February is almost played out...and the Encore "one Hitchcock movie a night" promotion is almost over.
I've been home enough to make a little game out of it: If I'm around when the Hitchcock movie is on, I turn it on for about a half hour and "re-set my memory" on the film.
Thus far, I've done that with: Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Saboteur, Frenzy, Vertigo, and Marnie.
To a film, they all come off as near-perfect in the LOOK. The compositions, the use of different lenses to create near 3-D effects, the camera moves.
They differ a bit in story quality. Saboteur, I was shocked to see, comes off as very banal in much of the writing and very wooden in much of the bit part acting. The exception: Otto Kruger's incredibly charismatic and articulate villain, rich capitalist Charles Tobin. Its as if the script was purposely written so that he would sound smart and everybody else would sound dumb -- as if Hitchcock PREFERRED him. (Tobin pretty much gets away at the end, and sees his plight as a good bet that he lost on.) Bob Cummings is just too lightweight as the lead(indeed, the very beautiful Priscilla Lane is top billed), but Norman Lloyd and a few others are good. Still, this movie seems very "B" ish to me.
Not so, Shadow of a Doubt made the next year. Oh, SOAD is a bit too dumb near the end -- with Uncle Charlie acting real suspicious and turning the radio on loud so no one can hear Young Charlie scream - but the rest of the movie is quite sophisticated and almost wrenchingly sad with the concept of how Uncle Charlie's sister -- Young Charlie's mother -- is such an emotionally frail creature who will surely die if she finds out the truth about Charlie.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
"Marnie" I watched in weird juxtaposition to another Sean Connery movie made ten years later -- 1974's Zardoz. They were on the same night, and I rather switched back and forth. In a mere ten years time, Connery had become a "Bald Actor" but in Zardoz, he shows off his nearly nude body for the entire movie(he wears a red diaper as a futuristic assassin who finds humanity) and any connection to Mark Rutland -- sophisticated, rich , suits and ties -- dissolves against the sensual brute Connery plays in the very weird "Zardoz."
"Frenzy" was a toughie. I have a particular sig other these days and she wanted to watch it and we got as far as Rusk entering Brenda's office and I elected to turn the film off while we watched another movie on another channel. But my companion kept saying "can we go back to Frenzy now? Surely that murder scene is over" -- and I was personally shocked -- as I flipped back to the scene a coupla of minutes later, and then another coupla minutes later, and then ANOTHER coupla minutes later...that the scene went on and on. Said my companion, "Jeez, just how long IS this murder scene?"
I felt a little ashamed about Frenzy. The shower scene in Psycho is 45 seconds of murder, maybe about two minutes start to finish..but this lingering Frenzy rape-killing goes on and on and on. Hitchcock had his reasons, I understand them, and I've never forgotten that scene. But it felt bad jumping back and forth and it was STILL going on. When I finally returned to the end of the scene -- Rusk rising from the now completely dead Brenda -- both my companion and I felt pretty bad. From a thinking, talking woman to a grotesque dead body: Brenda Blaney. Hitchcock's most horrifying take on the reality of murder, (even beating Marion, Arbogast, and Gromek.)
Worse: eventually we switched to a taped TCM showing of The Goodbye Girl and suddenly Frenzy looked even sicker than it was on Hitchcock's terms. Everything is relative. Had we switched to A Clockwork Orange, different.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
Vertigo. I expect to see it on the big screen in just a few weeks for its Cinemark 60th Anniversary, but I gave it a look. It sure looks beautiful. And Herrmann's score seems the most important part of it. But James Stewart...eh...what an odd frame he had...supertall, superthin, like a praying mantis or something. And whether in a middle-aged guy's sweater or a middle-aged cop's brown suit and hat...Stewart just seems WAY too old and musty to attract the gorgeous young Kim. I know this is a great movie, and I believe that the age of Stewart's character helps feed the madness and pathos of the character. But the mismatch of Stewart and Novak seems more daunting every year this movie exists.
There are five more nights of February as I type this. I haven't checked what the Hitchcock-a-night will be , I may not be around to see all of them - - even in the short bits I picked last week.
But it remains an interesting cable TV promotion...keeping the Hitchcock flame burning.
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swanstep (2715)
7 years ago
But the mismatch of Stewart and Novak seems more daunting every year this movie exists.
Age (with war years and terrors on that Body + 10 years of playing dark/conflicted roles in Westerns and for Hitch and Preminger) just did catch up to Stewart between Rear Window and Vertigo.... Stewart was only 50 but pampered Hollywood at age 50 now looks like Tom Cruise 5 years ago or Jon Hamm 3 years from now. [Compare: Bette Davis playing Margo Channing at 41, whereas Charlize Theron at 41 is the Atomic Blonde.]
Also, Stewart's not playing a rich guy in Vertigo. Stewart is ages with Roger Sterling on Mad Men and comparable-looking and -healthwise, but we never doubt Roger's ability to date Joan or to date, say, 1 out of every 3 hot, still younger things he asks out, because he's charming, and most importantly rich, and happy to throw money around for the party. We don't doubt Elster getting Judy *in* Vertigo for the same reason. But then (esp. since we've established that Judy must be a bit cold-blooded, a gold-digger) that Judy would just be overwhelmed with something like animal passion for Stewart's character is indeed a bit of a stretch.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
Age (with war years and terrors on that Body + 10 years of playing dark/conflicted roles in Westerns and for Hitch and Preminger) just did catch up to Stewart between Rear Window and Vertigo
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Stewart DOES look more healthy, handsome and virile in Rear Window tha...five years made a difference.
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... Stewart was only 50 but pampered Hollywood at age 50 now looks like Tom Cruise 5 years ago or Jon Hamm 3 years from now.
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Ha. Pretty amazing how the human face and body have "youthified." But James Stewart was a special case -- age-worn by WWII and prematurely aged and haggard.
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[Compare: Bette Davis playing Margo Channing at 41, whereas Charlize Theron at 41 is the Atomic Blonde.]
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Human evolution! Better food, exercise regimens, and health care.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
Encore's one Hitchcock a night February festival has concluded. Here's what I sampled
Sunday: Psycho. Just the end. Just Norman in the cell morphing into Mother and then into the swamp and car. As great and profound and perfect an ending as the Sopranos ending was...frustrating and worthless.
Monday: Torn Curtain. The color scheme (grays in the main) is dynamic. And Paul Newman looks great in his movie star close-ups and with his shirt off in a doctor's office. (Newman seemed resigned to giving Hitchcock a glamourous old star performance, he looks great, and Hitchcock frames Newman like a major star..)
Tuesday: Family Plot. Great print in HD, the movie looked far more expensive and shiny than when I saw it in 1976(and felt it resembled an upscale Columbo episode.) Noteable: Dern violently growls and screams at Harris a lot in the movie(certainly in the runaway car sequence) and snarls that she is "an ungrateful bitch" at one part. George Lumley seems an American follow-up to Richard Blaney in Frenzy: what was Hitchcock's interest in giving us such mean, angry, whiny male leads?
Wednesday: The Birds. To end the one-a-night February promotion -- pretty much a classic, pretty much Hitchcock's FINAL classic(Frenzy I love but it just doesn't achieve on the same scale.) The Birds is 13 years older than Family Plot and looks a little less polished. It remains great, great, great in effects and suspense sequences, not so great in script and characterization.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
This "Hitchcock festival" was a bit top heavy with late compromised films at the end - but I like those films. Paul Newman really looks like a star in Torn Curtain(Julie Andrews, whether alone or sharing the screen with Newman, less so.) Frenzy remains brilliant and its key brutal murder scene remains necessary -- to the entire thriller genre. Family Plot (the only one I watched all the way through) was much as I remembered it: an embarrassingly slow, expository, and uninvolving first hour(less the scenes with Black and Devane), followed by a nifty second hour where everything clicks into place and comes together in a headlong rush of great , entertaining scenes.
Note in passing: around the time they showed Family Plot on Encore, another cable channel ran a 1981 movie called "Harry Tracy" starring Bruce Dern as an outlaw in the Butch Cassidy era. The movie was terrible to look at -- as if filmed in Super 8 or something. But the script was solid, and Bruce Dern actually(finally) looked HANDSOME. Like a movie star. But with those Dern vocal mannerisms. He's fairly virile looking in Family Plot, but with a mop of long red hair on his head, he looks a little cartoonish in that one. Harry Tracy wears a moustache.
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