Hitchcock!

[peter]

I have this idea to try to watch all of the movies of the maestro AIfred Hitchcock. I have North By Northwest recorded and will post my thoughts on each as I see them. Any one keen to join in or comment would be more than welcome. I haven't seen anything by him for many years so it should be fun. I am looking forward to it!

[peter]

Ok, saw North By North West yesterday. It was a bit weird to be honest. I just don't think you could get away with making films like that today. The plot was so ........pulled! The girl would have had you running a mile, the abduction seemed to be as much a joke to the man as anything else and the acting was so ham it wanted mustard on it. How did they get away with that back then? It was almost like seeing one of those silent films where everything is overplayed to the point of death. Odd experience.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The expectations of moviegoers were significantly different back in the 1950s and 1960s (North by Northwest was 1959). Most people expected--and received--what was essentially a theater production that just happened to be on film, unless they were going to see a musical in which case we substitute a Broadway musical that just happens to be on film. A lot of the drama from that time was also more like a soap opera, as you note--a little over the top. Moviegoers these days expect flashy action or deep, complex plots that really make you think, provided they aren't going to a comedy movie.

As you will note while watching these films one of the main themes in Hitchcock films is the case of mistaken identity--the average Joe who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or who gets mistaken for the spy or saboteur. In this particular movie, if I recall, Cary Grant raises his hand for his restaurant check while the bad guys were prank-calling and looking for a man who doesn't exist.

Incidentally, you started in the middle. For early Hitchcock go back to The 39 Steps, Foreign Correspondent, The Man Who Knew Too Much (the first version, making Hitchcock one of the few directors to ever redo his own movie), or Secret Agent. He did some earlier stuff back in the 1920s but I never saw any of those. His pre-World War II movies are pretty good but the height of his career was the post-war period from 1946 - 1960. He almost always casts a blonde in the lead female role and he really liked James Stewart, especially since Mr. Stewart's wartime experiences gave him a dark tinge to his personality which is absent in his pre-war films.

[JIkj fjds j]

Was watching MI:2 this evening and had thought that even knowing Tom Cruise isn't really hanging from the edge of the cliff by his fingertips while doing a gymnastic crucifix, still I was held breathless nonetheless.

I would agree that Cary Grant's acting can get hammy at times. Like the drunken driving scene in which we are expected to believe that Roger Thornhill having downed enough booze to knock him out can still fight unconsciousness and steer the car, (back projected), all the way to the foot of the hill and to safety.
And yet we still buy into it! Why is this so?
Maybe we are kept on the edge of our seat not just because of the action on the screen but more in the hope that the actor can pull it off, convincingly.
There is a need within us to be thrilled, even, at the expense of suspension of disbelief.

The crop dusting scenes on the other hand are not just Hitchcock at his best but also Cary Grant acting at his best.
I guess it's easy to criticize old movies; North by Northwest is a great film. Ahead of it's time. And without it we may not now have better movies today.

(Oddly enough, MI:2 has been compared to Hitchcock's, Notorious!)

[peter]

Fair comment Vizidor - the crop dusting scenes were fine and it wasn't that I disliked the film - I just found it ..... strange. I'd forgotten how these older films were, and the sort of overplaying that Hashi refers to as an almost 'spin-off' from theatre, while it seems quite 'in-place' in films like 'Frankenstein' etc, in a film made on the cusp of the [for me] modern time seemed odd. The 'brutal' use of the train pulling into the tunnel metaphore at the end made me smile and I look forward to more of the same as I progress.

I've got a dvd of 'The Lady Vanishes' to watch next and from what I remember, the film is virtually 'hijacked' by the brilliantly concieved charachters 'Charters and Caldicott' who {IIRC} went on to star in a couple of 'follow-up' films of their own [not, I think directed by Hitchcock however].

[JIkj fjds j]

I understand what you mean by "strange".

I watched the Birds, a few weeks ago and noted how "strange" the look and feel of the film was. It's worth mentioning that he had used the artistic talents of Salvador Dali in the dream sequences of the film, Spellbound. A sign of the times, I guess.

[peter]

OK. Just watched Psycho. Fantastic! Must be Hitchcock's best or I'm a dutchman! Perkins was cast in a role that he never surpassed or lived down. He is forever Norman Bates, whether he likes it or not!

[JIkj fjds j]

Well peter, I certainly won't be calling you a Dutchman.

I watched The Birds again last week. One of those infernal movies that always leaves me wondering why oh why did the birds start to attack the humans in the first place. As far I as know, there was never any definitive explanation for the unnatural behaviour of the Aves.

And yet, if viewed as you might with Psycho, with an awareness of an underlying Freudian structure, it is only then that the mystery begins to make more sense.

The first clue has to be when the seagull swoops down and pecks at the top of Melanie Daniel's head.
Melanie Daniels = Tippi Hedron = tip hed = top of the head.

After that the rest of the mystery unravels like clockwork.

[peter]

yes - well, I'll wait untill I see that one [again] before I comment on that Vizidor.

re Psycho again, I wonder if today the 'explanation' scene at the end would have been handled the same way, or come to that even needed. Are we now savvy to the point where we would have understood the psychosis behind Bates' condition [multiple personality/schizophrenia] without an overt explanation - or is it just that we are so familiar with the film that we almost don't need the scene because we know it is there, but if it weren't........ [it could even be that it was the film itself that is responsible for the greater understanding the general public now has of such things.] Funnily enough the 'transvestite' comment was made almost as an aside as though this were the most understood thing in the world. I thought we invented transvestitism! Also recall that I saw that film with Hanibal Lector playing Hitch during the making of the film, and how the randy old bugger became obsessed with Janet Leigh. Can't say I blame him!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

One of those infernal movies that always leaves me wondering why oh why did the birds start to attack the humans in the first place. As far I as know, there was never any definitive explanation for the unnatural behaviour of the Aves.

That is the point--there is no cause. Sometimes, Nature just like to walk up and slap up in the face for no reason, forcing us to figure out how to deal with circumstances which are beyond our control and no have no definable causal basis. The birds are simply a natural disaster--all you can do is try to get out of the way until it passes.

This is where modern zombie movies fail--they keep trying to give us the cause of the zombie outbreak. No, it would be better--and scarier--for there to be no reason for zombies, just all of a sudden zombies start running around making more zombies.

[peter]

But The Birds was based on a true event never the less, so there had to be a reason somewhere behind it all

[Incidentally - where I live on the coast in the UK, the gulls are highly protective at nesting time and will atack humans without a second thought and in large numbers. They can be a real menace if not terribly dangerous.]

[JIkj fjds j]

The Birds is a good horror movie - and a cracking mystery story as well.

Psycho is by far, way more scary.
It's the toilet clean up scene that freaks me out the most. Why did Hitchcock take somewhere in the region of 10 minutes showing Norman Bates cleaning the loo? The dynamic close up of Janet Leigh's eye as she lay dead on the floor! The slow moving close up of the toilet being flushed!
A very clever way to make the imagination provide the maximum scariness. What might suddenly regurgitate up from the depths of the clean white bowl is horrific, sickening, yet also brilliant.

[peter]

The power of that scene is the superimposition of the banal on top of the exra-ordinary - the evil in this case. Bates does what he does every day, the sluicing out of the bathrooms - but today he sluices blood down the plugholes. [Much of the true horror of the Holocaust is of the same nature and Hitchcock of course would have experienced this era if not first hand then at least intimately via stories recounted by people who were there.]

[JIkj fjds j]

There's a thrift shop in town I sometimes use to get cheap DVDs. I'd saw, The Man Who Knew Too Much, on the shelf two or three weeks ago. As it was the original 1936 version I decided not to buy. Then I had second thoughts, reading through this thread, and returned to the shop last week.
It was still there! ha ha ha. Not surprising really, but there it is.

Watched only twenty minutes or so, but actually liked it. Even though the acting was forced and stiff-necked, the soundtrack poor, editing clunky at best. The story, and how Hitchcock deals with it, is what makes the film interesting. More enjoyable to me than was Casablanca.

There is a terrific sequence where a man at the ski-lodge hotel desk asks if he has any mail. The receptionist replies - two letters. Then, clunkily, in a room upstairs the baddie reads a note, in close-up, a set of instructions which he then destroys in the fireplace just before the authorities grab him to take possession of said note. On an other close-up, a slip of paper containing directions to a location in London has a letterhead with a symbol of a sunrise - a horizontal line, with a half-circle-sun topped with dashes of sunbeams.

The words and the letters are now unimportant. A rising sun will surely appear later in the film. Most likely in London. The clue has been cleverly revealed, so this tells us it isn't the McGuffin. What awaits I will then be looking forward to seeing.

EDIT: or sunset (?)

[sgt.null]

peter - Rear Window is great.

I took film study in High School and that class has stayed with me. that and typing.

we studied North by Northwest and Rear Window from Hitchcock.

[peter]

Some good pointers there - got a feeling I've seen North by North-West, but hey, it's all so long ago in truth I could have seen any of them. I'm going to do a little background reading on Hitchcock [nothing elaborate - just a bit of wikisearching] to try to get a handle on how he developed over his career and to put a 'timeframe' around his various porductions.

[sgt.null]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_%28film%29

another favorite.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Ah, Lifeboat. Even when the setting is "the middle of the ocean" Hitchcock found a way to give himself a cameo appearance. It is also a great study in ethics.

[sgt.null]

I loved looking for his cameos. Lifeboat was a weight loss ad, I think?

[peter]

The cameos were gimmicks that were great as much because they were so unnecessary as anything else! H. was such a great director they were totally superfluous and all the more entertaining for it!