After investigation, director Alexander Mackendrick was born in the 1910s, and he faded out of the film industry shortly after this film in his prime. I think this has to be blamed on the film's poor box office. Brilliant lines and acting, a beautiful and innocent heroine, top-notch photography (by James Wong Howe) can't save it.
A director who can't win at the box office means no one is willing to throw money at him. All his ideas, no matter how talented, can only be ideas. I am reminded of a joke Victor Sjostrom told others. He said that he went to visit Mauritz Stiller on the sickbed, and the latter didn't say much after sitting for a while. When it was time for him to leave, Stiller suddenly took his hand and said, "I'm thinking of a A great film about the fate of the entire human race. Sjostrom said, you rest now, and tell me tomorrow. But after he left, Stiller quickly fell into a state of unconsciousness. Stiller died of infectious pleurisy in Stockholm on November 18, 1928.
A few years ago, Hollywood invited two of Sweden's greatest directors to the United States with open arms. Stiller insists on taking the fledgling girl Greta Garbo. Who would have thought that Garbo stayed with the image of the demon banshee, but her mentor Stiller was not seen in Hollywood, and was captured by MGM during the filming of "The Temptress" (1926). I saw Stiller, who was on his way home after wandering for two years in the video data, was downcast, slightly cowering, and shrouded in the breath of death.
The taste of failure and being kicked out is probably far more bitter than being abused by the front office, at least the latter still has the qualifications to be abused.
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