Rain much?


I know photographers and directors prefer wet pavement and will often dampen things for a shoot, but this film seemed to push it to extremes. I don't think there was a single outdoor shot without wet pavement and puddles yet it never seemed to rain. Even when Henry spent all night in the cellar, under the open-to-the-sky hatch, he climbed up to what looked like recently rained on pavement. A magical land, no?

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Ever been to Manchester, Howard?

"The hour is come but not the man"

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Howard, BoultersCanary has taken the words out of my mouth. You should have been in Manchester last May.

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I take it you guys mean it rains a lot there, but that was my point, that in the movie it always seems to be wet but never seemed to rain. I was just thinking the director overdid it with the wetting down the pavement trick, he needed to include some actual rain shots to explain the wet.

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No, the director didn't overdo the wet pavement; it actually looks like that. As the film was largely shot on location in Manchester, that's what he would have had to work with.

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OMG! Sorry guys I just read this while actually watching this on TCM ( thank whoever for TCM). Yes a year and a half later! I have to tell you coming from Lancashire those street scenes are absolutely realistic. You have to understand that living on the wrong side of the Pennines you could experience so many showers in the lenghth of one day you didn't need to see the showers to see the run off on the streets continually. It ruined many a summer's day ( yes summer's day!!!!) for a lancashire lad on school holiday. This film of 1954 is actually a fantastic camera of days both old and new. You can still see shiny wet and rainbegotten streets in many a lancashire village after a Pennine rain. This film captures a lancashire that has almost totally passed but can still be captured after a short hour's rain or if one is willing to venture beyond the streets of any major metropolis. This film though made in the 50's creditably captures the industrial trappings of a Lancashire 40 years earlier. We Lancastrians should be grateful that a slice of life that gave us the backbone of our recalcitrant character is so beautifully captured on film.

God Bless all who sailed on her!

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obviously you know nothing much about weather, and if thats your biggest complaint of the movie, why bother, would you have felt more satisfied if in a scene or two it were raining, would that have changed the plot sufficiently for you!!!!

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A lot of Salford in this film that is still recognisable today (even if Salford council keep knocking historical landmarks down)

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The Greater Manchester is known for it's rain. And those puddles on the street produced the greatest scene in the film. The drunken Henry Hobson chasing the moon's reflection in the puddles and the window. With that weird bit of mysterioso music to accompany his antics.

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Lean probably lost hours and hours to rain; you can't film in it. After he finished this he probably thought,

Right, that's it. My next film'e going to be set 100% in the desert.

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