Alberto Cavalcanti

Biography: life and films

In a career that spanned half a century, the Brazilian born filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti directed over sixty films that show a remarkable diversity of styles and themes and, implausibly, include several groundbreaking documentaries and a classic Ealing comedy. Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 6th February 1897. The son of a mathematician, he evinced a keen intellect from an early age and began studying law at university from the age of 15. After being expelled, he went off to Geneva to study architecture, and then moved to Paris to find work as an interior designer. In the early 1920s, he came into contact with the film director Marcel L'Herbier, one of the leading lights of the Parisian Avant-Garde, who hired him as a set designer on his films, L'Inhumaine (1924) and Feu Mathias Pascal (1926).

Cavalcanti began directing his own films in 1926, starting with Rien que les heures. An early example of the 'city symphony', this documentary dedicated to the spirit of Paris inspired similar films of other cities, including Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (1927) and Jean Vigo's À propos de Nice (1930). Having acquired French nationality, Cavalcanti began working for Paramount's French studios, but left in 1933 to work in England at the GPO Film Unit, under John Grierson. He spent the next seven years here, working on several film documentaries, most notably Coal Face (1935) and Night Mail (1936). In 1940, he joined Ealing Studios, working for Michael Balcon on several of the company's prestige productions. These included the wartime propaganda film Went the Day Well? (1942), the musical comedy Champagne Charlie (1944) and the literary adaptation Nicholas Nickleby (1947). He also contributed to Dead of Night (1945), an early example of the anthology horror film, a genre that would become immensely popular two decades later.

In the late 1940s, Alberto Cavalcanti returned to Brazil to become head of production at the Companhia Cinematografica Vera Cruz, with the intention of helping to revitalise the country's ailing film industry. He directed a number of interesting films over this period - O Canto do mar (1953) and Mulher de Verdade (1954) - but he headed back to Europe after he was blacklisted for being a communist. For the rest of his career, Cavalcanti refused to settle and instead made films in several countries, including Germany, France, England and Israel. In East Germany, he directed Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1956), based on a play by Bertolt Brecht; in England he made The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961); in Israel he helmed Thus Spoke Theodore Herzl (1967). He ended his career in Brazil with the documentary Um homem e o cinema (1977). He died in Paris, France, on 23rd August 1982, aged 85.

Filmography