Background
Alberto Cavalcanti was born on 6 February 1897 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
director producer screenwriter
Alberto Cavalcanti was born on 6 February 1897 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The British documentary movement of the 1930s all too often treated realism as if it were dogma; to work in documentary was a vouchsafe of good faith. But within years of his work for the Crown Film Unit, Cavalcanti showed every sign of interest in the polished mysteries of Dead of Night. Even there, his invocation of the supernatural is more obtrusive but less disturbing than Robert Hamers. Dead of Night is the best-known example of Cavalcanti's work and it suggests a proficient but shallow craftsman. To prove or disprove that theory requires a chance to see much more of his work than is generally available.
He was an architecture student, who went from interior design to set decoration for Marcel L’Herbier on LTnhuniaine (24) and Feu Mathias Pascal (24). By 1926, he was making Rien Que les Heures, a symphonie but rather nostalgie study of the Parisian poor. To call it realistic is only to expose the standards of 1926; but undoubtedly the film influenced Walter Ruttmann as well as the British. Cavalcanti worked in France until 1934, directing Renoir in two films and writing Tire au Flanc (28). In 1934, he came to Britain and worked for the GPO Film Unit. Sound recordist on Night Mail (36, Basil Wright and Harry Watt), he produced Big Money (36, Pat Jackson and Watt); The Savings of Bill Blewett (37, Watt); The First Days (39, Humphrey Jennings); Speaking from America (39, Jennings); Squadron 992 (39, Watt); Spare Time (39, Jennings); and Spring Offensive (40, Jennings).
He joined the Crown Film Unit and produced The Big Blockade (41, Charles Freud); The Foreman Went to France (42. Trend); and Find. Fix and Strike (42, Compton Bennett). He then went to Ealing and produced Halfway House (44, Basil Dearden).
His own films at Ealing include Henry Kendall in Champagne Charlie, Michael Redgrave’s highly strung ventriloquist in Dead of Night, and Trevor Howard in They Made Me a Fugitive. In 1949, he went to Brazil and to an executive position, only to be dismissed after American complaints that he was a Communist. He worked with Brecht on Herr Puntila and with Joins Ivens on Die Vind Rose, before splitting bis time between directing for the theatre, teaching in America, and working for French TV.
The very scattering of his work makes him a difficult man to assess. But it seems clear that there is always something artificial about his naturalism, a taste for cinema that is more experimental than expressive. Grierson acclaimed Cavalcanti as one of the founders of realism, but it was Grierson who enthused over the “creative” treatment of actuality and who often dignified it with the attention of renowned and deliberate artists from other fields.