A Morte Passou por Perto

The musical aspect of the film is definitely not its strongest suit, but this, along with the performances, is something Kubrick could be proud of. It's not an amateurish film; you can tell there was a sense of attention to detail, evident from the opening boxing match, which Kubrick had previously filmed in real life for his documentary Day of the Fight. What he tremendously succeeded at, even as a screenwriter, is the storytelling, which is essentially flashback-driven. This is a film that pays homage to storytelling. The film still carries a certain rawness - that's how I would describe the work with amateur actors, or rather non-actors - but the sophisticated story and its gradual unfolding overshadow this, to its benefit. Stanley also handled the camera work himself (for example, the attack on Albert in the alley has beautiful character highlighting). Stanley Kubrick is a master director, and with this first fully preserved film that he did not try to destroy himself, he proved it. Film noir is definitely not one of the easiest genres to make films in. (26/03/2014)

A Morte Passou por Perto é um drama decentemente escrito e realizado, mas com uma atuação medíocre. Não se deixe desencorajar pela primeira metade, mais lenta e cheia de flashback. A segunda vai ser dura! (22/05/2003)

A nice noir. In the first, and more boring half you can at least enjoy the composition of the images and the way they play with light, darkness and shadow, while the second half is very tense and fun. It’s not a masterpiece (though there are a couple of scenes that show hints thereof, besides the oft-mentioned box and axe, I would point out to the attack in an alley), but it’s still a very decent thriller. (04/04/2010)

It lasts just a little over an hour, but even so, it’s too long. After the first forty minutes of badly acted boredom, we get just twenty minutes of solid tension. And Kubrick’s movie suffers from the same problem that harms his subsequent offering: inappropriate music, especially that squeaky march in the finale. (18/01/2009)

A shorter formal warm-up before The Killing, where Stanley's talent for the right composition of scenes and the story as a whole is already evident. Unfortunately, it’s not very good and, despite the optimal runtime, it lacks the expected noir tone and charge in the first two acts. Fortunately, though, the genius filmmaker tries some new camera tricks and stages most of the shots in such a way that they are simply fun to watch. And the last twenty minutes are a genre parade, although the similarly positive ending isn't exactly why I've come to love classic film-noir so much. A better 3* (07/03/2016)