Alberto Cavalcanti

[HerrSchreck]

Alberto Cavalcanti
(a.k.a "Cavalcanti")
1897-1982

"But it never occurred to them that a film is not, and never can be, the same thing as a play. In order to reach this not very advanced conclusion they would have had to do some theoretical investigation, which as I said above was not their strong point."

"They might have gone back twenty years, for instance, to the first dramatic silent films. If they had taken some of them out of the vaults and run them, they could have saved themselves a great deal of embarrassment. For the same mistake was being made in 1909 as they were proceeding to make over again in 1929. The early silent directors learned by a process of trial and error which lasted for many years, that [the] technique of stage acting is not the same as the technique of film acting. The gestures and attitudes are far too striking. By a long process, a technique of film acting was built up, in which the skillful actor employed restrained gestures, attitudes, and expressions which, magnified and emphasized on the screen, got him the effects he wanted. At the beginning of the sound period, when the actors from the theater poured into the studios, this lesson had to be learned all over again."

(...)

"I now propose to run briefly over this ground we have covered, and see if we cannot reach a further conclusion about the technique of sound. I may as well give my own conclusions. I believe in the first place that suggestion is such a powerful device in presentation that film cannot be fully expressive if it allows itself to become primarily a medium of statement, and I believe that whenever the device of suggestion is required for dramatic or poetic purposes, the line to follow is the exploitation of the sound elements. I also think that we have discovered a clue, in our review of the history of sound in film. And I think this clue can be indicated simply, perhaps too simply, in the cryptic expression "nonsync."

"It seems to me that all the most suggestive sound devices have been nonsync."

(...)

"With noise, we must include silence. Even in the so­called silent days, a clever musical director would sometimes cut the orchestra dead at a big dramatic moment on the screen (producing an effect similar to Handel's general pause just before the end of the "Hallelujah Chorus"). Yet sound film directors do not appear to be aware of the possibilities of the use of silence. One brilliant early example, however, will remain always in my memory. It is in Walter Ruttmann's Melody of the World. He built up a big climax of guns in a war sequence, worked it up to a close­up of a woman emitting a piercing shriek, and cut at once to rows of white crosses­in silence.

In the hands of an artist of Ruttmann's caliber silence can be the loudest of noises, just as black, in a brilliant design, can be the brightest of colors."
(Excerpted from "Sound in Films" by Alberto Cavalcanti)


Filmography

Um Homem e o Cinema (1977)

Visite de la vieille dame, La (1971) (TV)

Empaillés, Les (1969) (TV)

Story of Israel (1967)

Yerma (1962)

The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961)

Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1960)
(aka Herr Puntila and His Servant Matti)

Prima notte, La (1959)
aka Venetian Honeymoon

Die Windrose (1957) (Russian section)
aka Rose of the Winds

Mulher de Verdade (1954)
aka Woman of Truth

Canto do Mar, O (1952)
aka Song of the Sea

Simão o Caolho (1952)
aka Simon the One-Eyed

For Them That Trespass (1949)

The First Gentleman (1948)
aka Affairs of a Rogue (USA)

They Made Me a Fugitive (1947)
aka I Became a Criminal (USA)

Nicholas Nickleby (1947)

Dead of Night (1945)
(segments "Christmas Party" and "Ventriloquist's Dummy, The")

Champagne Charlie (1944)

The Halfway House (1944) (uncredited?)

Waterlight (1943)

Went the Day Well? (1942)
aka 48 Hours (USA)

Alice in Switzerland (1942)

Film and Reality (1942) (omnibus)

Yellow Caesar (1941)

Men of the Alps (1939)

A Midsummer Day's Work (1939)

Four Barriers (1938)

The Line to Tschierva Hut (1937)

We Live in Two Worlds (1937)

Who Writes to Switzerland (1937)

Message from Geneva (1936)

Coal Face (1935)

Pett and Pott: A Fairy Story of the Suburbs (1934)

New Rates (1934)

Coralie et Cie (1933)
aka Coralie and Company

Mari garçon, Le (1933)

Plaisirs défendus (1933)

En lisant le journal (1932)

Jour du frotteur, Le (1932)

Nous ne ferons jamais le cinéma (1932)

Revue montmartroise (1932)
aka Montmartre qui tourne

Tour de chant (1932)

Truc du Brésilien, Le (1932)

À mi-chemin du ciel (1931)
aka Halfway Up the Sky

A Canção do Berço (1931)

Vacances du diable, Les (1931)

Toute sa vie (1930)

Petit chaperon rouge, Le (1930)
aka Little Red Riding Hood (USA)

Dans une île perdue (1930)

Vous verrez la semaine prochaine (1930)

Capitaine Fracasse, Le (1929)
aka Captain Fracasse

Jalousie du barbouillé, La (1929)

En rade (1928)
aka Sea Fever

Yvette (1928)

P'tite Lili, La (1927)

Train sans yeux, Le (1927)
aka Train Without Eyes

Rien que les heures (1926)



Forum Discussion

Odeon DVD Label (comment about this label's release of They Made Me A Fugitive)

Annotated Kino Catalog (Discussion of their release of They Made Me A Fugitive)

Addressing The Nation; The GPO Film Unit (Set containing Cavalcanti's docs for the unit)

Less-Known City Symphonies (discussion of Rien que les hueres, a city symphony in Paris, completed before Ruttmans Berlin)

Anchor Bay Entertainment (discussion of their Dead of Night disc)

Film Noir Suggestions (discussion of They Made Me A Fugitive)



Web Resources

Full reprint of Sound in Films by Alberto Cavalcanti

BFI's "Screen Online" page for Cavalcanti

IMDB page

Filmreference on Cavalcanti

Wonderful survey (in Portugese) of Cavalcanti's life

Notcoming on Capitaine Fracasse

Noir Of The Week on Fugitive

Cairns/Shadowplay on Cavalcanti

Bordwell/Thompson on Cavalcanti



In Print*

By CAVALCANTI: book—


Film and Reality, London, 1942; as Film e realidade, Rio de Janeiro, 1952.

By CAVALCANTI: articles—
"Sound in Films," in Film (London), November 1939.

"Cavalcanti in Brazil," in Sight and Sound (London), April/June 1953.

Interview with J. Hillier and others, in Screen (London), Summer 1972.

Cavalcanti, Alberto, in Filme Cultura (Rio de Janeiro), January-April 1984.



On CAVALCANTI: books—
Klaue, Wolfgang, and others, Cavalcanti, Berlin, 1952.

Hardy, Forsyth, editor, Grierson on Documentary, revised edition, London, 1966.

Lovell, Alan, and Jim Hillier, Studies in Documentary, New York, 1972.

Barsam, Richard, The Non-Fiction Film, New York, 1973.

Rotha, Paul, Documentary Diary, London, 1973.

Sussex, Elizabeth, The Rise and Fall of British Documentary: The Story of the Film Movement Founded by John Grierson, Berkeley, 1975.

Pellizzari, Lorenzo, and Claudio M. Valentinetti, Albert Cavalcanti, Locarno, 1988.

Ellis, Jack C., The Documentary Idea, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1989.



On CAVALCANTI: articles—
De La Roche, Catherine, "Cavalcanti in Brazil," in Sight and Sound (London), January/March 1955.

Monegal, Emir Rodriguez, "Alberto Cavalcanti," in Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television (Berkeley), Summer 1955.

Minish, Geoffrey, "Cavalcanti in Paris," in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1970.

Taylor, J.R., "Surrealist Admen," in Sight and Sound (London), Autumn 1971.

Beylie, Claude, and others, "Alberto Cavalcanti," in Ecran (Paris), November 1974.

Sussex, E., "Cavalcanti in England," in Sight and Sound (London), August 1975.

Zapiola, G., "Medio siglo de cine en la obra del eurobrasileño Alberto Cavalcanti," in Cinemateca Revista (Montevideo), September 1982.

Courcier, J., obituary in Cinéma (Paris), October 1982.

Obituary in Films and Filming (London), November 1982.

Pilard, P., "Cavalcanti à Londres. Quinze ans de cinéma brittanique," in Revue du Cinéma (Paris), November 1983.

Casandey, R., "Alberto Cavalcanti," in Plateau (Brussels), vol. 10, no. 2, 1989.



*"In-Print" reprinted from filmreference.com

[HerrSchreck]

After having seen the stunning Went The Day Well? last night... this on top of already having seen the beautiful Capitaine Fracasse, the indescribably unique (and nearly impossible to see but for a faded backchannel rip) Rien que les hueres, not to mention of course Dead of Night, and the sneering masterpiece They Made Me a Fugitive... I am officially on a Cavalcanti mission. I've yet to see a film of his (and I've only seen a fraction, but his films are notoriously difficult to see) that wasn't extremely impressive.

This overlooked master seems to suffer from the fact of his rootlessness. He left his native Brazil to study architecture in Switzerland... ultimately got a job in Liverpool and began corresponding with Marcel L'Herbier-- and wound up undertaking art direction in the ravishingly stylish L'Inhumaine (in fact, imho aside from the miniature of the mansion, the art direction is the best aspect of the film. I recall saying this before I even knew it was Cavalcanti who executed it). His first film was the utterly sublime Rien que les hueres, a day in the life of Paris set in it's gloomier quarters, yet punctuated with celebratory, artistic conceits, melding images of what appear to be the slums of Menimontant with the paintings of Picasso, Matisse, etc. It is alleged that after this film Cavalcanti worked with Walter Ruttmann on his better known city symphony, Berlin.

He went on to make films throughout Europe but is best known for the films he made-- both documentary and melodrama-- in England. But unlike so many global masters, Cavalcanti has no country to "claim" him for cultural celebration and national self-reference and pride.. say, like Renoir for France, Murnau for Germany, Ford for America, Ozu for Japan, P&P for the UK.

Which brings me to Went The Day Well?. Long considered one of the best British films ever made-- and one of the best films you've never heard of-- I finally got the chance to see the film yesterday.. and was knocked for a total loop. Has anyone, particularly our friends in the UK here, had the chance to see this stunner?

And-- how are his GPO docs?

[Gregory]

Went the Day Well is a chilling and powerful film whose intelligence and complexity really overwhelms its provenance as a wartime propaganda film. It's easily one of the best films in a WWII setting during wartime or since, in my opinion.

Regarding the GPO stuff, one I can speak to is "Mony a Pickle," directed partly by Norman McLaren. I think Cavalcanti was producer. It's a real oddity, mainly showing a house animates itself into a showcase of modern decor as a young Scottish couple discusses all they could do if they had a healthy savings account, accumulated through the power of thrift.
Come to think of it, some of the Len Lye stuff I saw some time ago was probably produced for the GPO. He made his first cameraless film for the unit, using scraps of unusable film. The idea of Len Lye producing cameraless abstract animation as Post Office propaganda may seem a little surprising. Cavalcanti was sympathetic to the avant-garde -- arguably an innovator of it himself -- and even he needed a bit of convincing about this idea, I've read, but Grierson, the head of GPO saw the possibilities. People who are good at propaganda know that it's not enough for the message to be there; the film (or whatever medium) has to grab people's attention and make them want to watch.

[HerrSchreck]

Cavalcanti was sympathetic to the avant-garde -- arguably an innovator of it himself

Not agruably-- definitely. If you've been able to see L'Inhumaine, you'll see it in his set design, and if you've seen Rien que les heures you'll see it in his direction. Rien is pure French Impressionism, aka avant garde.

As late as the end of the 40's you get works like They Made Me A Fugitive where you see the sensibility pop up in more blatant form (vs the moody chiaroscuro of the overall tone of the film, which isn't neccessarily patently Impressionist of course) in Narcy's attack on Sally.. the spinning whirling camera, distorted lenses, etc. It could have come out of Menilmontant. There's also a murder in Went The Day Well that uses a conceit of stepped or removed frames to create a jerky slo mo effect. This film, for some reason, echoed the look and feel of the films of one of the slightly less spacey, but no less beautiful practitioner of Impressionism: Raymond Bernard, and specifically the style he exhibits in his own war film, Wooden Crosses.

[Gregory]

I have not seen L'Inhumaine, but would love to do so. I'm very sympathetic to your claiming Cavalcanti for the avant-garde but I haven't seen enough of his early work to say so myself. By the way, do you plan to add DVD information above?

[Zazou dans le Metro]

Cavalcanti was sympathetic to the avant-garde -- arguably an innovator of it himself

Not agruably-- definitely. If you've been able to see L'Inhumaine, you'll see it in his set design, and if you've seen Rien que les heures you'll see it in his direction. Rien is pure French Impressionism, aka avant garde.

Not least in the realm of sound. One thing that the GPO set does is to re-instate/re-iterate the debt to Cavalcanti's experimental sound design such as in Coal Face Granton Trawler and Song of Ceylon which would of course culminate in Night Mail.

[HerrSchreck]

I have not seen L'Inhumaine, but would love to do so. I'm very sympathetic to your claiming Cavalcanti for the avant-garde but I haven't seen enough of his early work to say so myself. By the way, do you plan to add DVD information above?

I had actually added it, but accidentally hit the PAGE BACK arrow and lost (luckily only) that wave of additions to the thread post I was building. It was so much stuff, that took so long (bouncing between regions, trying to figure out which of his GPO short films were in which sets.. there's a few of them, not just ADDRESSING THE NATION), and I'm a bit tired today from little sleep. So I just let it go for the day.

L'Inhumaine is unfortunately not 'officially' available at present.

Unofficially, however........

[Sloper]

A post in haste- I love the quotes you’ve put up here, Schreck. Indeed, for an illustration of what silence can do in a sound film you need look no further than the notorious pepper in the face/axe murder/bayonetting scene in Went the Day Well, which as I recall is virtually silent, and all the more chilling for that.

A really wonderful film, the best example of WW2 propaganda filmmaking, to my knowledge. It scares the hell out of me, so what it must have done to the staid middle class audience of its day I can’t even begin to imagine.

Incidentally, for a similar piece of uniquely British war-prop ‘Too Many Nazis’ cinema, take a look at Asquith’s Cottage To Let, packed with deranged performances from the likes of Leslie Banks, Alastair Sim and John Mills (who was never worse, a real unintended joy of a performance).

[zedz]

A great addition to our informal canon, Schreck. Cavalcanti must have had one of the most fascinating careers in movies, and he's extremely important as a catalyst as well as a filmmaker in his own right - what a sweep of influence! He's even respectfully acknowledged as a forefather by the wild and crazy Cinema Novo folk. (I just wish I could see more of his films!)

[Gropius]

And-- how are his GPO docs?

Cavalcanti's Coal Face, a sort of industrial cine-poem, is arguably a contender for the best of the GPO productions, and there were many of them.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

A better late than never introduction to the recent BFI Cavalcanti mini season by Geoff Brown, doing a very good impersonation of an Alan Bennett scripted vicar en passant. http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/394" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I unfortunately missed the early shorts but managed to get to 'They made me a fugitive' which has been rightly praised in this and the noir thread with Shreck and others already having alluded to the french poetic realist influences (Trevor Howard taking the Gabinesque fugitive role) . A quick note should be made for Gaillard's score here too with its strong echoes of Kosma.
There are also heavy doses of 'Greeneland' and Lang , not least in the poster image in the funeral parlour which whistles you straight back to the grieving mothers of 'M'. But for me what made this particular cocktail most intoxicating was the script by Noel Langley. For all its archness, mixing screen cockney-isms - 'Have a cuppa ducks, that's the ticket' with a flowery prose that wouldn't go amiss in Sweet Smell of Success - Gang leader , 'Narcissus' no less, berating a recalcitrant underling who refuses to bear arms with.."Don't be so reactionary this is the century of the common man."
Narcy, a sneering effete proto-Peter Mandelson, all swirling paisley and colliding checks might also contend for an early incarnation of Harry Flowers in 'Performance' (without the Kray twins make-over) as well as the film itself sharing the latter's hallucinatory setting of man on the lam.
Its cut glass accented gangster's molls, stiff upper clit chorus girls and mordant humour (black market cigarettes smuggled in coffins) might make for a camp hoot but there is also a motherlode of cinematic edge and a wonderful portrait of a pallid post war Britain dissolute and dissipated by corruption.
I would heartily welcome a BFI restored print version with all the trimmings if it's on the cards along with Cavalcanti's other output , but it looks like it might have to be a case of pick'n'mix with the GPO sets from BFI , and Odeon and the Ealing sets for the rest.
What's needed next is a mop up of the french 20's/30's stuff other than Rien on the Kino set.

[HerrSchreck]

Speaking of this film and the BFI, has anyone had a look at their edition? I seem to remember that Kino's disc, which is interlaced and has some artifacting going on (overall suitably watchable I guess but still the film needs a primo release), is prefaced by a British Film Library (or something similar) logo... though definitely not the BFI... just curious if the BFI were supplied with the same beta or created a completely new transfer? Can anyone speak to the quality?

The film really is among my top five noirs of all time. Right up there w Brute Force, TMen, Black Book, etc. Too good to be believed!

[tojoed]

I can't speak to the quality of that disc because I haven't seen it. But Odeon often release PD films and very little of their stuff is any good (quality of transfer not film).

[Jonathan S]

I seem to remember that Kino's disc, which is interlaced and has some artifacting going on (overall suitably watchable I guess but still the film needs a primo release), is prefaced by a British Film Library (or something similar) logo... though definitely not the BFI...

It is actually the (British) National Film Archive's old logo. I haven't seen the Odeon disc but it wouldn't surprise me if they used the same basic transfer. Their Scarlet Street was from the same Library of Congress source as Kino but progressively encoded and they released the UCLA restoration of Man on the Eiffel Tower, which Kino scheduled but cancelled at the request of UCLA.

Maybe I've been lucky with Odeon but I've been quite impressed by several of their titles for such a small label. They are not for people who like their movies digitally scrubbed of natural film artifacts - many of their releases are obviously from old TV masters but even that puts them above PD outfits. Their Tod Slaughter titles for example are far superior to the transfers I've seen from other sources and The Face at the Window is photographically superb, much better than the old UK TV print - it feels like watching a silvery nitrate original at times.

[Jonathan S]

Narcy, a sneering effete proto-Peter Mandelson, all swirling paisley and colliding checks might also contend for an early incarnation of Harry Flowers in 'Performance' (without the Kray twins make-over)

Maybe this is common knowledge now, but I was surprised to read recently that Cavalcanti was gay. More than one writer had previously remarked on the homoerotic imagery in his GPO documentary Coal Face without mentioning this. Another major GPO filmmaker Basil Wright was also gay, as of course were Britten and Auden, so at least some of the GPO Unit were united by more than the left-wing ideals and radical aesthetics usually discussed.

With this knowledge, the gay readings of Cavalcanti's famous ventriloquist's dummy episode in Dead of Night seem more persuasive too (the casting of bisexual Michael Redgrave strengthens this of course) and I'm now wondering if Went the Day Well? has a gay subtext with its village squire who lives two very different lives. And what fun Cavalcanti must have had in Champagne Charlie with the music hall pastiche "Come on, Algernon" commissioned from the gay eccentric Lord Berners with its lyrics about "brandy balls" and a "whopping... tip-top stick of Brighton rock"!

[HerrSchreck]

Their Tod Slaughter titles for example are far superior to the transfers I've seen from other sources and The Face at the Window is photographically superb, much better than the old UK TV print - it feels like watching a silvery nitrate original at times.

Ah, the Face At The Window... by far my favorite Slaughter title. I'm not surprised there's a great dvd out there, as I was turned on to the film via an ancient oop Kino VHS , and the video quality was pretty decent, considering the pedigree and the low rent status of many of those old Kino VHS's... they scrubbed nothing: what they got was what you got.

A genuinely eerie film, with one of the most poetic titles in vintage horror. Sure there are some bad fake beards and sideburns, but that just adds to the charm. The makeup for the "face" is worthy of Jack Pierce! That little bit of drool in the appearance by the banker's living room window-- brilliant!

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Speaking of this film and the BFI, has anyone had a look at their edition? I seem to remember that Kino's disc, which is interlaced and has some artifacting going on (overall suitably watchable I guess but still the film needs a primo release)

Just got in the Odeon release and it is definitely pre BFI resto. The print I saw recently sported the BFI logo at the beginning. The Odeon transfer looks like 16mm/vhs quality with plenty of good old tele-cine weave for good measure. It is however serviceable enough and at a pretty reasonable price so will do until the BFI Cavlacanti hamper gets the green light.

[zedz]

Which brings me to Went The Day Well?. Long considered one of the best British films ever made-- and one of the best films you've never heard of-- I finally got the chance to see the film yesterday.. and was knocked for a total loop. Has anyone, particularly our friends in the UK here, had the chance to see this stunner?

Couple of years late, Schreck, I know, but I finally saw this on the weekend and was indeed, knocked for a symmetrical loop.

I knew the premise, but was very surprised to see the 'secret' of the plot 'spoiled' in the opening narration. But that hardly impacts seriously on the film's suspense and surprise, which Cavalcanti orchestrates in a completely different way.

In fact, that opening reveal gives Cavalcanti the license to utterly subvert contemporary filmmaking norms, particularly in terms of on-screen brutality and the treatment of protagonists. Thus the audience's narrative involvement bypasses the expected mystery-solving of "what's going on here?" and goes straight to "how are they going to overcome it?" and "who's going to survive?" - something that is almost always a foregone conclusion in films of the period.

The setpieces are on a modest scale - perfectly in keeping with the film's setting and all the more effective and powerful for being in proportion or, more precisely, for being so precisely just out of proportion, the kind of actions which are all the more monstrous for being out of place without being overblown or unbelievable.

Cavalcanti has a great eye for character detail that allows him to create believable and memorable vignettes in minimal screen time without blowing the characters up into types. In some respects this is an ideal partner to A Canterbury Tale, though it inevitably gets much darker quite quickly.

The framing device seems to be primarily strategic: it's hard to imagine Cavalcanti being able to get away with half of what he does in the film without it. But it's also really quite remarkable in the way it projects the narrative and the audience simultaneously into the future and into the past. I can only imagine how this subjunctive approach must have played for audiences at the time, as the film threatens appalling future terrors, but from a removed vantage point which reassures them that they'll ultimately win the war. This seems to me a rather brilliant propagandistic approach, as the narrative that unfolds continually undercuts any potential complacency with its repeated motif of ingenuity and courage frustrated by indifference and pettiness.

Simply a great film. Now I intend to enjoy a couple of other unseen Cavalcantis in my big Ealing set.

[Roger Ryan]

Rialto Pictures intends to debut the restored 35mm print of WENT THE DAY WELL? in the U.S. during next year's TURNER MOVIE CLASSICS festival in L.A.

http://www.tcm.com/festival/uploads/pdf ... elease.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tojoed]

Went The Day Well is being released on Blu-Ray from Optimum (UK) in July.

[MichaelB]

Sorry, I've only just come to this thread, otherwise I'd have made this contribution a good couple of years ago!

Anyway, as mentioned above, the BFI's three GPO volumes contain tons of Cavalcanti - unsurprisingly, as he ran the Unit after John Grierson departed, and he made numerous significant contributions even to titles that he didn't personally direct.

So here's a list of his GPO work, in chronological order. Where Cavalcanti wasn't the director, I've added his roles in square brackets. Note that these contributions were often uncredited, which is why it's probably not definitive - though quite a few historians have been trawling through internal GPO Film Unit records, so it should be pretty comprehensive.

Granton Trawler (d. John Grierson, 1934) [sound]
Pett and Pott: A Fairy Story of the Suburbs (d. Cavalcanti, 1934) [also screenplay, sound, editor, actor]
Song of Ceylon (d. Basil Wright, 1934) [sound]
The Glorious Sixth of June (d. Cavalcanti, 1934)
Coal Face (d. Cavalcanti, 1935) [also script]
The King's Stamp (d. William Coldstream, 1935) [producer]
BBC - The Voice of Britain (d. Stuart Legg, 1935) [producer]

All the above are included on the BFI's Addressing the Nation.

*The Saving of Bill Blewitt (d. Harry Watt, 1936) [producer]
*Night Mail (d. Basil Wright/Harry Watt, 1936) [sound direction]
*Rainbow Dance (d. Len Lye, 1936) [producer]
Message From Geneva (d. Cavalcanti, 1936)
Line to the Tschierva Hut (d. Cavalcanti, 1937)
Men of the Alps (d. Cavalcanti, 1937)
Who Writes to Switzerland? (d. Cavalcanti, 1937)
*Big Money (d. Harry Watt, 1937) [producer]
*We Live in Two Worlds (d. Cavalcanti, 1937)
Four Barriers (d. Cavalcanti, 1937)
Daily Round (d. Richard Massingham, 1937) [producer]
*Book Bargain (d. Norman McLaren, 1937) [producer]
North of the Border (d. Maurice Harvey, 1937) [producer]
*Mony a Pickle (d. Cavalcanti, Richard Massingham, Norman McLaren) [also producer]
Happy in the Morning: A Film Fantasy (d. Cavalcanti, 1938) [also producer, script]
*North Sea (d. Harry Watt, 1938) [producer]
Speaking from America (d. Humphrey Jennings, 1938) [producer]
*Love on the Wing (d. Norman McLaren, 1938) [producer]
*N or NW (d. Len Lye, 1938) [supervisor]

Titles in the above list that are marked with an asterisk are included on the BFI's We Live in Two Worlds.

*A Midsummer Day's Work (d. Cavalcanti, 1939)
At the Third Stroke (d. Richard Massingham, 1939) [producer]
*Spare Time (d. Humphrey Jennings, 1939) [producer]
Men in Danger (d. Pat Jackson, 1939) [producer]
Health for the Nation (d. John Monck, 1939) [producer]
The Chiltern Country (d. Cavalcanti, 1939)
*The City: A Film Talk by Sir Charles Bressey (d. Ralph Elton, 1939) [producer]
*The First Days (d. Humphrey Jennings, Harry Watt, Pat Jackson, 1939) [producer]
Forty Million People (d. John Monck, 1940) [producer]
*Spring Offensive (d. Humphrey Jennings, 1940) [producer]
*La Cause Commune (d. Cavalcanti, 1940)
Factory Front (d. Cavalcanti, Ralph Elton, 1940)
*French Communiqué (d. Cavalcanti, 1940)
*Men of the Lightship (d. David MacDonald, 1940) [producer]
*Squadron 992 (d. Harry Watt, 1940) [producer]

Titles in the above list that are marked with an asterisk are included on the BFI's If War Should Come.

In 1940, Cavalcanti moved to Ealing, where he made propaganda films in a very similar vein before being bumped up to features. I've seen some of them, and they're broadly similar to his GPO work, but I don't think anyone has had the nous to compile them on DVD yet. Optimum would be the rightsholder.

[tojoed]

Studio Canal are releasing Nicholas Nickleby on DVD in the UK in May.
Extras are:

Interviews: Sally Ann Howes.
BFI retrospective with curator Michael Eton, Restoration comparison.

[knives]

May's going to be jam packed with must buys.

[MichaelB]

Just to update the GPO list that I posted above, the BFI's first Humphrey Jennings collection includes Speaking from America.

[HerrSchreck]

Thanks for.that great GPO list above Mike.. just as it took you a year or so to find this thread it took me a year or so on your post! Great work.. AC.was a fabulous and all-around talent, and your list certainly helps deepen that understanding.