Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

All four are exactly equally cool (actually Wilder esp.made some bluddy awful movies). My sistah's boyf gave me the early Hitch DVD for my birthday: easier here to see than in the later post-canonisation Greats that he spent his youth in the 20s hoovering up hardcore Surrealism (i mean bunuel and breton and aragon, not hipgnosis...): he was a funny wicked man when all about were quite stiff and careful... The 39 Steps = peerless.

"North by Northwest" was amazing with Cary Grant.

"The Birds" is maybe not one of Hitch's best films, but certainly one of his strangest, and I must work in a mention of Tippi (or do I mean 'Tippi') Hedren, who I dearly wish made many more films.

"Vertigo" may be the best film ever made, even tho any claim like that is absurd.

*warning: this may not be true

I do remember seeing a hitchcockian tv movie many years ago w/Ritter and Henry Winkler, one of them was stalking the other and it was really excellent.

Don't even joke about it! *trembles in fear*

Also, when they revived the show in the 80s on NBC, it was surprisingly high-quality; a shame it didn't quite catch on. How 'bout the episode with Martin Sheen dismembering Parker Stevenson to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" (a la Apocalpyse Now)? It doesn't get any more classic than that...

Yeah, Hitchcock made the very same movie, pretty much, over and over again: the wrong guy being pursued, the crime being solved, etc. (North by Northwest is Saboteur with a bigger budget) - but he did it so extraordinarily well that even today any hint of suspense in any sort of film can influence it to be mislabeled "Hitcockian." And Ford was mr. patriotism-western - exactly what sort of variety did he pursue? Even Wilder had a similar satirical element in all his films..that's why they were "auteurs" folks! (And of course he picked blondes well - it was that notorious fetish of his...Tippi was a 4th-rate Grace, but even in such a flawed film like Marnie was he able to evoke something-bordering-on-performance)

Ironically, none of those Cahiers people strike me as sticking to one or two central themes long enough in their own checkered careers - any dissention here?

The Rear Window remake that I know of has a post-accident Christopher Reeve in the James Stewart role, which does add a whole other level of creepyass voyeurism...

a more interesting question then: we all know truffaut would have become hitchcock's sex slave if he was asked, but what do you think hitch thought of tru's early 60s works...which he supposedly must have seen before they did that book together? or do you think hitch never saw them, or cared to ?

Perhaps. But I almost always find her more interesting to watch, think about and discuss than Grace.

Thomson's book Overexposures has a great Hitchcock essay. Haven't read the new Dictionary, but I have a complaint about edition one: How can someone who loves/hates Hitchcock and egregiously slams both Travolta and De Palma get away without seeing and addressing Blow Out?

I agree. It's not remembered so much probably because it didn't have any big name actors. It was also rated R in the US, atypical of a Hitchcock film. I love the scene right at the very end, where the protagonist is flogging a dead body, covered by a sheet, thinking it's the murderer...and then the detective walks in and sees him doing that. And you think, "MAN, does this guy get *any* breaks?".

Mr. and Mrs. Smith sucks too.

Man Who Knew Too Much remake isn't very good, Doris Day. Not too hot on Marnie, although it's interesting.

Frenzy and Family Plot are both underrated, though.

Best: Rebecca, Vertigo, Shadow of a Doubt, The 39 Steps, Psycho. Vertigo and Shadow of a Doubt the deepest of all his work?

Also very good: The Birds, Rear Window, The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train.

Critical opinion on him, though, very divided. Better than Ford? I think so, but such totally different views of life. Hitchcock's work, overall, is very shallow, though, and so repressed...

-- naked as sin

That's an interesting opinion. Why do you think so?

Yeah, you might. Joseph Cotten is great, I think, in the movie; and Teresa Wright is worth watching just for her very determined walk. It's a very creepy movie. "Uncle Charlie" 's speech about what really lives in the hearts of men and women (at the dinner table) is a classic. It's also one of the great shot-on-location Hitch movies, shot in Santa Rosa, Calif. So give it another shot maybe.

A tremendous, world-historical understatement.

http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Teresa/images5/teresa_faceshot_crop.jpg

Shadow of a Doubt was his personal favorite of his films, by the way. I think it's extraordinary.

"Shadow" was Hitch's favorite, and it's usually rated one of his best films, along with "Vertigo" and "Rear Window."

Compared to the very greatest filmmakers--Ophuls, Ray, Renoir, to name three who I don't think would provoke much dissension, although I would add Lang and Coppola and several others to the list--I think Hitchcock comes up a little short. Too much control, not enough "sense of superfluous life" (in the words of critic Robin Wood). But he's great. I'm sure other posters will take issue with the above...yeah!

Shirley Maclaine is georgeous in it though.

I think Rope, as often as it is dismissed as a one-off experiment, is underrated, especially the way Hitchcock makes the homosexual lovers angle subtly apparent. Farley Granger was the bitch, no?

Shadow of a Doubt was my early favorite, but I still personally like Rebecca best, even though (has this been said yet?), it could be argued that it was more of a David O Selznick "production" picture than a Hitchcockian one. He himself suggests as much in the Truffaut book. I thought Paradine Case, as much as I stayed awake for, was definitely a dud (and no one in the lead could save such a script) but I quite like Stage Fright, another one everyone typically moans about. Dietrich = delightful divadom

Suspicion was precisely a dud because of its studio-sanctioned ending. Interesting but useless trivia: Hitch put a small lightbulb in that glass of milk to make it glow up like that.

I think Vertigo is his unassailable masterpiece (Psycho is easier to critique), but imo Strangers on a Train is the most underrated Hitch, as far as I remember. Even though it falls under "light Hitchcock," as opposed to "dark," not a single minute lacks entertainment value. But I have to see it again.

Family Plot underrated? Please. Why is it rated at all? Let's see, is there even the remotest possibility that a film with both Bruce Dern and Karen Black in it could be watchable?

No Hitchcock film sits "squarely" in a light category, and Strangers on a Train has complex subtexts, as vitually all of his work. But on the whole, compared to his other man-on-the-run films, it's more along the side of North by Northwest and Saboteur in the lighter, wittier half of his catalog rather than the darker films with the similar narrative theme, such as Frenxy or The Wrong Man.

I think Rope was deliberately stagy (as was the lesser Lifeboat, another formal experiment) to a point, but I agree that Hitchcock does not quite "solve" the problem of shooting in unedited long takes. Actually he applies some similar techniques much more effectively in Under Capricorn--a film he could only have made after trying trying them out in Rope. UC is shot entirely in long takes (none 8+ minutes, but quite a few 3+) but without foregrounding that decision as noisily as Rope.

Rope is indeed a deliberate formal experiment; it's meant to be stagy. That doesn't make it good, and it doesn't make the experiment successful. Unless the point was to make a stagy-looking film. That he had an explicit, conscious idea (granted, already more than most directors), and executed it as precisely to plan as the production process allows--there are no auteurs--doesn't keep the background from looking like a grammer school diarama. The performances by the killers are unmotivated, and the diaglogue, although witty, is stilted. That's not a receipt for a great film, regardless of how few cuts there were, how elaborate the lighting changes are, and how complicated the camera choreography is.

Hollywood has never felt particularly in debt to the theatre--unlike early Continental cinema--and that's generally been a strength. The media are in most respects unrelated. Even European film got over this perceived link pretty quickly.

One of the (utterly true) cliches in the film world is the importance of casting (,casting, casting). Cary Grant is just brilliant. So is Jimmy Stewart. Farley Granger isn't. I'm just not convinced that H. coaxed these performances out; he was lucky when they were good, but indifferent when they weren't.

Well part of Hollywood being "Hollywood" is the directors of the 00s and 10s and 20s trying to cast off their inevitable borrowings from the theater--the low theater and, sometimes, that high theater too. The anxiety of influence, etc. See a book called Eloquent Gestures to see how this played out on the level of acting styles.

Candidia, I agree that Rope is not a complete success. What I was saying that he perhaps foregrounded the technical feat of unedited takes at the expensive of the fluidity in performance style that he had achieved in earlier films. I still think it's an awesome achievement in itself, but UC is a more successful integration of dramaturgy/mise en scene.

*use other features please.

Okay, what I perhaps SHOULD have said that was for all it's supposed glamour, chemistry (both literal and metaphorical), and plotting, I found it rather ponderous and incredibly talky.

What do you think?

Has anyone seen Blake Edwards' take on Hitchcock: "Experiment In Terror"? I would think that David Lynch and Mark Frost watched this together in 1989.

(I wasn't calling you out for repeating yourself btw)

-rated: Psycho, North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much (original), Frenzy

-rated: Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much (remake), Vertigo, Rear Window

... don't you agree?

Vertigo DROOL DROOL I love above almost any other movie. My next favorites of his in line- Rebecca, Psycho, Birds, North By Northwest, Rear Window. Have to see 39 steps since I see it rated so much on this thread.

speaking of Shadow of a Doubt (as we were on Rear Window thread) -- LOVE that "zombie waitress" in the dive who looks at the ring:

http://truespies.org/mirror-stage/2007/08/12/alfred-hitchcock-presents-the-night-of-the-living-dead/

you are making me want to see shadow of a doubt again.

i want to watch it with morbs and alex in SF!

well, get the Castro to book it, ummm, next summer.

Also, gr8 opening shot of the Pulaski Skyway.

I'm not sure which of these is best -- Hirsch & McAvoy on the train ain't bad -- but someone needs to be punished for casting ScarJo as Grace Kelly:

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2008/02/07/vanity-fair-hollywood-issue-2008/

I saw 'em earlier. I only really like Strangers and Seth Rogen doing North by Northwest.

they should remake it. jason segal in the james mason role.

I'd love McAvoy's fingers around my...neck.

I still don't think much of V compared to RW and NxNW, but I don't think I'd recognized just how good Kim Novak is - she carries the thing.

Seth Rogan replacing Cary Grant in NxNW would be an improvement. Renee Zellweger looks surprisingly right in Vertigo. And the casting of that Lifeboat pic is sorta epic.

Seth Rogan replacing Cary Grant in NxNW would be an improvement

why must you continuously disappoint me?

OK, what kind of baiting is that statement? It's the best (intentional) joke in the spread.

NxNW = Hitchcock's least interesting classic movie, so you could cast Renee Zellweger in Cary Grant's part and I'd call it an improvement.

^^^ Bottomless pit of Rong.

Wd rather see Rogen/Segel do Rope, tho.

NxNW: TOO SCREWBALL :p

(Eric, we love you, but you braek heart. Hitchcock got the wrong-man-chase movie right, at last, w/ NxNW.)

Using Eva Marie Saint is a nice touch, but I hope the forog didn't have to use the Tallulah on-set "hairdressing" joke.

fotog

(if you don't know the joke, Hitch was told by crew that Bankhead wasn't wearing underwear)

What's the best of his earliest work? My daughter bought a 4-DVD set of his earliest films (for $5!) -- I think it has about 17 or 18 features on it and a couple of "AH Presents" episodes.

Bottomless pit of Rong is slagging on Vertigo. Why does no one call that out?

The best of Hitchcock in public domain in the U.S. (which is what that set's no doubt filled with) is probably The Lady Vanishes (gasp! a screwball!) and maybe The 39 Steps, though I liked Sabotage too.

How early? 20s/30s? I like Sabotage an inordinate amount but it's probly the 1st Man Who Knew Too Much or The 39 Steps.

Rear Window does the light and breezy but still totally suspenseful thing WAY better than NxNW. C'mon people!

I've got that 5-movie box with Juno and Rich and Strange on it to watch over the weekend.

I would agree RW is greater, but cmon, they're significantly different stylewise!

Eric defines screwball broader than retro box sets define "noir."

This is the collection.

(7.0) Blackmail (UK-1929) - Anny Ondra/Charles Paton/Cyril Ritchard
(6.2) Champagne (silent-UK-1928) - Betty Balfour/Gordon Harker/Jean Bradin
(5.8) Easy Virtue (silent-UK-1928) - Isabel Jeans/Franklin Dyall/Ian Hunter
(6.3) The Farmer's Wife (silent-UK-1928) - Jameson Thomas/Lillian Hall-Davis/Gordon Harker
(6.2) Jamaica Inn (UK-1939) - Charles Laughton/Maureen O'Hara/Robert Newton
(4.7) Juno and the Paycock (UK-1930) - Barry Fitzgerald/Maire O'Neill/Edward Chapman
(8.1) The Lady Vanishes (UK-1938) - Margaret Lockwood/Michael Redgrave/Paul Lukas/Dame May Whitty
(6.9) The Man Who Knew Too Much (UK-1934) - Leslie Banks/Edna Best/Peter Lorre
(6.3) The Manxman (silent-UK-1928)- Carl Brisson/Malcolm Keen/Anny Ondra
(5.9) Number Seventeen (UK-1932) - Leon M. Lion/Anne Grey/John Stuart
(6.1) Rich and Strange (UK-1931) - Henry Kendall/Joan Barry/Percy Marmot
(6.2) The Ring (silent-UK-1927) - Carl Brisson/Lillian Hall-Davis/Ian Hunter
(7.2) Sabotage (UK-1936) - Sylvia Sidney/Oskar Homolka/Desmond Tester
(6.7) Secret Agent (UK-1936) - John Gielgud/Peter Lorre/Madeleine Carroll/Robert Young/Lilli Palmer
(5.7) The Skin Game (UK-1931) - C.V. France/Helen Haye/Edmund Gwenn
(8.0) The 39 Steps (UK-1935) - Robert Donat/Madeleine Carroll/Peggy Ashcroft
(7.1) Young and Innocent (UK-1937) - Nova Pilbeam/Derrick De Marney/Percy Marmot

ALSO-- ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS:
(#13) The Cheney Vase (S.1, 12/25/55) - Carolyn Jones Darren McGavin/George Macready/Ruta Lee
(#268) The Sorcerer's Apprentice (S.7, ???) - Diana Dors/Brandon De Wilde/Larry Kert

BONUS: 55 minutes of Hitchcock movie trailers

Wd rather see Rogen/Segel do Rope, tho.

YES

in the uk we have one box that has all the BIP films, and another coming out next week with all the gainsborough ones (ie pre-BIP) and gaumont films (ie post-BIP) plus the ones he did after gaumont.

Eric defines screwball broader than retro box sets define "noir."

I hate a lot of movies, so I have to.

is NXNW supposed to be "suspenseful"? I see it as a long romantic comedy (with some dead spots).

Is NxNW supposed to be "romantic"?!

or "funny"?!

It's a romp, guys.

Cary Grant drunk = height of comedy in 1959

Martin Landau as gay man = height of comedy in 1959.

If Hitch says so, I'll buy it.

xp: yes and yes and it is. (I'd love to sit thru The Awful Truth / NxNW in a theater with Eric and he could explain why everyone was delusionally laughing for four hours.)

Martin Landau was supposed to be gay in NbyNW??? What did I miss???

xpost You just want to see me cut my throat.

Landow is so not gay in NxNW. It's a pipe dream created by people who want to make the movie more interesting.

James Mason arguing with Landau says, "What's the matter – jealous?"

Landau: "Call it my woman's intuition."

I was just about to xpost that

I heard Landau say he was gay in NxNW.

(have you read Robin Wood?)

When I first saw the movie as a kid that line really made me go "huh?"

NxNW is more interesting than Spellbound, Dial M and Rebecca for starters.

Spellbound and Dial M, fer sure

I mean I love them all but Eric's dismissal just seems so arbitrary.

ha!

Leonard: You surely would have suspected. Why else would you have decided not to tell Miss Kendall why our little treasure here has a belly full of microfilm?
Vandamm: You seem to be trying to fill mine with rotten apples.
Leonard: Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms.
Vandamm: Truth? I've heard nothing but innuendos.

ha indeed. There's a lot of sexual Otherness in Hitchcock that isn't exactly gay in that repressed Hollywood way... more like, there's something going on here and you don't really want to know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?

btw, JJ Leigh makes a good Mrs Danvers, if more glam than Judith Anderson.

The first exchange might not not mean anything, but it's so weird and unexpected – and Hitch was not careless about dialogue – that it's the only possible explanation.

oooh i dunno if i'd say NxNW was more interesting than rebecca

It's maybe a bit Goth-y for me.

Agree with Morbs about Jennifer Jason Leigh but I assumed that was me being uncritical about everything she does.

(have you read Robin Wood?)

Yeah, like I'm going to read about NxNW.

oddly the first thing that comes to mind when I think about NxNW is that little kid in the background that plugs his ears right before Eva Marie Saint shoots Cary Grant.

Dial M could be conceivably less interesting than NxNW. I've skipped it so far. Spellbound and To Catch a Thief are both way down there alongside NxNW in disappointment, but neither are anywhere near as wildly beloved.

I love the hurt in Mason's voice when Leonard pulls the gun fulla blanks: "LEEONAARD?!?

Great opening credits on NxNW, I'll admit.

Spellbound kinda sucks

To Catch a Thief totally sucks

Sabotage = most underrated

Spellbound has got maybe 10 great minutes, and a lot of dialogue I don't remember. But it's hard to watch it without thinking of High Anxiety.

James Mason is the most polished, pained-looking Hitch villain ever! He can actually sell killing someone as a sequela of irritation.

Plus, an ad exec being relentlessly chased by killers brings me joy, having worked with such fuckers for 8 years.

Gregory Peck has a talent for smothering costars with a pillow of sincere, plodding suckdom.

The ski sequence might be his worst set piece that I've seen. If they cut out some of the "psychiatrists confer" sequences I could at least enjoy Spellbound as watchable trash.

James Mason is the most polished, pained-looking Hitch villain ever!

Claude fucking Rains.

I love the way James Mason says "Games?...*must* we?" in NxNW

Claude Rains is more anguished.

The audio commentary on Criterion Collection's Rebecca (currently out of print) is one of the best I have ever heard...astoundingly informative.

who did it?

I would agree RW is greater, but cmon, they're significantly different stylewise!
http://www.ruhrtal-cruising.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/fassbinder.jpg
Es tut mir sehr leid, Alfred, aber ich bin der Beste.

German is sexy.

haha

eric u crazy, NBNW is great.

NxNW : Hitchcock :: Untouchables : De Palma

It's great because the syllogism works (I'd imagine) for both of us.

yeah. untouchables is one of the few de palmas i like. but that's partly cos i saw it when i was like nine and was all "damn, i saw an 18-certificate film."

See, that difference in our tastes I remember.

Tho I don't remember fetishizing T2 for being one of the first superviolent R movies I saw.

let's all be thankful de Palma doesn't have the chops to do a witty Hitchcockian chase film.

ha, I saw The Reivers was on late last night on TCM and my parents pulled us out of that one when the cathouse sequence started. (I think I was 12, sis 10.)

This was the first PG-13 comedy I saw with my parents:

http://is2.okcupid.com/users/962/364/9633658855222444878/mt1129944315.jpg

yes, Morbs, let's ... jesus christ

meanwhile, let's be grateful Chantal Akerman doesn't have the chops to do a Leo McCarey screwball and that Michael Mann doesn't have the chops to do a Budd Boetticher shootout and that Clint Eastwood doesn't have the humanism of Jean Renoir.

suddenly it's Thanksgiving!

Yeah, I'm stifling vomit.

Clint Eastwood doesn't have the humanism of Jean Renoir.

http://www.homevideos.com/movies-covers/Every-Which-Way-But-Loose.jpg

Jeanne Dielman is just a leisurely screwball, and I think A Perfect World was Clint's stab at Renoirism.

Alright, I atone. I don't dislike NxNW even fractionally as much as I love Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, et al. Moving on.

RIP Suzanne Pleshette.

"How do you like our little hamlet?"

Some things I like in The Birds:
The discussion in the Coffee Shop across from the gas station before the explosion.
The cameo by Hitchcock's Sealyhams.

some things I like in The Birds:
lovebirds leaning during the car ride
the three cuts into the pecked-out eyes
the bird lady
"I think you're evil!"
Camille Paglia's BFI monograph

I forgot:
iconic image of birds on monkey bars

Yeah, I figured that whole sequence was a given.

I like when Jessica Tandy shoves her way past Rod and Tippi, with a strangled cry

'the birds' is kind of boring + height of "lame process shots" period yo.

Ooh, do Rear Window next!

For the record, RWF was talking to Alfred Hitchcock.

'the birds' is kind of boring + height of "lame process shots" period

Enter into the spirit of the period, you lame-o.

Haha, brainwashed film snob sheepz0Rz see name 'Hitchcock,' think "masterpiece," being blind to obvious shortcomings, easy targets for ridicule.

the thing of it is that hitch's reputation was partly built on THE VERY FACT THAT HIS PROCESS SHOTS WERE SHITTY!!! honestly, the cahiers legion of hitch stans thought his deliberate carelessness was a fine and good thing.

personally i can get into the period easier when the film properly bumps; but 'the birds' and 'marnie' were calculatedly pretentious films made to impress the critics, who he had noticed were treating him as an Serious Artist. kiss of death.

"The Trouble With Harry" is godawful and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" has a weak second half (not to mention Doris Day's fucking cloying insipidness), but anyone who says "dud" should be hit hard with a heavy hammer.

It is said that what is called the Spirit of an Age is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day, too, is the same. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.

The audio commentary on Criterion Collection's Rebecca (currently out of print) is one of the best I have ever heard...astoundingly informative.

who did it?

"Commentary by film scholar Leonard J. Leff, author of Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood"

Patrick McGilligan's excellent, recentish biog of Hitch makes the point that his pandering to/awareness of the critical discourse surrounding his films easily predates the 60s and his encounters w/ the Cahiers crowd (tho' admittedly Hitch, being something of a Francophile, was esp. pleased by their praise and attention.) Even in the 1920s, Hitch was cultivating his public image, playing up to to the trade and popular press w/ self-consciously 'arty' symbolism, expressionistic imagery/sound design and fluid camerawork, reading up on early film theory and psychoanalytic chitchat, and taking careful note of rival auteurs/critical darlings like Murnau, Ford etc. To me, THE BIRDS and MARNIE don't really seem any more pretentious and studied than, say, VERTIGO or SHADOW OF A DOUBT - it's just, as someone kind've pointed out upthread, the former are let down by dull casting, stodgy scripts and yes, some technical shortcomings (tho' the final attack on Tippi Hedren and then the silent getaway in THE BIRDS still strikes me as pretty bravura filmmaking/editing, and that film's electronic score is one of the greatest soundtracks ever.)

To me, THE BIRDS and MARNIE don't really seem any more pretentious and studied than, say, VERTIGO or SHADOW OF A DOUBT - it's just, as someone kind've pointed out upthread, the former are let down by dull casting, stodgy scripts and yes, some technical shortcomings

I can almost accept this, but those pre-Birds duds were almost all marked by dull casting and stodgy scripts: Shadow of a Doubt, sure, but also The Paradine Case, Lifeboat, The Trouble With Harry, etc.

I have not heard the Leff commentary on Rebecca, but would like to - his Hitchcock/Selznick book is excellent

Unfortunately, the commentary by Dr Drew Casper ("the Alma and Alfred Hitchcock Professor of American Film at USC", god help us) on LIFEBOAT and (in particular) the Peter Bogdanovich commentary on TO CATCH A THIEF are both wretched. The rambling Dr Casper sounds like an academic imagined by Nabokov or Terry Southern, all useless gossip and bogus image analysis; Bogdanovich does his Hitch impression while his interviewer asks him (at least three times!) what his favourite Hitchcock films are (none of which are TO CATCH A THIEF, surprise.)

Yeah, that Hitch/Selznick book was very good.

People who like To Catch A Thief might be interested in the novel The Last Match, written by the same guy who wrote the book To Catch A Thief is based on, David Dodge, and sharing the same Riviera setting.

Shadow Of A Doubt is a dud?

I like Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright's chemistry, but the script is heavy-handed; I've never understood its acclaim.

It's got its flaws but I still really dig Shadow.

Maybe they shoulda made Hume Cronyn a pedo to add some extra frisson

sorry, just had to put 'hume cronyn' and 'frisson' in the same sentence

That was quite good

Shadow as a dud = CRAZY

Patrick McGilligan's excellent, recentish biog of Hitch makes the point that his pandering to/awareness of the critical discourse surrounding his films easily predates the 60s and his encounters w/ the Cahiers crowd (tho' admittedly Hitch, being something of a Francophile, was esp. pleased by their praise and attention.) Even in the 1920s, Hitch was cultivating his public image, playing up to to the trade and popular press w/ self-consciously 'arty' symbolism, expressionistic imagery/sound design and fluid camerawork, reading up on early film theory and psychoanalytic chitchat, and taking careful note of rival auteurs/critical darlings like Murnau, Ford etc.

he's half-right, but the context of the 20s was very unlike the 50s or 60s; intellectuals got to cinema late and were playing catch-up, certainly with guys like hitchcock who grew up with it. he saw murnau at work before anyone in england could have heard of him ('nosferatu' wasn't shown in england till the late 20s). he certainly played up to the press, in some instances (circa 'the ring') to show what a highbrow he was; but he also used his 'umble roots when he wanted to.

the thing was that there wasn't anything particularly 'highbrow' about the german influence at that point -- it was easily compatible with the popular gothic fiction that hitch gre up on, it was seen in regular cinemas, by regular folks.

the point about sound is interesting coz of course *he* (with 'blackmail') converted the highbrows *to* sound -- he wasn't sucking up but showing them them something new. his contact with the self-appointed highbrows of back then was kind of minimal, and when he did appear in 'close up' (the one highbrow film mag of the late 20s and early 30s) he took the opportunity to (gently) deprecate eisenstein.

(hitch was obviously an intelligent guy but proof of his readings of psychoanalysis in the '20s have not been too forthcoming. it's one of those things that rests on supposition.)

by the cahiers era highbrow crit inhabited its own space more, so that "appreciating hollywood cinema" could seem new again -- in the 20s it was less of a big deal.

in the end i think his experimental touches in the 20s, in 'the lodger', say, are more keyed to what he thought the audience would accept than his early 60s stuff.

In any case, Number 17 <<<<<<<< The Birds

Saw Rebecca tonight for the first time in years. George Sanders looks like a young LBJ.

Anyway, it's easily in his top ten, despite the phony denouement. Joan Fontaine = most underrated element? Fontaine handles the awkwardness of a parvenue so well that we squirm, like the scene in which Mrs. Danvers quietly mocks her ("Mrs. De Winter was very particular about sauces") is grueling.

and, yeah, it's better than the novelette.

Looney writer for The Believer: "James Stewart, an amiable actor of limited resources, was the wrong man to play Scottie. The right man, the only man, would have been Henry Fonda."

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200803/?read=article_mckinney

Vertigo is called a masterpiece, but it can’t be. Stewart lacks the physical and psychological ingenuity to embody this dreadfully twisted character. Perfect for Rear Window’s humor and shivery suspense, in Vertigo he is a soft center neither projecting nor inspiring fear, his madness a monotonous mimicry.

OTM!

Casting Stewart against type was one of the best things in Vertigo. It makes his descent towards the end all the more affecting, because you don't expect Jimmy Stewart to go that low.

OTM

blah.

that guy wasted an awful lot of time on this non-question.

xpost

not entirely against type. he'd been playing crazy muthas for anthony mann for a few years by then. and an obsessive in 'rear window' obviously.

I guess you guys have never seen Rear Window, xp

it's not a non-question; it's addressing the weakest link in a ridiculously critically-regarded movie that isn't as good as the other parts of its triumvirate and that people basically like because it's more auteurist and fetishistic and doesn't have any jokes or fun that might interfere with its greatness. also, nice scenery, ok, but it looks like a graphic novel.

I don't think Vettigo is a perfect film or Hitchcock's best, but IMO this isn't because of Stewart. As for Rear Window, there's a big difference between Stewart's obsessiveness in that one and in Vertigo. In Rear Window he remains sympathetic throughout the film, because his obssession is of the sort almost everyone can relate to.

Also, Fonda might've been a more nuanced "psychological" actor, but criticizing Vertigo because of its lack of psychological realism is sorta missing the point. It's not supposed to be realistic.

isn't as good as the other parts of its triumvirate

I hate to ask, Laughing Boy, but what's the third one?

doesn't have any jokes or fun that might interfere with its greatness

RONG. Most of the stuff w/ Midge early on is fun, and even her nasty Portrait of Carlotta joke. Also "You fell into SF Bay," "The gentleman certainly knows what he wants" ... Why are ppl so clueless about the Hitch humor?

While Stewart's mania in Vertigo is odder than in RW, I don't find it 'unrelatable.'

James Stewart, an amiable actor of limited resources

WAHT. Does he mean David Niven?

He could be referring to Joan Fontaine in Rebecca.

I hate to ask, Laughing Boy, but what's the third one?

the one with the train going into the tunnel

RONG. Most of the stuff w/ Midge early on is fun, and even her nasty Portrait of Carlotta joke. Also "You fell into SF Bay," "The gentleman certainly knows what he wants" ... Why are ppl so clueless about the Hitch humor?

no, I get all those, thanks, we just have different notions of fun (yes, that's a six-foot engraved invitation), and i don't think anything about the shopping scene is supposed to be funny

that's like saying The Birds attacking the school kids isn't supposed to be FUN!

I'm not fond of Vertigo either, but with all the problems of pacing and plot incoherence, picking on Stewart makes no sense.

plot incoherence -- IT'S A DREAM

I'm not fond of Vertigo either, but with all the problems of pacing and plot incoherence, picking on Stewart makes no sense.

yeah, he's only the heart of the movie

how is 'vertigo' in a trilogy with 'rear window' and... 'nnw'? not consecutive, not even for the same studio, not with the same leading man, not with the same writer, and thematically different. 'nnw' was self-consciously fun. don't see how it fits.

oh no, not from the same studio! i called them a triumvirate, not a trilogy, as i believe many regard them - all from a short, mid-period span, all in color, all concerning similar themes (nnw certainly fits) - as the three greats. why, you prefer the declasse little b&w genre flick that opened the 60s?

yeah, he's only the heart of the movie

And if the movie works, it's thanks to how well he handles the conceit: the aw-shucks demeanor is a mere facade.

(Anatomy of a Murder does this better, though).

The problem for me has always been the denouement in the middle of the movie.

you mean the 'secret' that AJH moved because he didn't want it to be the crux of the film?

oh no, not from the same studio! i called them a triumvirate, not a trilogy, as i believe many regard them - all from a short, mid-period span, all in color, all concerning similar themes (nnw certainly fits) - as the three greats. why, you prefer the declasse little b&w genre flick that opened the 60s?

-- gabbneb, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 4:13 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ech, hitchcock's style changed pretty markedly from studio to studio. anyway i have no idea what links nnw to the other two, any more than other hitchcock films. i'm not sure if i prefer 'psycho' but it's no more of a genre flick than 'nnw'.

Jeez, guys, I'm very fond of Vertigo and feel no reason to say I'm not.

Vertigo's just suffering the inevitable backlash because it's been "Hitchcock's best film" for too long.

<i>you mean the 'secret' that AJH moved because he didn't want it to be the crux of the film?</i>

Yeah, I can see Hitchcock's point but I don't think it works. It kind of deflates the movie putting it where he does.

i liked it well before it knew it was a A Big Deal -- one of the first hitchcocks i even saw. the believer article feels pretty inconsequential.

xp: well, it deflates a lesser movie that he didn't want it to be! SURPRISE, she fooled ya Scottie!

C/D - Chicago Hope's Hitchcock tribute episode, filmed in black and white and featuring Tippi Hendren as a mad motel owner. I wish I were making this up.

or "The Flintstone" episode parodying "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," complete with monocle-sporting neighbor named "Alvin Brickrock."

the impact of vertigo would be severely weakened if scottie were a haunted nutcase from the start -- a lot of its power comes from the fact that for the first half-hour or so, he's just plain old jimmy stewart.

complaining that vertigo has pacing problems is kind of like complaining that king lear is too long: it's probably true but who cares?

I'd rather read Gloucester's speeeches than watch Kim Novak stare blankly, but that's just me.

yeah, i'd say that's just you.

"Vertigo's just suffering the inevitable backlash because it's been "Hitchcock's best film" for too long."

I'm pretty sure, if this is true, it's a recent phenom. It wasn't always so critically well-regarded.

it's been that way since its re-release in the 80s

I don't think it's GREAT but it's got awesome set pieces (Jimmy Stewart shaking Kim Novak: "You were a very apt PUPIL!").

although it's a masterpiece next to Marnie.

I'm rooting for a Topaz reassesment

Marnie's fine (mainly because everything in it is just a little "off"). I do believe though that as good as Hedren is in the lead, the film would have perhaps been better off w/a different lead actress. Hitch's blonde tunnel-vision hurt him a little bit there.

14 disc box set for £18.

why no North by North West?

These boxed sets are often a bit random. Great tip though, Gooblar. I think it's just on the side of not being likely to be a pricing error, so I've ordered it.

Yeah, there are actually a bunch of good deals there now; I think they're probably trying to get rid of a bunch of overstock.

that's a box set of (most) of the hitchcock films owned by universal - warner bros own the rights to NORTH BY NORTHWEST. again, you can get it as part of a cheap box set

the universal box has been available pretty cheaply for a couple of years, btw, but this is the first time I've seen it under £20

Amazon has it for £17.97

VAT-slashing price war!

whoa i forget how cheap amazon is (looking at other dvd box sets); you can really blow a lot of money there

paul merton's hitchcock docu on bbc4 last night was a pretty weak runthrough of the brit years that celebrated hitch as, first and foremost, a kind of melies-like visual trick specialist - nice to see gil taylor and roy ward baker interviewed tho

doc was bookended by a pinsharp digital print of THE LADY VANISHES - as if to disprove merton's 'thesis', the obvious model shots are by far the weakest part of that movie - and then REBECCA, which i am slightly shamefaced to admit that i'd never seen before. the opening sequence ("i dreamed...") is so good and strong that it takes a while for the film to recover - olivier's performance/line delivery is especially ODD and distracting - but all the scenes w/ mrs danvers are of course pure gold, and the final image of the burning embroidered pillow is powerfully evocative on all sorts of levels. some of the material - mrs danvers' obsessive passion/lust for rebecca, maxim's sexual ambivalence, rebecca's adulterous affair and suspected pregnancy - seems quite 'daring' for the time. and george sanders is a great blackmailing cad.

also: hilariously dated scenes of pub landlords and friendly coppers showing forelock tugging deference to lord of the manor mr dewinter

i was pretty meh on the p-mert doc... but also extremely relieved. i've been working on english hitchcock for, like, ever, and had they uncovered the amazing new shit that i've uncovered, i'd be pretty miffed. to say the least. anyway: they didn't.

i dunno if it was more interesting for newcomers, but i found the film-by-film approach got a bit boring. also, it relied way too much on interviews with hitchcock, who was a pretty evasive guy.

we simply do not know very much about his first 27-odd years on earth. i was hoping they might have uncovered something there, rather than retailing the 'he got locked up' story.

closer to what i am working on, 1) nobody used the word montage when hitch made 'the ring' (1927); 2) hithcock claimed to have seen only one russian film as of 1930, 'potemkin'; 3) the kuleshov experiment bit was all wrong. the whole point is that the actor's face is blank, not smiling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv4BwEGPQbM

I thought this was a stunning, stunning take (warning lengthy film crit):

http://www.chrismarker.org/a-free-replay-notes-on-vertigo/

definitely worked up my appetite for a Rescreen.

has anyone here seen ALL of hitch's films, including the silents? it's my goal for the new year.

I know ONE person who's seen Waltzes from Vienna.If you ever come across a copy, let us know!!!

But I've seen all of the ones I can, even Elstree Calling which Hitch dismissed.

http://www.thecastrotheatre.com/coming-soon.html

You know about this, right, Steve?

ooh, thx !!! i did not know!

I've seen everything post-1939 except Stage Fright, most of the British talkies and a couple silents.

vertigo (no matter how many times you see it, it's always more twisted than you remember)

also funnier, but maybe that's just me.

― sarahel, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 08:32 (1 week ago) Bookmark

i am watching this tonight. after rear window and nxnw i am ready to have my mind blown and my senses thrilled a third time round

― Electric Universe (wherever that is) (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 6 January 2010 18:32 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is such a slow-burner!! gotta say i didn't see the twist coming. i'd already worked out a far more outlandish one in which midge was madeleine :D that'll teach me to second-guess!

midge is way hotter and saucier and generally more attractive than the kim novak character obv. snappy chick who paints and has a sense of humour? will take that ahead of doomed tragic...oh wait maybe that's the point of the movie!

― Electric Universe (wherever that is) (acoleuthic), Thursday, 7 January 2010 04:47 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(it's not, but it's telling that he can only pursue a remembrance of death, like madeleine in her act...as that chris marker crit piece says, midge is painted out entirely for the second half)

― Electric Universe (wherever that is) (acoleuthic), Thursday, 7 January 2010 05:22 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

wonder if this movie wd have been better if it had confirmed the dream by ending with stewart in the hospital sitting bolt upright and grinning painfully like jonathan pryce at the end of 'brazil'

hmm

btw now i've seen the 'holy trinity' i've gotta say they're all AWESOME, wd rank them maybe rear window > nxnw > vertigo, but they're all different. first one's the date movie, second's the james bond, third's the slow descent into the inferno. vertigo suffers a little from being a mite unsatisfying right at the end, although i hadn't formulated the dream theory at that stage, and it'd have been better if i had. the main thing is that even with the dream theory, even with this expression of a man trying to reclaim something impossible, it doesn't feel quite as fundamental as the other two.

of course, rear window is one of the all-time great date movies (what a fucken script!) and nxnw is better than every james bond film put together and given a healthy anabolic injection of awesome

maybe need to see vertigo again more than the other two?

also it's unclear how much the kim novak character loves james stewart, or what her motivations are? i quite like to read it that stewart semi-deliberately destroys her, whether in actuality or in his 'dream'. because then stewart becomes evil. which makes the movie twice as cool as it already was. this man, becoming evil!

it isn't as breezy as the other two movies. it's poetic, but anguished. rear window is poetic, and it is as light on its feet and as exhilarating as movies can be. also the chemistry between the two leads in RW is WAY more powerful. in V it's more desperation than chemistry. they're brought together by duress, deception and illusion. in RW they're brought together by mutual belief and understanding. aw maybe i'm just an old sop.

i'll stop now.

man i LOVE the final act of Vertigo absolutely! find it incredibly satisfying all way through to the "i heard.."

you're totally right about the chemistry/desperation in the films' respective couples - but i think that's why i personally have to love Vertigo more, it's just a swarming, encompassing dream-sickness that you're watching in the final bits, vs. a more linear though still quite effective tightening of suspense in RW

also adding to what you're saying Novak's motivations - i don't know if she really fell if love with Stewart up through the first tower scene, but after that she basically became the husband's plaything and was tossed aside and abandoned, so by the time she meets in the third act she's also been at least somewhat devastated, used, broken, guilty - heck she's still hanging on to that souvenir - alone in that apartment. does she really believe he's never going to figure it out, or does she actually want to be caught?

not to slight the other two even a bit - NXNW especially, probably the most flat-out entertaining Hitch film, and RW's pretty great too but Vertigo's the one to me that really, really gets under the skin

Well, as many have said there's the chance that the second half is Stewart's vision, which makes her dilemmas less interesting (albeit that the way he 'turns' her possession into a something far more literal is delicious). There's the tiniest element of Vertigo that it's fucked-up for the sake of being fucked-up, and a weeny bit contrived (with the vertigo); I know it's expressionist and I know it's basically a horror movie but the concerns of RW and NXNW held me in a slightly more vice-like grip. Vertigo is still a fine, fine movie. Wondrously shot, and the pursuit scenes (all of them) are glorious.

I think the thing that puts Vertigo over the top is that you'll find yourself watching it literally dozens of times, all the while the experience only gets richer.

second's the james bond

hmmmm, NxNW is more like Bond with humanity.

btw From Russia w/ Love ripped off the cropduster scene.

Yes (xp). It has the escapism, free spirit and pacing of a Bond movie (Bond applies screwball tropes to action), but it has a believable, confused and wholly sympathetic character in the main role, and James Mason as some sort of awesome Bond/Bond villain superhybrid. It's Bond but with acknowledgement that life is one big accident. It has you cheering where Bond has you glazed.

I was saying to myself throughout 'this is James Bond! but three-dimensional'

NxNW totally rips off 39 steps.

(and with a killer script. OH btw the train scene in Casino Royale...take out the Rolexes and the Oxbridge oneupmanship, and put in a bit of chemistry...)

NxNW totally rips off 39 steps.

Not seen 39 Steps for about 10 years (true story) and need to see it again but there's nothing wrong with a director trying to refine his own craft and express something he can express in terms he prefers.

it's a refinement. xp

a believable, confused and wholly sympathetic character in the main role

sort of, but Grant is established as enough of an asshole in the first 3 minutes to make his predicament a blast.

He's a fast-talking, illusory ad exec, and his taxi patter is intended to be both boring and assholish, yeah. Plus, he's an entertainingly coarse drunk. He's not a 'nice guy' at all; he's a city slicker half living on his wits and half barely surviving a gloriously escalating situation.

However, he's sympathetic, because he's assholish in ways we can see in ourselves! Aspirational, well-to-do, grand.

...and then he becomes a superhero.

he has that line about "expedient" lying, and then no one believes him for most of the film.

Call it Morbs' feminine intuition.

(an accidental superhero)

Haha! This is actually true. Especially in the auction scene where he plays that to his advantage. He's never quite pinned down by anyone (except the girl).

The very last shot is one of the funniest things I've ever seen btw

It's like the end of Preston Sturges' Hail The Conquering Hero turned up to 15

Hitchcock called it "the only symbol" in the movie. xp

Love the look on Mother's face when she snatches the bribe from his hand in the Plaza lobby.

"That was mother" might be the funniest line of the film

just saw 'stage fright' and i'd say it's possibly my favorite hitch without stewart or grant. genuinely unpredictable and funny, and the acting somehow feels a lot more natural than the other hitch films of that period (much as i love AH, i often find the acting in a lot of his work off-puttingly wooden).

and jane wyman, damn!

http://www.classicfreemoviedownloads.com/jane%20wyman%2001%20500.jpg

I still haven't seen Stage Fright, the only one post-Jamaica Inn of which that's true, I think.

Glenn Kenny via Dave Kehr: Hitchcock borrows an image from Cecil B DeMille (37 years later):

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/04/demillehitchcock.html

Got a DVD of The Lodger in Oxfam for 2 quid. Haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but pleased.

Probably won't get much agreement here, but I was writing about Hud the other day, and I said that I consider it a much, much better film than The Birds. They both came out in '63; because of Hitchcock's auteurist standing--as opposed to Martin Ritt, who has none--The Birds is the much more famous and written about film.

I love Hud, and, yeah, it's better than The Birds.

like both, prefer The Birds, but haven't seen Hud in awhile.

last night i couldn't sleep so i watched the first two episodes of hitchcock presents. what fun!

i liked 'the spy who came in from the cold' and maybe a few other ritt films but im not sure he is as distinctive a filmmaker as hitchcock. i don't like 'the birds' much but it's sort of obvi why hitch has the auteurist standing he has. for sure too much is written about him but all the same.

They're hard to compare, being so different...I'll concede that there's probably more going on visually in The Birds, even though James Wong Howe's black & white cinematography in Hud has a nice spare, classical look to it. But when you get down to performances, it's not even close. Taylor and Hedren are typically wooden, whereas Newman and O'Neal are fantastic. Especially O'Neal--she'd be on my short-list of favourite female performances ever. Anyway, I'm glad you guys have a favorable opinion of it; I feel like it's an unfairly neglected film. (Love The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, too.)

The Birds always strikes me as Hitchcock challenging himself to see if he could make a suspense flick using the most outlandishly silly premise he could imagine. It only works if you allow yourself to swallow (no pun) the premise entirely. I never can, so it has always seemed to me a very silly film.

read a good book saying he was shooting for a 'real art-film' with the birds, having realized all these serious young men took him seriously now -- had its debut at MoMA iirc

Yeah, you have to turn your brain off a bit. I do like The Birds, though, especially how it clears the ground for something like Night of the Living Dead.

I've been getting Hitchcock Presents discs from Netflix for a while now, I'm up to season 4 (though they stream on Hulu too.) Absolutely love them. (Season 1 #1 "Revenge" is ultra-awesome.)

One more vote for Hud > Birds, but yeah they're so different stylewise it's really oranges/apples. (I just prefer oranges.) I just saw Hud for the very first time not long ago, so the "newness" of it for me may color my judgement a bit. Great, great film.

I've been getting Hitchcock Presents discs from Netflix for a while now, I'm up to season 4 though they stream on Hulu too.

YES!!! :D

Just this image gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies -- conjures up late night TV as a kid:

http://epguides.com/AlfredHitchcockPresents/logo.jpg

sorry, I like the CHARACTERS in The Birds, and the way the fantastic menace comes out of their interpersonal tensions. (It took me awhile to look at the film this way, I guess Robin Wood gets the credit.)

I mean, you don't think it's ABOUT birds massing and attacking people, do you?

that's the problem!

read some Robin Wood, yo

Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette ("How do you like our little hamlet?") are particularly amazing, and the Cartwright girl.

I didn't find Wood particularly convincing on The Birds; he trod suspiciously auteurist ground.

Wood's regard for The Birds and Marnie was...off the charts. I think it's fine to approach the The Birds either way. But because Taylor and Hedren are so bland, to me it's not worth the effort to parse out what's going on psychologically; I think it's a better film if you stick with the birds massing and attacking people.

I suspect you are a Paulette, Soto!

I think it's fine to approach the The Birds either way. But because Taylor and Hedren are so bland, to me it's not worth the effort to parse out what's going on psychologically;

otm

how do you feel about Hedren and Sean Connery? I think she's quite good in Marnie particularly.

I've only seen Marnie once, about 10 years ago (introduced by Wood). It's one of those films where I'll finish reading Wood and think, "Wow, I'd love to see that," and then you see the film and it's "Huh?" I hesitate to say any more because it was so long ago. Another major Wood puzzler: Rally Round the Flag, Boys!

weird, just today i was reading david thomson's bk abt psycho etc, including this paragraph abt The Birds: "The screenwriter, Evan Hunter, who had witnessed Hitch's indifference to what the birds might mean firsthand, was now amused, yet distressed, by the way the director was available for any and every parable of significance. Hunter had known that Hitch had no other aim except to frighten the audience. But the subject of earnest interviews needed more weight. And so The Birds - which was in postproduction during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 - became a story about the end of the world and man's complacency. In truth, of course, it was a strange sadomasochistic transference between actress and director."

i think 'the birds' is great, and agree with morbs about the supporting performances being excellent. plus it's the only hitch i've ever found genuinely scary --- the last scene with hedren coming up the stairs espec.

also tbi i don't find the premise 'silly' at all -- i mean, hell, it could happen! if anything it strikes me as more plausible than the setup of 'vertigo.'

The Birds is also very much a companion piece to Psycho, in themes and obv the shower scene's resemblance to some of the Tippi-attacked scenes.

I thought growing awareness of his reputation among cineasts triggered Hitch's about-face. When were his interviews with Truffaut?

around the time of Torn Curtain, I think.

That's kind of a weird quote from Thomson. Hitch didn't talk with the screenwriter about subtext, so therefore there isn't any?

the truffaut interviews were in 62 or 63

don't trust thomson much these days

"In truth, of course, it was a strange sadomasochistic transference between actress and director."

in truth. of course.

Yeah, the Thomson bk is a big mess - there's a horribly under-researched chapter on films that were directly inspired by Psycho that ends with the Red Riding trilogy and doesn't mention Mario Bava, ffs - and liable to enrage you, history mayne. Funnily enough, by far the best chapter is on Hitchcock's critical reception post-Psycho, that takes in the Cahiers crowd and the Truffaut interviews (mainly recorded in August 1962, just after Hitchcock had finished the Birds, published 1966), VF Perkins and Movie, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael (the Birds is 'a bad picture at every level'), and Penelope Houston's similarly anti-auteurist essay 'The Figure in the Carpet', published in Sight and Sound, and (in truth, of course) Robin Wood.

that penelope houston essay is rly good iirc. i 'used it in class' the other week

but if you only get one book about psycho...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Hard-Look-Psycho-Silver/dp/1844573583/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1301991166&sr=8-3

DT reviewed it the first time it came out

Cool, don't know that partic durg text so have added it to my wish list

avoid at all costs: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psycho-Shower-History-Cinemas-Famous/dp/0826427693/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301994329&sr=1-1

Evan Hunter, source of THE TRUTH on Hitchcock.

The H/T book was published in '67, I'm pretty sure they discussed the oven scene from TC.

There were some follow-up interviews conducted after the 1962 session

i love how dirty the jokes get in his 70s movies

"Evan Hunter, source of THE TRUTH on Hitchcock"

Yes - I just like how they discarded the very simple possibility that Hitchcock couldn't be interested in discussing a possible subtext of the movie with Hunter.

but if you only get one book about psycho...

http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/1000_Frames_of_Vertigo_%281958%29

Despite all the reading of Vertigo as Hitchcock's "confession," on seeing it for maybe the twelfth time I prefer to see him as Gavin Elster rather than Scottie.

btw never saw this 'foreign censorship ending' to Vertigo til lately (obv SPOILER):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imbLXT2K--M

Watched Dial M for the first time via Netflix Instant the other night. Was kinda "meh" about it. It can't avoid looking and feeling stagebound, obvs, but at least he got some interesting camera angles in at times. Liked the wordless, economical setup at the beginning, Milland was appropriately sleazy and not-as-clever-as-he-thinks-he is, Anthony Dawson was so unappealing and unctuous you would've been crazy not to be thrilled when Kelly killed him.

the Siren's quest to help the National Film Preservation Foundation stream the unearthed Hitch silent The White Shadow (he was AD and writer):

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2012/02/for-love-of-film-iii-last-night-i.html

sounds like the kind of project Kickstarter was designed for - likely to get more publicity (thus donations) via that route, too

http://i.imgur.com/y8gkL.jpg

how is that not don rickles

That's what she said.

Final day of the Hitchcock Blogathon

it's his 113th birthday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okLiLsncyi0

I guess he'll be having a big party and then leaving the Shire forever. :(

also, there's a new (well, recent) edition of this book I didn't know existed:

http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/%22Writing_with_Hitchcock%22_-_by_Steven_DeRosa

Didn't look at this, so didn't realize it was his birthday till they mentioned it on the radio. Happy birthday, Alfred--we argue about your retired-detective film like every single day.

and damn, Marnie is so much better than Strangers on a Train.

I used to think that too. The last viewing wasn't as kind.

MORBS OTM

feh

Marnie is like the Ruth Roman bits in SOAT giving precedence.

also Shadow of a Doubt is almost as great as he thought it was.

(again, the worst bit is Macdonald Carey courting Teresa Wright)

humph. Too many of the performances in SOAD look indifferently directed: overstatement etc.

strangers on a train might be my favorite hitchcock, though, so...

would like to see marnie again, though. it's been a while.

actors usta be BIG, Alfred.

it's the Hitch pictures that got smaller

Family Plot is a better comedy than The Trouble with Harry, too.

That is OTM, but so is Psycho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxMslIwsCZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opZJwGkNRMs

This looks fun and false as hell.

Which one?

I don't quite understand why these films, why now, 32 years postmortem? ALl the people who are interested in the lore have read a ton of it, can't see them interested in 2 hours of dramatization.

The audience for these films fetishize acting as caricature.

First I've heard of either of these. I dunno, I haven't really immersed myself in all that much Hitchcock lore, but they look enjoyable to me on a My Week With Marilyn or Notorious Bettie Page level.

yeah, My Week With Marilyn, ugh, but at least the T&A biopic factor is there (and Lohan as Liz Taylor) whereas it's just support here w/ Scarlett as Janet Leigh.

The Psycho censorship transgressions/battles are way more interesting than the Hitchcocks' marital dysfunctions.

the toby jones one looks fun, hopkins one looks like hot steaming shit

My Week with Marilyn was meh. Biopics in miniature form are still biopics.

Though they at least solve the problem of absent or laughably forced narrative thrust.

the anti-biopic sentiment around here is baffling, there are plenty of great ones.

not really, they hadda squeeze in as many of poor Norma Jean's offscreen tragedies as they could into that one forgotten little British film's making.

xp

Edvard Munch and Mommie Dearest, sure.

besides Andrei Rublev, what? xxp

Haynes's Superstar

My Winnipeg an entertaining bio-hazard-pic.

biopics - which ones are good?

'an angel at my table,' 'young mr lincoln,' 'lawrence of arabia' all great.

xp surprisingly short thread

unsurprisingly

Another film thread discussion shut down by ILX film snobs. All in a day's work.

hi-5

'alexander nevsky,' 'prick up your ears,' 'raging bull' of course. surely 'passion of joan of arc' ought to count if 'my week with marilyn' counts. 'w' is probably oliver stone's best film.

anyway the point is that not every biopic is 'gandhi.'

point is an awful lot of them are A Beautiful Mind

Or Ray.

yes, there is not-by-the-numbers, but pretty rare.

(and neither of these Hitch things are biopics, they cover consecutive periods in his early 60s.)

mary harron's two biopics are great too.

but yes i doubt any hitchcock biopic would be any good.

If the first thing most people are going to take away from the movie is that the actor playing the famous person gave a great impersonation, then it basically counts as a biopic imo.

there's a rash of these things made for UK TV now, basically indistinguishable, revolving around impersonations of much-loved 60s/70s TV stars and a banal run-through of some "secret" "scandal" in their private lives

anyway, Hitch bio shd be 30 minute 1-take scene of young Hitch getting locked up in the police cell and then cut straight to him throwing birds at Tippi Hedren

Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Three's Company' (xpost)

'Hitchcock' in 5 Seconds

'w' is probably oliver stone's best film.

tsk tsk, we might've accepted Born on the 4th of July

You two got the right ta-ta but the wrong ho-ho.

'w' is the only one that actually has any insight into its subject. i know y'all love 'JFK' and it is kind of a campy masterpiece but boy did it have a dire effect.

ok, JFK is a deathopic. I thot for a sec Eric was invoking The Doors.

anyone seen his Juno And The Paycock? I went to see it with a friend during the season at the BFI, we'd both seen a lot of the other ones that were on and me being Irish I'd done it at school so was interested. it was quite good. even had the Hitchcock "he's evil!" close-up on Johnny Boyle. really worth seeing, if in part cos it's a great play to begin with.

I thot for a sec Eric was invoking The Doors.

that'd be me haha

altho W. was on tv last night and yeah it is v entertaining and even insightful

got Juno on DVD and to my shame i don't think i've ever watched it - it's in a set with some other early films is my excuse

it's very rough around the edges, but was nice watching something that has story at its core. few weird accents. there's one character who's basically meant to be "a jew" except sort of like if dracula was from dublin, he has to be seen/heard to be believed, whatever they were going for doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did.

30s British movies are a treasure trove of lost accents, most of them probly did exist at some point

there was a small jewish community in dublin for sure, it's more the feeling that it's sort of anti-semitism mixed with bad acting or a bad accent. my friend with whom i saw it is of jewish descent so it provided a nice contrast to her irish mockery after.

ah i take your point, anti-semitic caricatures still going strong in Lean's Oliver Twist in 1948 anyway

haha I liked Ray very much but mostly because it gave young black actresses semi-strong roles for once.

kinda dodgy, especially given there's no jew in the original play, hitch would have had to write in a caricature. it's a tailor haranguing the family for money, of course. xpost

got Juno on DVD and to my shame i don't think i've ever watched it - it's in a set with some other early films is my excuse

― thread lock holiday (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, October 10, 2012 5:16 PM

This may be the same set we have -- something like 20 early Hitches on 4-5 DVDs? Ashamed to say I haven't watched any of them yet either.

mine's just 5, got it because i wanted to see Rich and Strange but it also has Juno, Secret Agent, The Farmer's Wife and The Lady Vanishes. don't think i've watched The Farmer's Wife either

bloody hell John Laurie's in Juno too, will watch this week

Seeing Alfred Hitchcock and Juno mentioned together is giving me visions of Michael Cera getting impaled on a weather vane after battling w/J.K. Simmons.

while Thelma Ritter amiably helps Ellen Page abort her c hild.

Brody on how guilt/concealment issues make Marnie such a personal film:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/10/how-hitchocks-obsession-with-tippi-hedren-shaped-marnie.html

Oh my god, Hitchcock is soooooo lame.

i believe it. it looks like something I'd pay to not see

The Girl looked like a much more interesting movie and I didn't even bother to watch that, even though it was on the Television Set as well as On Demand for Free even right now.

Watching The Girl now.

Miller is a lot better than I expected, Jones is creepily on the money. Sorta feels like it's missing something thoug, but I can't quite place it.

I really never thought of Frenzy as underrated -- it's stone great, and so is Shadow of a Doubt -- and it doesn't appear to be given how often it's mentioned here.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/the-criticwire-survey-underrated-hitchcock

I like Under Capricorn, I Confess and The Paradine Case too.

Someone gave me this for my birthday last month:

http://0.tqn.com/d/horror/1/0/E/_/-/-/AlfredHitchcockPremiere.jpg

When I looked on Amazon, lots of reader complaints about defective discs...I was feeling guilty about the person overspending, now I'm starting to wonder.

Hopkins' make-up may actually make him look less like Hitchcock.

the girl was ok but the movie felt perfunctory and just kind of 'ended'. miller and tobey were very good though; he's a much better hitchcock than hopkins, if the trailers were anything to go by.

Hopkins' make-up may actually make him look less like Hitchcock.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 20, 2012 4:35 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he looks so fucked up

xpost yeah I felt like it was missing something..kinda was expecting a bit more. it looked very good, though the hitchcockian homages got a little old after a while.

I really wish those two (apparently) POS films wd be discussed elsewhere

well sorrreeeee

i wish i had a pony

Furio?

sorry i'd rather discuss the guy's films, just like on the Polanski thread that got trashed.

I think the word is "raped."

I think it got trashed first, and then raped.

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/screen/reviews/181034041.html

I’d rather be watching Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake.

Pretty much.

LOL, seriously.

jesus tell me that's fake

It's absolutely for real. The more I think about it, the more this seems like the worst movie ever. It's riotously shitty.

"He helps her into the car" = "He pretends she's a steak at Ernie's and smears horseradish on her."

so does this movie have a shot at the coveted My Week With Marilyn slot

It's absolutely for real. The more I think about it, the more this seems like the worst movie ever. It's riotously shitty.

― Bobby Ken Doll (Eric H.), Thursday, November 29, 2012 9:08 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i have no problem believing this

oh my god at that script picture

Helen Mirren could probably slip into Best Actress, especially since her character keeps saying "I am Alma Reville." Actor's too crowded for Hopkins to have more than an outside shot.

it reminds me of the fake michael bay's batman script

http://my.spill.com/profiles/blog/show?id=947994%3ABlogPost%3A355506

they don't call the Academy the Masters of Suspense for nothing!

It gives you a PECK on the cheek.

Did I mention a raven lands on Hitchcock's shoulder at the end of this movie?

there's so many lines in the trailer alone that make me cringe. like a reporter going "mr. hitchcock, you're the most famous director in the history of the medium... but you're 60 years old!"

Did I tell YOU there's a scene where Hitch sits down in a train and Robert Walker goes "Excuse me -- is this seat taken?"

Did I tell YOU there's a scene where Vera Miles is wearing a black bra? Or was it a white one?

Also, he loves him some imported, canned foie gras.

Does this at least approach Mommie Dearest levels of camp, or is it completely worthless?

It's not really campy at all. Just a run-of-the-mill hatchet job that highlights each and every one of the pitfalls of this pitfall-heavy genre.

this O'Hehir piece is kind of intriguing, as he finds Hitch's craft a "baleful influence in film history."

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/24/the_strange_case_of_alfred_hitchcock/

tbh there aren't many directors who do Hitch well so if he's to be judged by the baleful qualities of his hack imitators...

It’s clearly relevant to Hitchcock’s films that he was a neurotic mess (and quite likely a highly unpleasant and unhappy person) who had unresolved mommy issues and lusted fruitlessly after a parade of icy blondes. But those things don’t explain his seductive, paranoid, mistaken-identity dreamscapes any more than Scott Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and bigotry can explain “The Great Gatsby,” or Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism can explain “The Ring of the Nibelungen.” Indeed, as Richard Brody of the New Yorker recently suggested in a post about Hedren and “Marnie” (a movie I pretty much can’t stand), the fact that Hitchcock was a defective personality may make his artistic achievement greater rather than lesser.

It and Gertrud form the great 1964 diptych of defective sexuality.

I like Marnie too, tho it falls a little short of Gertrud.

(add Dr Strangelove for a triptych)

True and true.

is Bruce Dern the last working actor who's been in 2 Hitchcock films? I guess Norman Lloyd is retired.

Hedren has 5 credits in the last 2 years and 3 in various stages of production.

ok, i wondered about that

btw, UK MWKTM on Criterion in January. Need to resee.

http://www.criterion.com/films/27999-the-man-who-knew-too-much

Me too. I need to rewatch a lot of the British ones. Don't have particularly fond memories of many aside from The Lady Vanishes.

The one w/ Sylvia Sidney & husband running the movie theater is pretty amazing. (I keep forgetting it's based on a Conrad novel)

Sabotage, and my favorite of the Britcocks.

the PBS outlet in NY used to show the Britcocks ALL the time when I was a teen.

Kinda starting to think that non-Lifetime biopics are the absolutely worst film genre.

Oh right, I liked that one too. Best bomb theory in practice.

funny you mentioned Sabotage as I remembered it yesterday when watching Day Night Day Night.

xxpost they very much are. Want to lobby a mod to change this thread title:

biopics - which ones are good?

to a "defend the indefensible"

Hoberman enthuses about Lorre in the Brit Man Who... (dead rong about the '50s version tho).

http://blogs.artinfo.com/moviejournal/2013/01/02/hitchcocks-peter-lorre-is-too-much/

yeah, the 50s version is lazily criticised by people who won't recognise it's a different film to the original. Lorre is amazing of course, cos he's Lorre. really wish he'd made a dozen B&Ws with Hitch.

watched Saboteur all the way thru for maybe the first time this week - i seem to know the last 15 minutes by heart but have always managed to miss bits from earlier. really enjoyed it, obv - some lovely set pieces and the only real negative for me is the clunkiness of some of the more obvious propaganda speeches. i figure he actually reworked it as much into the second Man Who Knew Too Much as he did NxNW, the whole society ball section especially. nice to have an unfamiliar guy (to me) as the wrong suspect for a change.

anyway, i was just in the mood. it's probly a shade long but it's an under-rated blast imo.

Robin Wood gets mentioned a number of times on this thread; found a cheap copy of his Hitchcock book with this cover on the way home tonight (only s second edition, unfortunately).

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/wood-hitchcock.jpg

now you can get Revisited and compare

Isn't there something after Revisited as well, Re-Make/Re-Model?

US tour of BFI-restored early flms:

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/rare-early-hitchcock-pics-to-tour-u-s-1200326013/

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/576925_10151486503447488_1840767835_n.jpg

Maybe this photo is famous, but I'd never seen it until this morning:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1nr5p7YBC1qm1ld5o1_500.jpg

(From a TV intro, I'm guessing.)

yeah yeah yeah

Guillermo del Toro's brief analysis on the Man Who Knew Too Much Criterion is rich. I wonder if his book on AJH will ever be translated? or has it?

watched north by northwest last night. that is all, tbh, i don't need morbs shouting at me this time on a sunday

lol

fine, u & Eric have had yr masterpiece vaccines

I find the best times for a lecture from Morbius are Wednesday mornings or Thursday afternoons. I have no explanation.

up to rushmore it's a stone cold classic

ironically, the cold stone was the problem

Martin Landau is about to step on your fingers.

away with him, google image search suggests he weighs about 5 stone these days

fine, u & Eric have had yr masterpiece vaccines

Because I dislike precisely one accepted Hitch masterpiece out of dozens.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/picture/2013/aug/12/alfred-hitchcock-film-statistics#zoomed-picture

According to the last graphic, the 4 untouchable classics when critics, "film fans" and the general public are given equal weight are:

Rear Window
North By Northwest
Notorious
Psycho

Those four are exactly right, but I would have thought by now that Vertigo would have moved into the inner circle. I'm going to start asking everyone I know if they're a film fan or a general public.

I'm fine with adding Vertigo and possibly Shadow of a Doubt to those four. Britcock has it's masterpieces but they are just a simpler species of fish.

Shadow of a Doubt is top three for me, but I thought it was still very underseen.

Actually, come to think of it, I thought there was general consensus among critics/non-critics on The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes.

according to that diagram vertigo and strangers on a train are the ones critics/"fans" like but that the general public cannot countenance

this is my favorite statistic in there: 20% of hitchcock dvd sales are north by northwest.

can't decide whether i care least for the opinions of critics, film fans or the general public

http://www.barbican.org.uk/film/event-detail.asp?ID=15029

Hitchcock’s East End is a season of screenings and unique events that celebrates Alfred Hitchcock’s connection to Waltham Forest. For our opening event we celebrate Hitchcock’s masterpiece – Vertigo.

IDGI

Strangers on a Train simply isn't shown by AMC as much as the others.

Vertigo still fails miserably within the "general public" sector.

this is my favorite statistic in there: 20% of hitchcock dvd sales are north by northwest.

I could puke right here.

of course, it's too weird

there are trees in Vertigo, Nood

Vertigo still fails miserably within the "general public" sector.

You, sir, are no movie critic-slash-film fan.

step away from the sacred cow, mister

are the London scenes in the 50s Man Who Knew Too Much from Waltham Forest? they're some of my favourite "creepy emptiness of sleepy outer city" shots ever

I took a couple of film classes in college, one of which was a sort of combined history-of-cinema/film language course taught by a guy named Bill Allman, a drama/theatre professor. He chose two Hitchcocks to show in class: Strangers On A Train and Shadow Of A Doubt.

step away from the sacred cow, mister

mmm skirt steak from sacred cow

waltham forest is not a forest

I do find the film fan/general public thing amusing. Do they differentiate by number of films seen in a year, or by someone's evaluation of the quality of films? Is one Weerasethakul worth more or less than two P.T. Andersons and an Adam Sandler?

Pretty sure "film fan" = IMDB user

I'll raise you one Joe give you three Mizoguchis.

Pretty sure "film fan" = IMDB user

Yeah. The footnotes say that "film fans" = IMDb voters and "general public" = DVD sales.

you guys have to remember Alfred thinks Tootsie is a great film

you're pretty much alone with that scorn, bud

http://www.moviemartyr.com/1959/somelikeithot.htm

David Thomson has a Hitchcock piece up today:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114225/hitchcock-review-david-thomson

"Where is America? I don’t think we see it until Psycho, which uses actual geography, abandoned back roads, a shabby motel, and out-of-the-way towns where gruesomeness takes twenty years to surface."

That matches my own experience, with the exception of Shadow of a Doubt. That feels pretty American, or at least the small-town version of America you got from movies in the '40s.

no America in Vertigo's SF and Cali locations?

"The villain in Vertigo is very English, and he makes San Francisco seem like Fortnum & Mason."

Not being British, I don't know what that means...My sense is that Thomson means feel more than locales.

I should make clear the piece is a tribute to Hitchcock, not an attack--that's just one small point along the way.

yeah i wasn't being defensive just questioning his argument. i went back over that - there might be some point about SF, altho i feel that it's as much a character as the actors in some respects, but beyond that the out of town locations feel essentially Californian to me (who's never been there) and not landmarks for the sake of it - it has the same vibe to me as the use of London in Sabotage or The Man Who Knew Too Much

i can see a point about Psycho being the only film thoroughly rooted in an American sensibility tho - that might be a different argument, because i think Americana pops up throughout his US work

Saboteur, NxNW have road movie elements
The Wrong Man feels threatened by a particularly American version of democratic process
what you said about Shadow of a Doubt feels true of The Trouble with Harry to me too

Everything about TTWH is so awkward, though, that its vision of small town America can't help but feel equally off.

North by Northwest too, yes--that slipped my mind. Not necessarily even Mount Rushmore, but all crazy road-movie stuff that leads them there.

it's a nice little piece, it's interesting to think of Psycho as Hitch's uniquely American movie. i think Thomson might be making a classic British assumption that class doesn't exist in the US to over-argue his case tho.

yes, Rushmore in NxNW = the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur, landmark excuse for a set piece. but there's American picaresque in the lead up to both those climaxes

yer going to Hitch for smalltown verisimiltude, huh?

it's needed and works in SoaD, probably due in part to Thornton Wilder.

I'm a dissenter. SOAD has always been falsely, insistently acted, particularly by Teresa Wright; she telegraphs every move. It's been a few years though.

The general thrust I get from Thomson's piece is the Antonioni-in-America thing: that Hitchcock's Britishness was always there--in Vertigo's detective, in The Birds' old woman--and that he was always a bit of a tourist. Even with some obvious exceptions, I think it's a reasonable point. (Says this Canadian...)

Which is one of the many things that amazes me about Sweet Smell of Success: how was this the first American film of a Scottish director in his 50s? Except, except--reading a little bit of Mackendrick's bio right now, I find out for the first time he was actually born in Boston. Not sure at what age he left--maybe that mitigates my amazement somewhat.

Howe's photography and Lancaster and Curtis' unabashed Americanness helped too.

And Odets, obviously and above all else. He had lots of help--true collaboration. It was still surprising to learn, when I first saw the film, that it wasn't an American director.

A group of exceptional film-makers died at about the same moment: Howard Hawks, Chaplin, Nicholas Ray, George Cukor, William Wyler, Vincente Minnelli, Douglas Sirk, King Vidor. With regret, I have to concede that those careers are now known in the halls of cinephilia but hardly anywhere else.

including chaplin -- one of the most famous ppl of the 20th century -- with these guys is kinda crazy imo.

Yet if you say “Hitch” out loud on any bus, people start looking for a bomb, or a fat man with a poker face who is studiously ignoring the search.

i wonder if anyone has ever tried this experiment?

When Mackendrick was six, his father died of influenza as a result of an pandemic that swept the world just after World War I. His mother, in desperate need of work, decided to be a dress designer. In order to pursue that decision, it was necessary for Martha MacKendrick to hand her only son over to his grandfather, who took young MacKendrick back to Scotland when he was seven years old. Mackendrick never saw or heard from his mother again.

psycho's 'real' america was produced on US television means - so i wldn't be surprised if you found similar location-work and imagery in some of the Hitchcock-directed tv shows that preceded psycho

Thanks for the Mackendrick information--longer in the States than I would have guessed.

I tried the Hitch experiment this morning. No bomb-searching, but I did end up arguing about the existence of god with the person beside me.

xp

i wondered about the TV shows but didn't know how hands-on Hitch was with them tbh

Nick Pinkerton gives Frenzy a close, admiring look, and gives a short comparison to Shadow of a Doubt (I'd forgotten that one shares a writer with Meet Me in St Louis):

http://blog.sundancenow.com/weekly-columns/bombast-109-2

Newly translated -- Rivette on Under Capricorn:

Not the least of the script’s merits is its resolving of this complex network of emotions and plans into a story with a clear, linear continuity. Hitchcock’s direction—which is also very discreet—intentionally remains on the side of its subject, refusing to underline the important points and, instead, simply presenting them to us. The camera surrenders to the characters as they move around but usually refuses to penetrate and intervene in their interior lives. If the surface details of the story—including the macabre evidence—are underlined in one heavy, abrupt stroke, it is because Hitchcock does indeed love disposing of the whole spectacular side of a plot through excess and, by taking on the outrageousness of such details himself, frees the spectator from being preoccupied with them.

http://kinoslang.blogspot.com/2013/08/hitchcocks-under-capricorn-by-jacques.html

HItchcock's Holocaust documentary restored:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/alfred-hitchcocks-unseen-holocaust-documentary-to-be-screened-9044945.html

I Confess anyone? Screened last night, surprisingly low-key and offbeat. Hitchcock really wanted to reuse Monty Clift after this one*, but alas it was not to be.

*Both Clift and Anne Baxter were sorta imposed on him by the studio; Hitch wanted Grant, Stewart or Olivier for the male lead, and got as far as flying Anita Bjork over to the states to for the female lead before the studio discovered she'd had a child out of wedlock.

Eyes of HItchcock

http://vimeo.com/107270525

btw Norman Lloyd (aka the Guy Who Fell Off the Statue of Liberty) just turned 100!

http://variety.com/2014/film/features/norman-lloyd-at-100-hollywoods-living-memory-1201345747/

last days (I've not read the book this was expanded into)

Hitchcock has a pacemaker. Once a month he attaches a device to his chest, clamps metal bracelets on his wrists, and hooks the whole thing up to a telephone. An electrocardiogram is taken over the phone and then sent to his physician for examination. “Come on, Da-vid, let's play with my pacemaker.” He takes great pleasure in demonstrating the monitoring procedure. After everything is in order and the call has been placed, Hitch picks up the receiver and says “How do you do?” in his slow and deliberate voice. The technician on the other end is probably in a laboratory a thousand miles away. “Today,” he intones, “I have attached our little device to the electric typewriter. How is its heart?” He also says he intends to attach it to the dog. The little disks on his wrists resemble handcuffs. He seems quite taken with the idea of being taken.

He is fascinated by the Patty Hearst affair. He followed the trial compulsively. Hearst is to be released from prison and is planning to marry. “First she says she fell in love with her captors. Imagine! Now she wants to marry her bodyguard. Is it the gun, do you suppose, or the set of keys?” Hitch cannot get enough of it. Patty Hearst's parents are separated, and he broods about which parent the girl will go to before her marriage. He keeps mulling the question, over and over.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/13/alfred-hitchcock-s-fade-to-black-the-great-director-s-final-days.html

Rod Taylor RIP

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B64tG8jCQAAFLju.jpg

some links

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-rod-taylor-1930-2015

Anyone have recommenadations besides the 3-4 well-known films? I think he has a couple nice dialogue moments w/ Hedren in Birds, esp in that divisive hilltop conversation.

Darker Than Amber (1970) is very strong... not sure why its imdb rating is so average. Oddly, it's the only cinematic representation of John B. MacDonald's "Travis McGee" private eye character to date. William Smith is an incredible villain in it and their fight scene on a houseboat is semi-famous.

Taylor is also very good in Young Cassidy (1965), playing essentially the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (renamed John Cassidy) in his early years.

yeah, didnt know that John Ford began that film and dropped out.

alas i just missed a 35mm rep screening of Amber here last month

the fight scene in the unexpurgated version of "darker than amber" is fucking insane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0igiQA5jvI

it's not on a houseboat but a cruise ship... and outside the cruise ship.

some outstandingly ugly 1970s zooms in there, too.

rod taylor was kind of an axiom of hyperviolent 1970s cinema

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUBqmmGGudY

and don't forget zabriskie point

he also dated yvette mimieux, which couldn't have been too bad

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqvvby30CO1qf826yo1_1280.jpg

re his face, Robin Williams met him and said "Dad!!!"

kind of an axiom of hyperviolent 1970s cinema

I guess that's why the video clerk cast him as Churchill

i should say, an axiom of hyperviolent late-1960s cinema

TCM is showing a Rod Taylor block of five features and a short this Thursday night at 8

new bio

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-peter-ackroyds-alfred-hitchcock

Died 35 years ago today.

If you need another ranking...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9443826/From-Topaz-to-Psycho-top-52-Hitchcock-films.html

Understandably overvalues his British work.

Good to see Downhill in the top twenty

Aw, Number Seventeen's not that bad.

Def the worst one I've seen, but there's a lot of British silents I haven't sat thru yet.

Good to see Sabotage so high.

Good to see Brits still like kids dying. (For real, tho, my fave Brit Hitch outside of Lady Vanishes.)

David Bordwell on Hitchcock/Truffaut: the book, the Kent Jones documentary, and the two filmmakers.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/06/12/truffauthitchcock-hitchcocktruffaut-and-the-big-reveal/

Wow!

https://vimeo.com/gumpstudio/thereddrumgetaway

The Red Drum Getaway
A Hitchcock mashup where Kubrick is the villain.
"Jimmy was having a rather beautiful day until he bumped into Jack and things got weird."

https://38.media.tumblr.com/bddf1c5f4fb51ebe3e170a7ee12b9517/tumblr_mi5ojcWQwH1ritscno1_500.gif

Jamaica Inn is a kind of a weird Hitch in that it seems to be more Laughton's show than the director's. I can't think of another film of his where the star, no matter how iconic or prominent, overshadow's the filmmaker's presence. Which is to say that, while Laughton is a hoot in the film, the overall effect of it is kind of entertaining in the moment and then immediately forgettable.

Haven't seen it. That was the one that made the first worst-movies-ever Medved book.

Jamaica Inn has the liveliness common to all Hitchcock's British talkies, and I prefer it to Under Capricorn if we're talking period costume romps.

Jamaica Inn is pretty good. I love the shipwreck scene. Good gothic suspense.

No idea what a Hitchcock acolyte would think of Hitchcock/Truffaut (e.g., it basically omits The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps, which, from what I recall, is in keeping with the perspective of the Truffaut book). I'm not; I love many sequences and images (I consider the still of Janet Leigh's eye one of the greatest images ever, and really liked hearing Scorsese talk about that shot the way I see it, as an entry point into the '60s) and maybe a half-dozen films, but I usually come up short on what happens between those sequences and images. Hitchcock/Truffaut, as you would expect, sticks with the highlights (makes me want to see Saboteur and The Wrong Man again, for starters). The interview subjects are well chosen (could do without Bogdanovich, who seems to be there so he can knowingly name-drop "Hitch" at one point), and I liked that Kent Jones stuck with seven or eight instead of an endless procession; thought Fincher was very good. (Hope this isn't meaningful: Scorsese is identified as the director of Taxi Driver and The Wolf of Wall Street.) I guess it would have been too weird to include De Palma--I wonder if he was approached. Not a complaint, just an observation: they basically put the Truffaut book aside for lengthy sections on Vertigo and Psycho. (Film/book I'd like to see: the story of how this film that no one could even see in the '70s became the consensus choice as the greatest film ever made.) The deaths of Hitchcock and Truffaut in relatively close proximity makes for a melancholy ending.

Nine millionth person to say this: I meant Sabotage.

It disappointed me, much like the Buckley-Vidal. The makers didn't dramatize the material. Everything that could be said about the book was done in five minutes; then I wanted to reread it.

i like sabotage, it's zippy and wartime-bleak. never watched the wrong man cuz the title's too on the nose, like if lynch made a movie called the possessed or welles made one called abracadabra

(xpost) They've got the voices on tape, and they've got still photographs. I'm not sure how you'd dramatize it...Seems to me they explained the context in which the interviews took place well enough (Truffaut the auteurist trying to elevate Hitchcock above the "entertainer/master of suspense" tag). I've never owned the book, but I read a lot or maybe even all of it from either a high school or university library. A local book store had a remaindered pile of the reissue they mention at the end a few years ago--kicking myself for not buying one.

Hitch should've called Vertigo The Wrong Woman.

this week from Hull Independent Cinema: 5 movies, 5 nights; Rear Window, Vertigo, NxNW, Psycho and Hitchcock/Truffaut. hope my poor aging apnoeic brain can handle the late nights.

i visited the Frenzy door in Covent Garden tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRfbuQgJsjY

Did I tell you when I was London last summer I walked by the Carol Reed blue ceramic circle in Chelsea many times? Don't think I passed any Hitchcock locales, although maybe I did pass by the Michael Balcon ceramic circle as well.

so this http://openplaques.org/plaques/1367

Yes. Apparently called Blue Plaques. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/travel/london-blue-plaques-ceramic-homages.html
There seems to be an app as well.

i had dinner w/in a few blocks on Kings Road last night.

There's one on Joe Orton's house/death site too.

i wondered for a minute what the ceramic circle was.

yeah we have a lot of these across the UK

i wondered for a minute what the ceramic circle was.

yeah we have a lot of these across the UK

Our (America's) would be so LOL

Perish the thought

in what universe is Shadow of a Doubt = dud????

my top 5

The 39 Steps
Shadow of a Doubt
The Lady Vanishes
Rope
Vertigo

https://media.giphy.com/media/bM7h7JvPDonS0/giphy.gif

Strangers on a Train is my #6

Our (America's) would be so LOL

― Iago Galdston, Sunday, November 27, 2016 6:58 PM (ten months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://pics.me.me/Imgur-de19b1.png

My contrarian idiosyncratic bloody-minded top 5:

1) Blackmail
2) Rich and Strange
3) Downhill
4) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
5) NxNW

Difficulty: I don't watch movies made after 1934, unless I really want to, okay?

via Criterion Daily

In the latest entry in Reverse Shot’s symposium on time, Julien Allen proposes that “perhaps the most compelling display of Hitchcock’s bravura in Psycho [1960] occurs during one of its least discussed sequences, in which Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cleans up the crime scene, immediately after he discovers Marion’s body. Its duration alone—nearly ten percent of the film—is prima facie remarkable, and it contains, in its nine and a half minutes, an encyclopedic collection of escalating and conflicting sympathies and emotions, as well as directorial deceptions which are all the more exceptional for the director’s justified confidence that they would be almost invisible on first viewing.”

http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/2382/psycho

My favourite sequence in the film, and maybe the greatest instance of Hitchcock beautifully fucking with his audience that I can think of offhand.

Marnie is now an opera.

http://www.metopera.org/Season/2018-19-season/marnie-muhly-tickets/