Robert Hamer
Birth : 1911-03-31, Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England, UK
Death : 1963-12-04
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Robert James Hamer (31 March 1911, Kidderminster, Worcestershire – 4 December 1963, London) was a British film director and screenwriter. He was the son of the actor Gerald Hamer (1886-1972).
Hamer was won a scholarship to Cambridge University but was sent down (expelled) from Cambridge, and began his career in 1934 as a cutting room assistant and from 1935 worked as a film editor involved with such films as Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939) co-produced by Charles Laughton. At the end of the 1930s, he worked on documentaries for the GPO Film Unit.
When his boss at the GPO Alberto Cavalcanti moved to Ealing Studios, Hamer was invited to join him there. He gained some experience as a director by substituting for colleagues and contributed the 'haunted mirror' sequence to Dead of Night (1945). He followed this with the three Ealing films under his own name for which he is best remembered: Pink String and Sealing Wax (1946), It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), both featuring Googie Withers, and the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), with Dennis Price and Alec Guinness.
Hamer died of pneumonia at the age of 52 at St Thomas's Hospital in London. An alcoholic, who was homosexual in an era when it was taboo in the UK, Hamer's career "now looks like the most serious miscarriage of talent in the postwar British cinema", according to film critic David Thomson.
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Writer
An English professor decides that there are too many useless people in the world and invents a gas that will kill them off. But first they'll at least have a good laugh.
Director
Hapless Henry Palfrey is patronised by his self-important chief clerk at work, ignored by restaurant waiters, conned by shady second-hand car salesmen, and, worst of all, endlessly wrong-footed by unspeakably rotten cad Raymond Delauney who has set his cap at April, new love of Palfrey's life. In desperation Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship to learn how to best such bounders and win the girl.
Screenplay
An Englishman in France unwittingly is placed into the identity, and steps into the vacated life, of a look-alike French nobleman.
Director
An Englishman in France unwittingly is placed into the identity, and steps into the vacated life, of a look-alike French nobleman.
Director
A father and son go to Paris to help each other find love.
Screenplay
Works of art are disappearing, stolen by a master thief, a master of disguise. Father Brown has two goals: to catch the thief and to save his soul.
Director
Works of art are disappearing, stolen by a master thief, a master of disguise. Father Brown has two goals: to catch the thief and to save his soul.
Screenplay
An innocent man is released from prison after 12 years and tracks down the witnesses who lied about him in court.
Director
An innocent man is released from prison after 12 years and tracks down the witnesses who lied about him in court.
Screenplay
A trade union official becomes governor of a British island colony
Director
A trade union official becomes governor of a British island colony
Director
"The Spider and the Fly is set in Paris during the cloud-cuckoo days before WW I. The storyline intertwines the destinies of three people. Guy Rolfe plays Phillipe de Ledocq, a resourceful safecracker who always manages to elude arrest. Eric Portman is cast as police-chief Maubert, who will not rest until Ledocq is behind bars. And Nadia Gray is Madeleine, the woman beloved by both Ledocq and Maubert. Just as Maubert has managed to capture his man, Ledocq is released at the behest of the government, who wants him to steal secrets from the German embassy revealing the whereabouts of the Kaiser's secret agents. And just how does Madeleine figure into all of this? Spider and the Fly is a diverting precursor to the 1960s TV series It Takes a Thief." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Screenplay
When his mother eloped with an Italian opera singer, Louis Mazzini was cut off from her aristocratic family. After the family refuses to let her be buried in the family mausoleum, Louis avenges his mother's death by attempting to murder every family member who stands between himself and the family fortune. But when he finds himself torn between his longtime love and the widow of one of his victims, his plans go awry.
Director
When his mother eloped with an Italian opera singer, Louis Mazzini was cut off from her aristocratic family. After the family refuses to let her be buried in the family mausoleum, Louis avenges his mother's death by attempting to murder every family member who stands between himself and the family fortune. But when he finds himself torn between his longtime love and the widow of one of his victims, his plans go awry.
Writer
During a rainy Sunday afternoon, an escaped prisoner tries to hide out at the home of his ex-fiance.
Director
During a rainy Sunday afternoon, an escaped prisoner tries to hide out at the home of his ex-fiance.
Additional Writing
Melodrama set in Victorian Brighton. Scheming pub landlady uses the timorous son of a domineering pharmacist to assist in the poisoning of her drunkard husband. (The title is from the way pharmacists used to wrap parcels containing poison).
Director
Melodrama set in Victorian Brighton. Scheming pub landlady uses the timorous son of a domineering pharmacist to assist in the poisoning of her drunkard husband. (The title is from the way pharmacists used to wrap parcels containing poison).
Director
Architect Walter Craig, seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales.
Writer
British drama documentary from 1943, based on the true story of the 1940 rescue of the tanker MV San Demetrio by parts of her own crew after she had been set afire in the middle of the Atlantic by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer and then had been abandoned. When one of the lifeboats drifted back to the burning tanker the day after, and found that she still hadn't exploded, they decided to board her and put out the fires. Eventually, they managed to start the engine again and decided to try to reach Britain against all odds.
Producer
British drama documentary from 1943, based on the true story of the 1940 rescue of the tanker MV San Demetrio by parts of her own crew after she had been set afire in the middle of the Atlantic by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer and then had been abandoned. When one of the lifeboats drifted back to the burning tanker the day after, and found that she still hadn't exploded, they decided to board her and put out the fires. Eventually, they managed to start the engine again and decided to try to reach Britain against all odds.
Editor
Based on the true story of Melbourne Johns, an aircraft factory foreman sent to France to prevent the Nazis getting hold of some vital equipment.
Editor
Before the war, a Fleet Air Arm pilot is dismissed for causing the death of a colleague. Working for a small Greek airline when the Germans invade Greece, he gets a chance to redeem himself and rejoin his old unit on a British carrier. This is regarded the last of the conventional, rather stiff 1930's style Ealing war films, to be succeeded by much more realism and better storytelling.
Editor
George Pearson, an employee at an underwear factory, is caught between his modern wife and his meddling mother. After buying a special yarn and getting his wife to promote it, he has an argument with his boss, Mr Dawson who insults Pearson's wife and refuses to apologise. Pearson then resigns. After finding out that the yarn is actually worth a fair amount, Mr Dawson tries to buy it from Pearson but he has some competition.
Editor
Part of BFI collection "If War Should Come."
Editor
In coastal Cornwall, England, during the early 19th Century, a young woman who's come there to visit her aunt, discovers that she's married an inkeeper who's a member of a gang of criminals who arrange shipwrecking and murder for profit.
Editor
On the sidewalks of the London theater district the buskers (street performers) earn enough coins for a cheap room. Charles, who recites dramatic monologues, sees that a young pickpocket, Libby, also has a talent for dancing and adds her to his act. Harley, the theater patron who never knew Libby took his gold cigarette case, is impressed by Libby's dancing and invites her to bring Charles and the other buskers in his group to an after-the-play party. Libby comes alone. A theatrical career is launched.
