Tag: Alfred Hitchcock

Rapid Response: Torn Curtain

“Torn Curtain” finds Hitchcock dipping his toes into a pool he never has before: politics. It’s one of Hitchcock’s more disappointing films.

I don’t think I ever thought this day would come: the day that I would find an Alfred Hitchcock movie I didn’t like.

They say that Hitchcock’s last perfect film was “The Birds” in 1963, and from then on he struggled with old age and a changing of the guard in Hollywood to more jarring, violent and hyper kinetic films. Although I’m still very keen on “Frenzy,” with something like “Torn Curtain,” how is Hitchcock really supposed to compete when the rest of the world is looking to James Bond for their suspense?

“Torn Curtain” struggles because it finds Hitch trying to adapt to New Hollywood and the surrounding culture, but in completely the wrong way. With “Frenzy,” Hitch would embrace the despicable sexual instincts of his murderers and what they would be realistically likely to do to his blonde-bombshell victims. Here, Hitchcock tried to make his film as tied to the Cold War as the 007 movies, and he dips his toe into a pool he never had before: politics. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Torn Curtain”

Rear Window: Hitchcock's most emotional film

Starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” is one of his most deeply emotional movies. Read more about “Rear Window” in this analysis of the film.

“Rear Window” has been mercilessly scrutinized, fitting for a movie about people obsessed with minute details. We fully understand how the movie is put together, how Alfred Hitchcock creates suspense minimally and how he ties all those tingling suspicions into a story of voyeurism, privacy, neighbors and curiosity.

But those who have seen the film will know how emotionally wrenching it is. Tangential to the main mystery, Hitchcock colors an entire community of lonely people struggling with marriages, romances or careers. These livelihoods serve not to add clues to the murder mystery but to emphasize the one core idea running through “Rear Window,” a fear that could be shared by anyone, not just Hitchcock: “What if you are witness to something terrible and can do nothing to prevent it?”

Poor L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (James Stewart) is witness to a lot of such trauma, even within his own life. But as is true outside of the window, he’s pretty powerless to do anything about it. His romance with the wealthy and glamorous Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) is troubled. The two of them are incompatible people, yet she’s clearly in love. He knows she’s perfect but can’t foresee a way to make it work, and she can’t do a thing to change his mind. Continue reading “Rear Window: Hitchcock's most emotional film”

Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock has the most recognizable silhouette in all the world, yet Sacha Gervasi’s film “Hitchcock” is little more than the silhouette of the man. It only hints at his many vices, fetishes and moments of pure genius, content instead to be an amusing caricature.

Standing in Hitch’s (Anthony Perkins) shadow is of course his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), a long time screenwriting partner and assistant director who never got the attention she deserved. This is her story more than Hitch’s, about how during the production of “Psycho” their marriage hit a rocky patch. She started a professional affair with Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston) that was bound to turn into a romantic one, and all the while “Psycho” was turning into a dog of a movie.

Despite the massive success of “North By Northwest,” Hitchcock was still being called old-hat by the press, championing French New Wave masters of suspense like Claude Chabrol and Jules Dassin poised to take his throne. As a change of pace, he decided to make a low-budget horror movie based on the murders of Ed Gein (Michael Wincott), but it sickened the studio heads and the censors, forcing Hitch to finance the movie himself.

This is Film History 101. It touches on how Hitchcock bought up all the copies of “Psycho” to prevent people from knowing the ending, how the censors objected to a toilet being shown flushing on camera and how directors and actors were locked into contracts with the studios, but it doesn’t reach to explain how the studio system really worked or even how the master himself found inspiration for all of “Psycho’s” brilliant ideas.

Instead, “Hitchcock” may as well be “Rocky,” the old-guy jumping back in the ring to prove he’s still got it. Does it take liberties in the process? That’s hard to say, and I believe Gervasi, the documentarian behind “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” did his research. But was Hitchcock really bothered he never won an Oscar? Did he really think TV “cheapened” him? Did he really spy on his leading ladies in the same way Norman Bates did?

The real pleasures of the movie are the performances and the coy, immature humor on sexuality and violence. Hopkins is more dirty-old-man than macabre, but he has some fun orchestrating terror, either on set getting Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) to scream during the shower scene or in the movie theater lobby as the audience screams during the finished product. The movie’s best gem is James D’Arcy as an impeccable Anthony Perkins. He only has one big scene on Hitch’s casting couch, but he owns those ominous wide shots.

“Hitchcock” is less of a movie buff’s movie and more for someone who is familiar with the master of suspense but hasn’t dug too deep in his catalog. Coincidentally, watching his films remains the best and most enjoyable way to really understand the silhouette of the man.

3 stars

Vertigo (1958)

The worst thing that can happen to “Vertigo” after being named the Best Movie of All Time by Sight and Sound is that the movie will turn into homework.

For decades, “Citizen Kane” carried the burden of being seen as a good helping of cultural vegetables. I know how people are. They think they’ve seen a lot of movies in their life, then stumble across a list like Sight and Sound and proceed to boastfully challenge the top choice.

“I don’t see what makes it so great.” Maybe if the Sight and Sound poll weren’t treated like a figurative film canon, then maybe people wouldn’t be so quick to write off masterpieces as stodgy, arty, no fun movies for critics and old people.

So naturally upon rewatching “Vertigo” with my family, I quickly asked my dad if he knew why “Vertigo” was considered worthy of the number one spot. He gave the best answer I could’ve imagined. “Because other movies just aren’t as good?”

In terms of film auteurs, Alfred Hitchcock is far and away the most approachable, the least “challenging,” the least stodgy and often the most fun. His films are technical flourishes. Where other directors fail to set the mood, where other directors use a plot device that is all too obvious or where other directors incorporate a twist that is all too ridiculous, Hitchcock never stepped wrong.

We call him the master of suspense because he brought no-nonsense thrills into the cinema and became a household name before anyone else. If his movies lacked the emotional heft of other Old Hollywood classics, it’s because he played his films with such virtuosity and perfection that stray feelings never got in the way.

“Vertigo” on the other hand is his most personal and his most emotionally complex. That’s why this is in the number one spot; because it’s excellent. Continue reading “Vertigo (1958)”

2012 Sight and Sound Poll Announced

“Vertigo” has now been named the #1 film over “Citizen Kane” in the 2012 Sight and Sound Critics’ Poll.

For 50 years, “Citizen Kane” has sat alone as the greatest film of all time, much like its title character locked away in a giant palace, untouched.

Now, a giant has toppled.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” has bested “Citizen Kane” as the number one film ever made in the Sight and Sound Poll, a list organized by Sight and Sound magazine and voted on by critics and writers from around the world.

Roger Ebert calls the list essentially the only film poll that matters, and it is such because it has been conducted every 10 years since 1952 and surveys the best of the best in film.

Citizen Kane has been number 1 since 1962 when it overcame Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” the reigning champ from 10 years prior. Since then, “Vertigo” has been on every list since 1972, climbing to as high as number 2 in 2002. This year, “Vertigo” received 191 votes from its 847 participants, dwarfing “Kane’s” 151.

This year’s full list is as follows.

  1. “Vertigo” – Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
  2. “Citizen Kane” – Orson Welles, 1941
  3. “Tokyo Story” – Yasujiro Ozu, 1953
  4. “The Rules of the Game” – Jean Renoir, 1939
  5. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” – F.W. Murnau, 1927
  6. “2001: A Space Odyssey” – Stanley Kubrick, 1968
  7. “The Searchers” – John Ford, 1956
  8. “Man With a Movie Camera” – Dziga Vertov, 1929
  9. “The Passion of Joan of Arc” – Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1927
  10. “8 1/2” – Federico Fellini, 1963 Continue reading “2012 Sight and Sound Poll Announced”

Rapid Response: Notorious (1946)

“Notorious” is Alfred Hitchcock testing his limits as a story teller and evolving a new approach to suspense.

Notorious

I must sound like a broken record whenever I write about an Alfred Hitchcock movie and say it’s one of his best. “Notorious” took me two viewings to realize its greatness, and now I see it as a sharp-nosed film that combines romance and espionage on a razor thin blade. This isn’t like “To Catch a Thief,” where the only draw is the romance between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and it happens to have a good suspense story and great cinematography worked in.

No, “Notorious” uses its romance as the driving force behind the spy thriller. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is enlisted by the American government to infiltrate the home of the German smuggler Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains). However, Alicia is in love with her American contact, known only as Devlin (Cary Grant). Because Alexander suspects their infatuation, Alexander forces her to prove her loyalty to him through marriage. Because all three characters are emotionally involved and complex, we care little about the ramifications of Alexander’s misdeeds but how the events of the plot will affect their tortured love triangle.

It’s a romantic and yet gripping and even surreal film. “Notorious” is Hitchcock testing his limits as a story teller, a director capable of cinematic bravado and an artist evolving a new approach to suspense. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Notorious (1946)”

Rapid Response: To Catch a Thief

“To Catch a Thief” is not Alfred Hitchcock’s best thriller but his best romance with the grace and lushness of Old Hollywood.

Could it be that all modern romances draw not from the tender love scenes in “Casablanca” and “Gone With the Wind” but from Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief,” which contains a moment so lovely to look at and so passion filmed that it’s hard to believe Hitchcock could ever have filmed it?

The scene in question is in a darkened hotel room along the French Riviera, with fireworks in the background and the glorious Grace Kelly beckoning in a stunning white dress to a resistant but suave and certain Cary Grant. She’s desperate to inflame his passion and his weakness for jewelry and beauty, and with each mysterious and aloof remark to pull himself away, she draws him back in with her infectious and seductive understanding of him. The orchestrations are sprawling, the lighting is soft, and the image is perfect. Continue reading “Rapid Response: To Catch a Thief”

Rapid Response: Frenzy

Film critic David Thomson called “The Birds” Alfred Hitchcock’s “last unflawed film.” And because of that infamous criticism, most Hitchcock fans will look no further than it in his career.

In fact, neither did the general public around the time Hitchcock’s 1972 “Frenzy” was released. The director had experimented with political thrillers that alienated audiences and only just unified critics, and “Frenzy” was his return to form in the murder genre.

But Hitchcock was an Old Hollywood staple; a master of his time who struggled to find his footing in a new generation of filmmakers. “Frenzy” was lewd enough to warrant an R-rating, but if the movie was ultimately a lot like something he could’ve made in the ’40s, would you waste your time with it if you had just seen something like, say, “A Clockwork Orange” or “The Godfather?”

The difference is however, “Frenzy” holds up remarkably well. It’s still the filmmaker displaying technical perfection that is unrivaled in any age. It’s gripping, complex, darkly funny and deliciously twisted on a level that matches, if not surpasses, some of his more famous films. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Frenzy”

The Man Who Knew Too Much: 1934 Original and 1956 Remake

People perhaps scoff at the idea of a remake today, even if it’s a director redoing his own film. But Alfred Hitchcock is not George Lucas, and when he chooses to remake “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and both versions are equally great, that’s the sign of a master director.

Hitchcock said in an interview with Francois Truffaut that the original 1934 version of “The Man Who Knew Too Much” was the work of an amateur whereas the 1956 remake was the work of a professional.

That seems believable, as there are only so many liberties Hitchcock takes in tweaking the story between versions. Each is about a family who has befriended a man who has just been killed. In his dying words, he reveals to them a need to deliver precious information regarding a diplomatic assassination attempt to the British consulate. But before they talk, each family is informed that if they say a word, they will never see their child again.

The newer, American version starring James Stewart and Doris Day is certainly a more polished film, making use of bold color cinematography and elaborate travelogue sets in Morocco and Britain. But Hitch was hardly an amateur when he made this in 1934. He was already building a reputation as a great auteur of the silent screen now breaking out into sound, and he would even make his first masterpiece, “The 39 Steps,” a year later. That said, the quality shows in the original as well, and Hitch actually preferred the original because of its rough edges. It’s an unpolished gem rather than a processed studio thriller.

And while both films are arguably equally good, the battle will rage on deciding which is best and which history will remember more.

Superficially, the original is 45 minutes shorter than the remake and is in so many ways a more immediate, instantly gratifying thriller. The remake on the other hand has star power on its side, a big budget and the inclusion of the Oscar winning song “Que Sera Sera.” Continue reading “The Man Who Knew Too Much: 1934 Original and 1956 Remake”

Rapid Response: The Trouble With Harry

“The Trouble With Harry” has to be the damnedest film Alfred Hitchcock ever made. Although all of his films have witty elements in their carefully constructed and orchestrated screenplays, this is one of his few movies that is a straight comedy.

Of course it is not without Hitchcockian elements, but it is at times a maddening film with the plot of a screwball and the dry delivery of an Ealing comedy.

As the tagline goes, the trouble with Harry is that he’s dead. A little boy (Jerry Mathers, before he was in “Leave it to Beaver.” Did the Beaver ever trade a dead rabbit for a frog and two blueberry muffins?) stumbles across a dead body in the lovely and idyllic Vermont forest. It’s poor Harry Wolp, and Capt. Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) believes he shot him while hunting for rabbits. He’s about to move the body, but person after person walks by before the Captain can hide it, including the boy with his mother, Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine, in her debut film role). Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Trouble With Harry”