Is horrid model shot charming or embarrassing?

You have to keep in mind it was 1938 and Hitchcock still wasnt a name in the US. He probably had a budget of 10 pounds hence using a miniature train set as the opening shot. Sure its a shocker but Hitchcock didnt have the money or the technology that tarantino or fincher have. Think about the disadvantages ie lack of money/technology the director faced before u go criticising his work.

To tell the truth, I never noticed the model shot at the beginning as anything that took away from the film. It was just early special effects. Watch other films from the same time period and see just how many obvious model shots there are. Also, to go forward to other special effects in later years, note how many of the early CGI effects now look ridiculous because they're so obviously computer generated. That doesn't denigrate the films, that denigrates the technology that was availble.

Hitch LOVED trains, models toy towns, and even that stupid little toy car going by in the beginning. Also, in Young and Innocent he indulges this elaborate toy set. By the time he made Rear Window the whole film was one gigantic (thankfully far more realistic) toy! He had a ball with that kind of stuff. In many ways he was rather childish and fun-loving.

What makes the model terrible is the fact that certain elements move in a very misguided attempt to make it look real. Several people are standing there motionless. Then one of them moves in a terribly jerky way. Then a car or something strolls by. Those moments added to the cheapness and fakeness.

It would be embarrassing in his later movies but here I forgive it because it's a low budget movie. If Fincher or Tarantino had been making a movie with a low budget early in their careers, with no Hollywood backing, they totally would have had stuff just as embarrassing.

I thought it was charming. It was blatantly obvious, yes, but I liked it. I always took it as Hitchcocks imagination, like he was playing with his train set and his imagination came up with this story.

I can also totally see Tarantino using models like this, we all know how he loves to pay homage to classic movies, it honestly wouldnt surprise me if he did something similar to this.

No power in the verse can stop me

Given the fact that Hitch was still in the process of becoming one of the most influential Hollywood directors of all time AND the fact that, therefore, the budget for this film was not the lush amount of his films made in Hollywood, I'd have to say it's totally acceptable given the purpose of the opening scene as well terribly creative given the film's limited budget.

Most likely, they couldn't get any realistic-looking location footage since the Alpine terrains of Europe at this time were under siege.

What I thought was sort of an endearing touch was having the small figurines in the model jerk so as to give them some sort of life.

What I find far less forgivable is Hitch's insistence on using movie fakery in his later movies, when he had bigger budgets and Technicolor film.

"Dial 'M' for Murder" is probably the worst, with its big fake finger shot for the purposes of 3D as well as the rear-projection shots for scenes that could have easily been shot on a small set (i.e., the outside entrance to a townhouse, etc). "Vertigo" employs the classic "zoom-pan-out" shot that IS creatively disturbing, but there are other shots in V that annoy me, most of all the shot where James Stewart sees Kim Novak in his apartment for very first time and there is this blurry greenish oval that covers her while he tries to adjust to the fact that his fantasy has now become reality. I don't see how those scenes were "acceptable" back then. I find them tacky now.

"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"

I put this opening shot of trains in a mountain village station on my desktop and I don`t really see how is it so obvious it`s a model shot. As a matter of fact, I couldn`t be sure it is one - it can only be deduced by checking the filming locations which tell me that the movie was entirely shot in England. No mountain villages there.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan