Clifford Fanshawe Pember (1881–1955) was a British

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

notable for his set designs in British cinema and theatre. Pember worked on films during the late silent and early

sound era A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed befo ...

s. Pember originally trained as an architect. In 1928 he designed the sets for

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...

's film '' Easy Virtue'', adapted from the play by

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' called "a sense of personal style, a combination of c ...

. Along with Walter Murton, Pember has been identified as belonging to the "old school" of British set designers who resisted changes brought by new

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

influences (particularly by German immigrants).BFI: Clifford Pember profile
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Selected filmography

* ''

Dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the diffuse sky radiation, appearance of indirect sunlight being Rayleigh scattering, scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc ha ...

'' (1928) * '' Easy Virtue'' (1928) * ''

The Vortex ''The Vortex'' is a play in three acts by the English writer and actor Noël Coward. The play depicts the sexual vanity of a rich, ageing beauty, her troubled relationship with her adult son, and drug abuse in British society circles after the ...

'' (1928) * ''

The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel ''The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel'', first published in 1922, is a book in the series about the Scarlet Pimpernel ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' is the first novel in a series of historical fiction by Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. It ...

'' (1928) * '' The Woman in White'' (1929) * '' Escape'' (1930) * ''

Birds of Prey Birds of prey or predatory birds, also known as (although not the same as) raptors, are hypercarnivorous bird species that actively predation, hunt and feed on other vertebrates (mainly mammals, reptiles and smaller birds). In addition to speed ...

'' (1930) * '' Captain's Orders'' (1937)

References

Bibliography

* Bergfelder, Tim & Cargnelli, Christian. ''Destination London: German-speaking emigrés and British cinema, 1925-1950''. Berghahn Books, 2008.

External links

* 1881 births 1955 deaths British art directors People from Kingston upon Thames {{UK-film-bio-stub