Country: USA
Year: 1975
Duration: 75'
In 1930s New
Orleans a drifter makes
ends meet by participating in clandestine boxing matches and shares the
money
he makes with a small-time swindler with a gambling problem who is
being
blackmailed by gangsters. In his debut film as a director, Hill
reconstructs
the years of the Great Depression and tells a story of survival, with
deadpan
Charles Bronson playing the part of an antihero reminiscent of
characters in
westerns.
“There
was already a screenplay for Hard Times but
I hadn’t read it,
the producer had told me about it. Then I showed up and wrote my own.
My mental
image of Chaney was of a much younger man. At first we took it for
granted that
it would be a very low-budget film because a brand new director rarely
receives
a high budget. It ended up being a low-budget film that just happened
to star
Charles Bronson. Bronson got his usual salary, but it was without a
doubt the
lowest budget film he worked on for years.” (W. Hill)
Biography
film director
Walter Hill
Walter Hill (Long Beach,
California, 1942)
studied art and later enrolled at Michigan University, where he
discovered his
passion for cinema. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam war, moved
to Los
Angeles and entered the world of cinema as assistant director. He
worked on the
set of Bullit (Peter
Yates, 1968) and The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman
Jewison, 1968) and in
1971 met Sam Peckinpah, for whom he wrote the screenplay for the film The
Getaway (1972). After writing the screenplay for The
MacKintosh Man (
John Huston, 1973), Hill debuted as director in 1976 with Hard
Times, a
story about clandestine boxing matches during the Great Depression. He
next
wrote the screenplay for The Drowning Pool (Stuart
Rosenberg, 1975) and
went on to direct his second movie, the detective film The
Driver (1978).
Walter Hill won international fame with his next film, The
Warriors (1979),
which mixes classic and modern cinema, horror films and musicals,
westerns and
thrillers. His success was confirmed by his next movie, Alien
(Ridley
Scott, 1979), which Hill produced and, along with David Giler (his
present
collaborator), was also non-accredited screenwriter. In 1980 Hill tried
his
hand at westerns for the first time and directed The Long
Riders,
followed two years later by the greatest success of his career, the
action film
48 Hrs., which made Eddie Murphy a star, and in 1984 the rock
fairy tale Streets
of Fire. Over the next few years Hill experimented different
genres -
comedies, Brewster's Millions (1985);
musicals, Crossroads (1986);
modern westerns, Extreme Prejudice (1987); noir
films, Johnny Handsome
(1989) - along with more commercial productions like
Red Heat (1988)
and the sequel Another 48 Hrs. (1990), without the
same box office and
critical success he had enjoyed during the 1970s and '80s.
After the violent
film Trespass (1992), Hill returned to directing
westerns with Geronimo:
An American Legend (1993) and writing screenplays for John
Milius, Wild
Bill (1995) and Last Man Standing (1996),
based on a story by
Kurosawa. In 2002 he directed Undisputed, which
takes place in a
California prison and is inspired by Mike Tyson's
vicissitudes, and in 2004 he
directed the pilot film of a western series on HBO entitled Deadwood.
Hill is now on location in Canada shooting his next western, Daughters
of
Joy.
FILMOGRAFIA
Walter Hill (Long Beach,
California, 1942)
studied art and later enrolled at Michigan University, where he
discovered his
passion for cinema. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam war, moved
to Los
Angeles and entered the world of cinema as assistant director. He
worked on the
set of Bullit (Peter
Yates, 1968) and The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman
Jewison, 1968) and in
1971 met Sam Peckinpah, for whom he wrote the screenplay for the film The
Getaway (1972). After writing the screenplay for The
MacKintosh Man (
John Huston, 1973), Hill debuted as director in 1976 with Hard
Times, a
story about clandestine boxing matches during the Great Depression. He
next
wrote the screenplay for The Drowning Pool (Stuart
Rosenberg, 1975) and
went on to direct his second movie, the detective film The
Driver (1978).
Walter Hill won international fame with his next film, The
Warriors (1979),
which mixes classic and modern cinema, horror films and musicals,
westerns and
thrillers. His success was confirmed by his next movie, Alien
(Ridley
Scott, 1979), which Hill produced and, along with David Giler (his
present
collaborator), was also non-accredited screenwriter. In 1980 Hill tried
his
hand at westerns for the first time and directed The Long
Riders,
followed two years later by the greatest success of his career, the
action film
48 Hrs., which made Eddie Murphy a star, and in 1984 the rock
fairy tale Streets
of Fire. Over the next few years Hill experimented different
genres -
comedies, Brewster's Millions (1985);
musicals, Crossroads (1986);
modern westerns, Extreme Prejudice (1987); noir
films, Johnny Handsome
(1989) - along with more commercial productions like
Red Heat (1988)
and the sequel Another 48 Hrs. (1990), without the
same box office and
critical success he had enjoyed during the 1970s and '80s.
After the violent
film Trespass (1992), Hill returned to directing
westerns with Geronimo:
An American Legend (1993) and writing screenplays for John
Milius, Wild
Bill (1995) and Last Man Standing (1996),
based on a story by
Kurosawa. In 2002 he directed Undisputed, which
takes place in a
California prison and is inspired by Mike Tyson's
vicissitudes, and in 2004 he
directed the pilot film of a western series on HBO entitled Deadwood.
Hill is now on location in Canada shooting his next western, Daughters
of
Joy.