945 dream without end
• 1947 The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
• 1947 They Made Me a Fugitive
• 1947 The First Gentleman
• 1949 For Them That Trespass

Brazil and Europe

• 1952 Simao, O Caolho
• 1952 O Canto do Mar
• 1954 Mulher de Verdade
• 1955 Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti
• 1956 The compass rose
• 1958 La prima notte
• 1960 The Monster of Highgate Ponds
• 1967 Thus Spoke Theodore Herzl
• 1969 Les Empailles
• 1970 La Visite de la Vieille Dame
• 1976 Le Voyageur du silence
• 1976 To Homem eo cinema

Web links

• Alberto Cavalcanti in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Alberto Cavalcanti at the British Film Institute
• Our debt to Alberto Cavalcanti