Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Thunder Rock (1942)

Director: Roy Boulting

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Best known for their limp late '50s comedies, the Boulting Brothers are often far more interesting for their more serious earlier work, like this propagandist drama adapted from Robert Ardrey's anti-isolationist play. Redgrave plays the surly, cynical keeper of the eponymous Lake Michigan lighthouse; a former British war correspondent disillusioned by his compatriots' complacency towards the rise of Fascism in Europe, he now peoples his ivory tower with the ghosts of immigrants drowned in a shipwreck almost a century before. As his conscience - in the form of the boat's dead captain - forces him to rethink his romantic ideas about the simplicity and optimism of times past, and thus to regain his sense of political commitment, the film effortlessly transcends its theatrical origins, merging dream and reality, past and present, propaganda and psychological insight, to complex and intelligent effect. Beautifully performed, closer in tone and style to Powell and Pressburger than to the British mainstream, it's weird and unusually gripping.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Roy Boulting

Producer: John Boulting

Cast: Michael Redgrave, Barbara Mullen, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Finlay Currie, Frederick Valk full cast

Duration: 112 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.