A Korean War veteran returns to Washington D.C. only to discover his business partner had died and their public-research business sold, so he works there undercover to find out the truth.
Die Angstmacher, Fabricantes do Medo, La piovra nera, La Cible Parfaite, Los intimidadores, 더 피어메이커스, Els fabricants de por, 谍海擒凶记
USANR
USA
Tourneur's most postmodern work - a world where navigating through politics is no different than navigating through an ocean of advertisements. Possibly the single most claustrophobic film ever made - never have I seen the Academy ratio used so effectively in closed spaces. Everything here - the cheesy music, the cheap sets - never has banality been so terrifying. There is no freedom and politics no longer have meaning - every cog and wheel is well in motion. Andrews is suffering from intense PTSD - and he comes off as the most sane person in America!
It's probably the most overtly conceptual and political film JT ever made, but he doesn't take any sides - everyone has a ploy, everyone…
Jacques Tourneur: "Lobbying groups and dark money are taking over our political system. Powerful, shadowy forces are seeking to influence politicians directly, bypassing public opinion. It's no longer 'one man, one vote' in a system where money talks."
Me: "Yeah! Right on!"
Jacques Tourneur: "And that's why we gotta root the Commies outta D.C."
Me: "Wait a minute..."
(Actually this was apparently a bit of hackwork that Tourneur took on as a favour to Dana Andrews. After a strong start, I was zoning out a fair bit. Don't go looking for much of that trademark Tourneur mise-en-scène here.)
Em 1983 David Cronenberg fez Videodrome. Grande feito, grande filme, um de seus melhores. Um filme paradigmático, um filme que cristaliza a imagem de uma época e o faz transfigurando todas as outras hipóteses de imagens, textos e ideias que outros artistas e pensadores intuíram para a época em questão, um filme que deixa perplexo, mas de modo algum um filme profético, um filme à frente do seu tempo - o que, por sinal, não é nenhum defeito, apenas é preciso deixar claro o que cada coisa é em relação ao que todas as coisas são.
Em 1958 Jacques Tourneur fez The Fearmakers, que pode ser visto muito grosseiramente como o filme que Cronenberg quis fazer quando fez Videodrome. Há…
Truly cracking. So exceptionally relevant with its ideas. Possibly Tourneur's most brilliant picture.
The rare early Cold War era political thriller which hasn’t lost a single ounce of its timeliness, in fact it only seems to gain more in this day and age where statistical inference and machine learning/processing has become almost an ideology in itself. The Fearmakers really strikes at the heart of modern liberal politics, though, because it identifies how the manipulation of this data is essential to power and its acquisition—one of the first to do so—effecting the basis for all paranoiac notions surrounding our institutions and the people chosen to maintain them. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any of Tourneur’s non-Lewton work and I’m pleasantly surprised to see how he excels here around the edges of the…
“The puppet may look harmless, but how large will it grow? And who’s pulling the strings?”
Just wanted something light tonight, instead I got a heady piece from Jacques Tourneurs, totally devoid of style but loaded with substance. Dana Andrew’s is a vet suffering from ptsd returning to civilian life. He finds out that his partner at the PR/ Public Opinion firm he founded not only died, but sold the business to an unscrupulous traitor who’s now using the firm to sway public opinion to get select public officials elected to advance his group’s political agenda. Great script that easily reflects today’s right wing populist garbage tactics.
“I can see what your phony front groups are manufacturing. You’re manufacturing fear in order to sell your peace at any price.”
Dana Andrews plays a Korean War POW who returns after years of torture and brainwashing to his marketing research business to find that his partner has been killed in a hit & run accident and the business sold out from under him. He reluctantly joins the staff only to discover a conspiracy of corruption in political polling that has wide-reaching implications in Washington D.C. The story is a fascinating one with parallels to today's ethically-challenged times, though it often seems naive in comparison, which only goes to show how far down we've allowed things to go despite the warnings of films like this one. The conspiracy in this film is like kindergarten stuff in today's politically corrupt climate. But the standards…
The banality of terror/the sheer terror of banality. A film about the people who create ideas, and because it is a Tourneur film the only ideas are how to manipulate. The claustrophobia of all these manipulative character relations overtake the claustrophobia of all the closed spaces in this film. Paranoia and bitterness dominate the damaged psyche of Dana Andrews' returning POW/Buisnessman. In fact, almost everyone in this movie is a buisnessman. So it's no wonder there is so much talk of "public opinion." Because for them, public opinion only exists so it can be controlled. No nightmares or superstition here, because reality itself is a nightmare: quintessentially Tourneur, we have absolutely no control. The monsters in our dreams have nothing on the ones which lurk in our waking moments.
"I sometimes wonder if that French architect ever realized that in laying out the design of Washington, with its circular streets and radiating avenues, he designed the perfect target."
Who knows what to make of this, which seems at first like it's going to be a juicily subversive Cold War thriller in the tradition of The Manchurian Candidate a few years later. But where that movie's edge is still sharp enough to cut through dense American flag caviar after more than 50 years, this one is bogged down in a lot of vague machinations involving political polling and public relations - imagine, if you will, that the plot of The Manchurian Candidate didn't focus on mind-control and assassination but instead…
Unbelievable how relevant this feels to contemporary American politics: Dana Andrews returns from the Korean War to find his old business partner dead and his public relations firm commandeered out from under him, repositioned in the realm of politics where it now produces and distributes manipulative and misleading political polls, allowing lobbyists to use manufactured statistics to shape the political landscape to their will. His company has literally turned into a Fake News Machine
The one thing the movie gets wrong is its implication that it's only communist infiltrators who would be this corrupt; in reality, this is just how the system works, regardless of political ideology
Part 1 of My Mini Dana Andrews Marathon Because I Watched Laura Again And Damn He's Good In That Movie
”Taking public opinion is useful; making public opinion is dangerous.”
I’m predisposed to like a Dana Andrews film, and this one is directed by Jacques Tourneur which means my interest is doubly piqued. Sure, it’s no Night of the Demon (released just a year earlier) but it’s nonetheless a very effective Buchan-esque conspiracy thriller that kept my full attention.
Tourneur ratches up the tension nicely, despite working with a fairly unsophisticated screenplay (rudimentary plotting, mainly) that nevertheless depicts a world of barely controlled lobbying power – which means it’s as relevant now as it’s ever been.
This is Andrews during his career wane. He’s clearly a little worse for wear, which is sad to see and the age gap between…
This film kind of reeks of hysteria over the threat of communist subversion. It opens with Chinese soldiers beating their American POWs, one of whom is Dana Andrews. The harsh treatment implies an alien type of brainwashing that required deprogramming of the communism that may have infiltrated their brains followed by a reprogramming of wholesome American anti-communist ideology. Then it goes off into the threat of communist ideology spreading over America after American fellow travelers, who somehow know of Andrews and try to lead him into their web, take control of a Washington D.C. public relations firm in order to form American public opinion that is more sympathetic to unilateral nuclear disarmament which I guess would let the Russians and…
