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El cuervo

Título original: This Gun for Hire
  • 1942
  • 13
  • 1h 21min
PUNTUACIÓN EN IMDb
7,4/10
11 mil
TU PUNTUACIÓN
Alan Ladd in El cuervo (1942)
When assassin Philip Raven shoots a blackmailer and his beautiful female companion dead, he is paid off in marked bills by his treasonous employer who is working with foreign spies.
Reproducir trailer2:08
2 vídeos
99+ imágenes
Cine negro¿CrimenDramaThriller

Cuando el asesino Philip Raven dispara a un chantajista y mata a su hermosa compañera, su traidor empleador le paga con facturas marcadas.Cuando el asesino Philip Raven dispara a un chantajista y mata a su hermosa compañera, su traidor empleador le paga con facturas marcadas.Cuando el asesino Philip Raven dispara a un chantajista y mata a su hermosa compañera, su traidor empleador le paga con facturas marcadas.

  • Dirección
    • Frank Tuttle
  • Guión
    • Albert Maltz
    • W.R. Burnett
    • Graham Greene
  • Reparto principal
    • Alan Ladd
    • Veronica Lake
    • Robert Preston
  • Ver la información de la producción en IMDbPro
  • PUNTUACIÓN EN IMDb
    7,4/10
    11 mil
    TU PUNTUACIÓN
    • Dirección
      • Frank Tuttle
    • Guión
      • Albert Maltz
      • W.R. Burnett
      • Graham Greene
    • Reparto principal
      • Alan Ladd
      • Veronica Lake
      • Robert Preston
    • 109Reseñas de usuarios
    • 56Reseñas de críticos
  • Ver la información de la producción en IMDbPro
    • Premios
      • 3 premios en total

    Vídeos2

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:08
    Official Trailer
    This Gun for Hire
    Clip 1:02
    This Gun for Hire
    This Gun for Hire
    Clip 1:02
    This Gun for Hire

    Imágenes180

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    + 173
    Ver cartel

    Reparto principal79

    Editar
    Alan Ladd
    Alan Ladd
    • Philip Raven
    Veronica Lake
    Veronica Lake
    • Ellen Graham
    Robert Preston
    Robert Preston
    • Michael Crane
    Laird Cregar
    Laird Cregar
    • Willard Gates
    Tully Marshall
    Tully Marshall
    • Alvin Brewster
    Marc Lawrence
    Marc Lawrence
    • Tommy
    Olin Howland
    Olin Howland
    • Blair Fletcher
    • (as Olin Howlin)
    Roger Imhof
    Roger Imhof
    • Senator Burnett
    Pamela Blake
    Pamela Blake
    • Annie
    Frank Ferguson
    Frank Ferguson
    • Albert Baker
    Victor Kilian
    Victor Kilian
    • Drew
    Patricia Farr
    Patricia Farr
    • Ruby
    Harry Shannon
    Harry Shannon
    • Steve Finnerty
    Charles C. Wilson
    Charles C. Wilson
    • Police Captain
    Mikhail Rasumny
    Mikhail Rasumny
    • Slukey
    Bernadene Hayes
    Bernadene Hayes
    • Albert Baker's Secretary
    Mary Davenport
    • Salesgirl
    Chester Clute
    Chester Clute
    • Rooming House Manager
    • Dirección
      • Frank Tuttle
    • Guión
      • Albert Maltz
      • W.R. Burnett
      • Graham Greene
    • Todo el reparto y equipo
    • Producción, taquilla y más en IMDbPro

    Reseñas de usuarios109

    7,411.2K
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    Reseñas destacadas

    aptpupil79

    solid film-noir in all areas

    one of the things that can make a film noir great is the ability to, at each turn, make the audience think that things are going to turn out okay, and then slam the door in its face. this film is able to do just that. alan ladd doesn't get the lead billing (that honor goes to lake and preston), but make not mistake - he is the star of the film. he plays a loner hit-man and we pick up the action just before he's set to do a job. he holds up his end of the bargain, but the man who hired him pays him in marked bills in an attempt to pin a robbery on him. ladd goes on the lam, but runs into the girlfriend (lake) of a cop (preston) who is after him for having passed one of the marked bills. little does ladd, or even preston, know, but lake has been enlisted by the government to do some investigative work on the man who paid ladd for the hit with the marked dough. it's quite a criss-crossed story, but it's all very easy to follow and very fun to watch while it unfolds. lake is sworn to secrecy because of the sensitive nature of her investigation, and she has no idea that the man she meets on the train (ladd) is the same man her boyfriend is pursuing. it's not as dark a noir as detour, but the ending is surprisingly affecting and certainly dark enough to qualify as a noir. the lighting is more subtle than it is in some noir and i made a note of looking into the cinematographer on this film. my hunch was right - john seitz did the cinematography for this and such films as invaders from mars, sunset blvd., double indemnity, sullivan's travels, and big clock. it's a crime that i've never heard of the guy. but i redeemed myself by finally looking into his work after watching this film. with sunset blvd and double indemnity i probably attributed the good lighting and camera work to billy wilder and the same is true for sullivan's travels and preston sturges. at any rate, this is a good film - ladd and lake do a good job, preston is capable; the cinematography is good even though it doesn't knock you over the head with its brilliance; and the story is well-constructed despite being a little far-fetched in places. B+.
    9hitchcockthelegend

    I like Cats! So says the icy cold broken wrist killer!

    Phillip Raven is a hit man of no obvious moral fibre, he literally will kill anyone for the right price. After fulfilling a contract for the chocolate munching Willard Gates, he finds himself pursued by the law on account that he was paid by Gates with stolen money. Raven sets out for the ultimate revenge and dovetailing towards the explosive finale with him is sultry conjurer Ellen Graham and honest cop Michael Crane.

    Based on the Graham Greene novel A Gun For Sale, this is not a straight out adaptation, the plot has been re-jigged with very impressive results. The most enlightening thing I found when reading up on the film was that the studio were so blown away by the efforts of Alan Ladd as Raven, they turned the script around to make him the films chief axis, and boy what a smart move that was for this is Alan Ladd's show all the way.

    Ladd plays Raven with brilliant icy veneer, he's cold and devoid of emotion, his only trip to anything resembling caring is an affinity to cats because in his own words, "cats don't need anyone, they are on their own, just like me", the result is one of the most unnerving killers put on to the 40s cinema screens. Veronica Lake is the stunning female of the piece, she glides through the picture with ease as Ellen, a character with her own issues, but thankfully she's integral outside of any sort of romantic plot, even though she is the only one who gets close enough to Raven to learn anything about what makes him tick.

    Robert Preston as Michael Crane was to be the pics focus but he becomes a mere side part thanks to Ladd's barnstorming show, and unsurprisingly Laird Cregar is suitably shifty as Gates. It's a fine film in its own right, it's tightly filmed, wonderfully scripted and contains a great noir ending, but ultimately it's all about the cold as death hit-man Raven, and the great performance by the man who played him. 8.5/10
    9bkoganbing

    Doublecrossing A Killer, When he's his own Police

    The film that launched Alan Ladd's career, This Gun For Hire is a very short film like the earlier Public Enemy which gave James Cagney his stardom. This would be the normal length of a B film, but it definitely gets all it wants to say in its brief running time.

    Essentially we have three stories where all the principal players get brought together in the end. The first involves Robert Preston investigating a reported payroll robbery of the firm that Tully Marshall is the president of. Note that I said 'reported robbery.' The second involves his girl friend, entertainer Veronica Lake being recruited by no one less than a United States Senator to get the goods on one of Marshall's top aides, Laird Cregar who they think is doing some fifth column work at the behest of Marshall. Finally we have contract killer Alan Ladd who's hired by Cregar to bump off Frank Ferguson who is blackmailing Marshall as to his treasonous activities. Preston, Ladd, and Lake don't know they are all on the same case, but by the end of the film they do.

    Alan Ladd became Paramount's answer to Humphrey Bogart as a star of action/adventure films and noir films. This Gun for Hire launched his career. He was enormously popular through the Forties, Paramount's biggest star after Crosby and Hope. He played cynical tough guys in modern films, but then branched into westerns where for the most part he was the gallant hero. In fact the ultimate gallant white knight hero in Shane.

    His part as Raven is a difficult one, yet he pulls it off. He's a cold blooded contract killer, one of the earliest ever portrayed as a film protagonist. Yet he's human and you see flashes of it, his concern for cats. As a cat lover, I can sure identify with that. Raven is also one of the earliest characters in cinema who talks about child abuse making him what he is. Groundbreaking when you think about it.

    Next to Ladd, the biggest kudos have to go to Laird Cregar, borrowed from 20th Century Fox to play Willard Gates. Gates is a top company executive with Marshall's firm which is a defense contractor which is why the Senate is interested in him. He's basically a jerk who thinks he's so clever. Veronica Lake gets to him real easy because of his weakness for the nightclub scene. And he really doesn't take the full measure of Raven, even though the audience is very aware of how deadly he is.

    When you think about it what Cregar and Marshall do is unbelievably stupid. They hire Ladd to kill Ferguson and then pay him with hot money, from the alleged robbery. Why would you do that? Chances are in the rackets they're involved in, they might have need of his services in the future. Not a guy to get mad at you. In fact their double cross is what sets the whole film plot in motion.

    Moral is never double cross a guy who says and means that "I'm my own police."

    This Gun for Hire was Director Frank Tuttle's finest film. He was a contract director for Paramount who did a whole bunch of films with their various stars in the Thirties and Forties. When he hadn't worked in a while, Alan Ladd got him a job directing him in Hell On Frisco Bay while he was at Warner Brothers and Tuttle also directed A Cry In the Night which Ladd produced. Ladd remembered and was grateful to Tuttle for helping break through into top star ranks. Ladd was like John Wayne that way, ever ready to help a colleague down on his luck.

    Veronica Lake is recruited by a U.S. Senator with a fictitious name, but in fact there was a committee looking into all kinds of things like this in the Senate in regard to the conduct of the war. It was headed by a Senator from Missouri named Harry Truman who went on to higher office. I wonder if Truman liked This Gun for Hire? Veronica Lake got a big boost in her career. She and Ladd became a classic screen team as a result of this film.

    This film is one great cinematic classic, so important to so many careers and still keeps you on the edge of your seat today.
    theowinthrop

    Hooray for Gates and Tommy!

    Frank Tuttle is one of those directors (like William Seiter) who is not consistently good, but who could do a terrific job now and then that retains our admiration. Seiter directed Laurel & Hardy in their best feature film, THE SONS OF THE DESERT (and turned in an above average job with the Marx Brothers in ROOM SERVICE). Tuttle did this film noir classic, and did it well. Based on a novel (or, as the author called it, an "entertainment") by Graham Greene, Tuttle made a star of Alan Ladd, and created the first of a series of films co-starring Ladd and Veronica Lake (as his cool, opposite number). He was ably abetted by a good cast of character actors: Laird Cregar, Tully Marshall, Robert Preston (at the start of his career), Marc Lawrence.... It was a terrific little thriller.

    Laird Cregar's Willard Gates is one of the funniest neurotics in film noir. An overweight lady's man, he seems to go in both directions: using his money and nightclub to pick up women, and yet being a trembling tub of lard who enjoys reading "Naughty Paris at Night" while eating a box of chocolates in his private bedroom on his train. Cregar's Gates is augmented by his chauffeur - bodyguard - factotum Tommy, who has a wicked sense of ghoulish humor, and is able to make his queasy boss go nuts with fear just by describing a possible method of getting rid of Lake's prospectively dead body tied with cat gut that would disintegrate in a month (allowing her body to rise in a river, and leave her death a mystery. "Cat gut, what a horrible word!", quivers Gates. Marvelous - just look at Lawrence's grin as he speaks. He knows what he's doing.

    The novel is a peculiar problem, not too frequently mentioned in discussing the film. It was set in 1935 in the midlands of England. At the beginning Raven is shown going to the office of a man who turns out to be Europe's leading peace advocate. He comes in using a letter from an unknown person. The peace advocate is happy at the recognition given to him by the letter's author and sits down to read it. In a moment Raven kills the man and then his secretary (who is a witness). This is changed in the movie to the murder of Baker, a blackmailer, and his girlfriend by Raven. The letter is from an important industrialist and munition dealer - Sir Marcus. His associate is the middle man between Sir Marcus and Raven, as Gates is in the film. But it is not in southern California in 1942 (and not dealing with treason with Japan). Instead Greene's villain is planning to help cause a new European War, for his profit.

    Who is Sir Marcus? How is he different from the industrialist played by Tully Marshall? Marshall is a traitor for profit working for the Japanese Empire. Sir Marcus was Jewish.

    Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh were the two greatest English Catholic novelists of the twentieth century, but in different ways. Greene's novels dealt with the issues of good and evil in us all, usually told in stories of crime or spies. Waugh wrote of a fading Catholic English aristocracy, and had a masterful sense of comedy. They complement each other as writers. Both were deserving of Nobel Prize recognition, and both failed to achieve it. Other Englishmen did get the prize (Shaw, William Golding), but they never did - though repeatedly they were recommended for it. The possible reason was their open anti-Semitism. Waugh's novels are full of Jewish stereotypes, like Augustus Fagin in DECLINE AND FALL. Greene did the same, with Sir Marcus and Colleoni in BRIGHTON ROCK. The only difference is that Greene (in later years) edited out the anti-Jewish sentiments in the novels. But if you get the original novel you have Raven (a murderer-for-hire, mind you) telling off Sir Marcus about his ancestry before shooting him. The screenplay keeps to the storyline, with the American and non-religious changes. It was all to the good, but we all should be aware of Greene's religious bigotry.
    7xyzkozak

    A 1942, Hollywood Classic

    THIS GUN FOR HIRE (TGFH, for short) is, without question, one of Hollywood's truly classic thrillers from the glorious 40's. It's a top-rate suspense flick, no doubt about that, and, personally, one of my all-time favourite flicks from that particular era. TGFH is jam-packed with plenty of hard-boiled action and death-defying drama. It's a 'Must See' for any Film Noir fan, like myself.

    This would be Alan Ladd's first starring role as an actor. He'd been struggling to make it in Hollywood for nearly a decade. Ladd's widespread appeal as the hard-edged tough guy, Raven, in TGFH would, literally, catapult him into immediate stardom. Ladd's position as one of Hollywood's top male actors would endure for the next 10 years. Sadly enough, he would eventually die by his own hand from a deliberate overdose of alcohol and barbiturates in the early 1960's. Alan Ladd - Gone, but not forgotten.

    Adapted from the Graham Greene novel of the same name, TGFH is a tough-edged story about love, power, and betrayal set in the seamy underworld of the 1940's.

    Alan Ladd, as Philip Raven, plays a cold-blooded, professional killer who's been double-crossed and set-up for termination by his most recent client. It's only a matter of time before he's put out of action for good. But Raven ain't going down alone. No way. To avenge himself and the wrong done him, Raven must track down and eliminate, with extreme prejudice, those who want him out of the picture, permanently.

    The tension mounts and before the night is over someone will be paying dearly with their life.

    This Gun For Hire is a sure-fire hit!

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    Argumento

    Editar

    ¿Sabías que...?

    Editar
    • Curiosidades
      After confronting the cops at the club, Raven takes Ellen hostage and flees. He finds a warehouse to hide in, but they must scale a wall. Raven helps Ellen to climb the wall, but he first warns her to stay on top until he gets there and not to run. She then replies, "Who do you think I am, Whirlaway?" Whirlaway is an American champion thoroughbred horse that won the U.S. Triple Crown in 1941, the year before this movie was released.
    • Pifias
      When Gates discovers Graham and Raven sleeping on the train, Raven's head is on Graham's shoulder. The next shot after the one of Gates retracing his steps shows them separated. As Gates enters the car, Graham shrugs to move Ravens head off her shoulder. It's possible his head falls back on her shoulder as seen and then gets shrugged off fully between the next shot.
    • Citas

      Ruby: What's the matter? You look like you've been on a hayride with Dracula.

    • Conexiones
      Edited into Cliente muerto no paga (1982)
    • Banda sonora
      Now You See It, Now You Don't
      (1942) (uncredited)

      Lyrics by Frank Loesser

      Music by Jacques Press

      Performed by Veronica Lake (dubbed by Martha Mears)

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    Preguntas frecuentes19

    • How long is This Gun for Hire?Con tecnología de Alexa

    Detalles

    Editar
    • Fecha de lanzamiento
      • 13 de noviembre de 1990 (España)
    • País de origen
      • Estados Unidos
    • Idioma
      • Inglés
    • Títulos en diferentes países
      • Contratado para matar
    • Localizaciones del rodaje
      • Richfield Tower - 555 South Flower Street, Los Ángeles, California, Estados Unidos(Nitro Chemical headquarters building - demolished 1969)
    • Empresa productora
      • Paramount Pictures
    • Ver más compañías en los créditos en IMDbPro

    Taquilla

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    • Presupuesto
      • 500.000 US$ (estimación)
    • Recaudación en todo el mundo
      • 108 US$
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    Especificaciones técnicas

    Editar
    • Duración
      • 1h 21min(81 min)
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Relación de aspecto
      • 1.37 : 1

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