Dream without end
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Dream without end |
| Original title | Dead of Night |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1945 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Alberto Cavalcanti , Charles Crichton , Basil Dearden , Robert Hamer |
| script |
John Baines , Angus MacPhail , TEB Clarke |
| production | Michael Balcon |
| music | Georges Auric |
| camera |
Jack Parker , Stanley Pavey , Douglas Slocombe , H.Julius |
| cut | Charles Hasse |
| occupation | |
| |
Endless dream (original title: Dead of Night ) is a British episode film from 1945 , which is considered a classic of horror films . Basil Dearden directed the frame story and the episode Hearse Driver (hearse driver , after EF Benson ), Robert Hamer in The Haunted Mirror (written by John Baines), Alberto Cavalcanti in The Christmas Party (written by Angus MacPhail) and The Ventriloquist's Dummy (the Ventriloquist dummy, screenplay by John Baines), Charles Crichton in Golfing (based on HG Wells ).
The film was shot at Ealing Studios . It hit UK theaters in September 1945 shortly after the end of World War II and was a huge hit at the time (no horror films were released during the war). It is considered to be one of the most important British films of the genre before the later films of the Hammer Studios .
action
The architect Walter Craig tells several people who seem to be completely strangers to him in a country house ("Pilgrim farm") that he has already dreamed of their meeting. A recurring dream that begins harmlessly, but then turns into a nightmare after a certain event (the breaking of the glasses of the psychiatrist Dr. van Straaten, who takes on the role of the skeptic in the group) , but the end of which he does not remember can.
Each of you have a scary story to tell, and one by one you contribute an episode below. The best known is the ventriloquist episode with Michael Redgrave , in which a ventriloquist doll slowly gains dominion over its master and completely dominates him after he has shot a colleague who he believed was about to steal his doll.
Further episodes deal with the ghost of a murdered little boy at a children's Christmas party, the premonitions of the racing driver Hugh Grainger (as in his dream, the bus driver shares with him with Just room for one inside , whereupon he does not get in and escapes an accident), a golf game a woman, an old mirror, becomes the origin of an almost murderous marital dispute between the Cortlands. The film has a surprising ending that Craig fears as part of his recurring nightmare.
Others
- The golf and Christmas stories have been cut or left out in the US version.
- Thomas Gold and Fred Hoyle were allegedly inspired by the closing end of their " steady state " theory in cosmology.
- The ventriloquist episode was picked up several times, e.g. B. in The Laughing Bomb (1954), in Magic - A Weird Love Story by Richard Attenborough from 1978 (based on the book by William Goldman from 1976, who also wrote the screenplay, with Anthony Hopkins ) and in the TV movie The Dummy (1962) from The Twilight Zone series with Cliff Robertson . The material was already used in The Great Gabbo with Erich von Stroheim from 1928.
- In Golfing , the famous British couple Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne , already known in Alfred Hitchcock's A Lady Vanishes ( The Lady Vanishes , 1938), appear.
Reviews
“Endless Dreams is one of those early British horror films that cleverly plays with primordial human fears and episodically spreads a palette of nightmares that are arranged in such a way that even the real framework turns out to be a dream towards the end. [...] Due to their different directors, the individual stories are qualitatively different. The episodes The Haunted Mirror (Robert Hamer) and The Ventriloquists Dummy (Cavalcanti) have a particularly dark aura. "
Soundtrack
- Georges Auric : Dead of Night. Suite . On: The Film Music of Georges Auric . Chandos, Colchester 1999, record no. CHAN 9774 - digital re-recording of excerpts from the film music by the BBC Philharmonic under the direction of Rumon Gamba .
literature
- William K. Everson : Classics of Horror Movies. (OT: Classics of the Horror Film ). Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10205-7 , u. a. P. 169ff.
- George Perry: Forever Ealing. A Celebration of the Great British Film Studio. Pavilion, London 1985, ISBN 0-907516-60-2 , u. a. Pp. 86-89.
- Charles Barr: Ealing Studios. A movie book. University of California Press, Berkeley 1998, ISBN 0-520-21554-0 , u. a. Pp. 55-68.
Web links
- Dead of Night in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Article at Screenonline. (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Translated: The deepest hours of the night.
- ↑ The great TV feature film film lexicon. Digital library special volume (CD-ROM edition). Directmedia, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89853-036-1 , p. 12614 f.