Until the last hour (film)

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Movie
German title Until the last hour
Original title Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1948
length 79 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Norman Foster
script Leonardo Bercovici
Walter Bernstein
production Richard Vernon for Universal Pictures
music Miklós Rózsa
camera Russell Metty
cut Milton Carruth
occupation

Up to the Last Hour (OT: Kiss the Blood Off My Hands ) is an American film noir with Joan Fontaine and Burt Lancaster directed by Norman Foster from 1948.

action

Canadian veteran Bill Saunders is mentally unstable after spending two years in prison and is prone to uncontrolled outbreaks of violence. He is stranded in London and keeps afloat with the occasional rip-off. A man kills his negligence in a pub argument. Bill escapes undetected. The black market dealer Harry Carter, however, observed the crime. During his escape, Bill climbs through an open window and ends up in Jane Wharton's bedroom. Jane, a lonely nurse, decides to help Bill. They spend a day at the zoo and on the racetrack, but then there is another outbreak of violence against Bill and he beats a police officer. Bill is sent to prison for six months, where he is mentally and physically abused. After his release, Harry Carter tries to blackmail him with the knowledge of what was going on in the pub. Jane goes out of her way to persuade Bill to remain honest and decent. Later that night, Harry ambushes Jane to rape her. In her panic, she pokes Harry in the back with a pair of scissors. Believing to have killed her attacker, Jane flees to Bill, who finds out that Nick is still alive. He brings Nick back to his apartment, where he dies. Bill tries to persuade Jane to flee the country, but Jane convinces him that the only future for the two of them will be if they face their deeds and take responsibility for them. They go to the police together.

background

Norman Foster was an actor with Warner Brothers and later RKO in the early 1930s . He appeared as Leading Man alongside Loretta Young in Weekend Marriage and Ginger Rogers in Rafter Romance . After his divorce from Claudette Colbert in 1935, Foster moved increasingly behind the camera and concentrated on his work as a director.

For Joan Fontaine , appearing as a lonely nurse who kills in self-defense to avoid rape was a departure from her usual roles as a lady of society in costume films. In the same year returned Fontaine back to the kind of roles they had made famous when it next to Bing Crosby in Billy Wilder I kiss your hand Madame an Austrian countess at the court of Emperor Franz Joseph I played.

Reviews

The New York Times took a liking to the sometimes brutal events:

"Norman Foster staged 'Until the Last Hour' with great appreciation for the emotional background of the story, and he treated the scenes of violence with impressive sharpness."

The lexicon of international films is of the opinion that the film is “only interesting because of the atmospheric description.” “[I] n its socially critical tendency”, on the other hand, the production is “too unclearly formulated”.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Until the last hour. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 24, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ^ TMP: Lancaster Fights the World Again . In: The New York Times . October 30, 1948 (English, online at nytimes.com [accessed on January 24, 2019]): "Norman Foster has directed" Kiss the Blood Off My Hands "with keen appreciation for the story's emotional content and he has handled the scenes of violence with striking sharpness. "