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...

the answer to the thread is obviously dud along with kubrick and all the other great men of cinema whose abuse of women is glorified by film nerds. i'm sure the films are great in some sense, i'm also told birth of a nation and triumph of the will are great films

― Left, Thursday, 5 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

It's hard being Left.

If only NRQ were around to enlighten us. I see his book on The Lodger quite often in the MoMI bookshop.

does it answer this question: Is THE LODGER David Bowie's best record?

Heh, I dunno, you’ll have to ask him at the next London FAP. But then you both might have to take the train to London.

Cross-cross, DO U SEE?

Now thinking of Peter Bogdanovich who was justly proud of his imitations of Hitchcock and Hawks (the latter he said was better but nobody could tell since they didn’t know what he sounded like) and of Cary Grant as well. He would talk about this then imitate the answering machine messages he would leave, first an AH drawl saying “Happy Birthday, Cary!” then HH saying “Happy Birthday, Cary!” and finally imitating Grant’s response the first time he heard his Hitch: “That’s terrific! Now do Howard!”

HH had kind of a folksy voice, maybe sounding like one of the people a hard-bitten Capra-asque reporter played by Jean Arthur might meet when she gets off the train at the station in a small midwestern town and tries to ask for directions. The line PB liked to do was what Hawks said when they first thought of gender-swapping Hildy when they were transforming The Front Page into His Girl Friday: “Gee, it works even better when it’s a girl!”

Post-Cindy Sherman, I think the way that these back projection sequences etc can be read has changed significantly from 'back in the day'. It's now possible to see them as part of a displaced Englishman's 'performance' of classic Hollywood cinema, with exotic locations, film stars, production values, technicolour, and, for the time, 'state of the art' special effects. Or to put it another way, Hitchcock World always has two components - am inner psychological world that's dark and hidden, and a flamboyant outer world of surface sensuality that rejects realism as method and philosophy and celebrates effect, style, artificiality.

See: the Archers.

All my dreams last night were matted. I was standing there with another old guy like me in one of them, and I pointed behind us and said "That looks so dumb." "WHERE'S THE HORIZON?" he snapped back at me, and that's all I remember before waking up.

tbf to JCO she seemed to be posting calmly as she usually does after the stupid Hitch controp and wasn't milking it. Another facile bit of movie crit that bugged me (well I heard it from my brother and also read it on here) was that DeNiro looking too ridiculously old in a single scene where he unconvincingly beats someone up detracted from The Irishman as a whole somehow or even made it an unworthwhile movie.

the real detraction is that i dremt the de-ageing process used in the irishman made their faces look like bleached sea anemones but when i rewatched it didn't

Now wondering if Guy Maddin ever uses rear projection.

See: the Archers

lol no: "The Archers", the British film-making partnership of Powell and Pressburger

Lol

Did not know they called themselves "The Archers" - think it's obvious why they aren't known as this in the UK now!

Mentally singing "The Archers" now to the tune of Denim's "The Osmonds."

Did not know they called themselves "The Archers" - think it's obvious why they aren't known as this in the UK now!

But they are! Just for example, Ian Christie wrote a major book about them called 'Arrows of Desire'.

Btw Thelma Schoonmaker turned 83 on Tuesday.

this image (or similar, sometimes B&W) can i believe be found in all powell & pressburger films:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_and_Pressburger#/media/File:Archers-AMOLAD-Logo.jpg

"ian christie wrote a major book" <-- this made me smile a little (not to be unkind but… )

ugh this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Archers-AMOLAD-Logo.jpg

On point.

Heh

Thanks for excerpting, Halfway. That was the bit I was thinking of; I just didn’t remember it properly, in that I thought he made a point of discussing how the film’s noted “flaws” actually worked in its favor (he may make a similar point elsewhere in the essay).

Sorry for the confusion - that quote wasn't from the Wood essay, it was from a blog discussing the scene that he mentions, which I found interesting in its own right. I think your summary is close to what he actually says.

I wonder if it is too late to say a thing or two more about Shadow of a Doubt.

There's a shadow of a doubt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pdscKJp_58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFNnvQLvs7I

Speaking of rear projections...

Cool.

👍

since Twitterers are so easily riled up, let's just say that Ravel, one of the great composers of the 20th century, also composed one of the absolutely awful, glaringly unmusical, excruciatingly unbearable compositions in musical history--"Bolero."

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) January 6, 2023

DNFTT

if I was only famous as an 80's soft-porn movie I wouldn't be chatting shit about Maurice!

that didn't make any sense, but neither do opinions - I'm done with 'em!

Everyone has them, just like everyone has, um...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXtBsikiY50

"Bolero" is both awesome and also one of Ravel's lesser compositions

Fair enough.

There is no thread dedicated to Ravel so I'm posting here

I got to see the Dover String Quartet perform the Ravel String Quartet in F Major as part of the Yale Summer Music Program at the Shed in Norfolk CT last July. I had never heard it before. It was an amazing performance

I think it anticipated and influenced a lot of the movie soundtracks that followed, including those of Bernard Hermann

There is this, but the results are infuriating: for the piano #3: Debussy vs. Ravel vs. Satie

I don't know why Blake Edwards decided that "Bolero" was a good soundtrack for sex. I guess he like the resonance with the name of his star.

*liked

“Bolero” is sex tho

I suppose, in the sense that it rhythmically builds to a climax, but it takes a long time to get there.

https://e.snmc.io/i/600/w/794e08b67ab88a629684111230f1fe2e/4402113/orchestre-national-de-lopera-de-monte-carlo-alceo-galliera-werner-haas-complete-music-for-piano-solo-complete-piano-concertos-Cover-Art.jpg

this is a fantastic disc

Paul Crossley's two discs on CRD are also highly recommended.

I suppose, in the sense that it rhythmically builds to a climax, but it takes a long time to get there.

you might wanna reword that last bit

Huge fan of Pascal Roge’s solo piano collection tbh

xp Or I might not LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeohvYoQ57Y