I was just thinking how extraordinary was Hitchcock's journey from his first thriller (The Lodger) in 1927, to his second to last one (Frenzy) in 1972. The plot of those two films was essentially the same yet set 45 years apart and separated by a World War, sound, and color.
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It was noted at the time how similar the plot (and London setting) of Frenzy was to The Lodger. Its almost a remake ins some ways, which was OK -- Hitchcock officially remade The Man Who Knew Too Much and essentially remade The 39 Steps first as Saboteur and later as North by Northwest.
Still, such a journey from The Lodger to Frenzy: from the silent era to talkies, from black and white to Technicolor, from censored material to sex, nudity, profanity(and "ultra violence.")
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Despite the greater frankness in Frenzy as regards nudity, sex and violence, it's not hard to tell they were made by the same director.
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Indeed. Hitchcock used silent techniques which rather only survived with him to the 70s(other silent directors were dead or inactive). And he also invoked sound experimentation early on which also turns up in Frenzy(in the silence before Rusk's "Got a place to stay?") The "silent techniques" became something more personal to Hitchcock -- travellling POV shots, montage, camera movements, a certain "child like simplicity" to his visual storytelling, etc.
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He was the world's most famous director for most of that period... between 1934 (The Man Who Knew Too Much) and 1963 (The Birds). Has any other director had that long of a run at the top?
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We have another thread on that going.
https://moviechat.org/nm0000033/Alfred-Hitchcock/621bad0bd2857119a7609760/Spielberg-and-Scorsese-About-to-Join-Hitchcock-in-Longest-Career-Eastwood-Already-There
Right now , we live in an age where Spielberg and Scorsese seem to have matched Hitchcock for decades of work and still having relevance. For me personally, that's interesting: I've watched Spielberg from the beginning -- 1969's Night Gallery pilot -- and, hey, it doesn't seem THAT long ago. Life is short.
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ecarle (14979)
2 years ago
But , by accident of his birth and years of work, Hitchcock seems to have been there for pretty much every major change in movies of the 20th Century. He even lived to see VHS rentals of his films(in very limited early types of distribution.)
Hitchcock also had that TV show, which seems to have earned him wealth at least equal to his movies and made him a star to millions more people than SAW his movies.
I like to point out that as a movie producer-director, Hitchcock was a peer to John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Frank Capra, but as a TV star, Hitchcock was a peer to Lucille Ball, James Arness, and Jackie Gleason. Spielberg's attempt at a TV series lasted 2 years (to Hitchcock's 10); nobody else has much tried (though that director of The Shape of Water has an anthology on now.)
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