I love watching them, writing about them, hearing about them and talking about them. “MovieCHAT” is my indie talk show on YouTube, where I show my friends and I sitting around and discussing our favorite classic films.
Now, when my friend Lindsey and I came up with the idea of “MovieCHAT” we were not trying to re-invent the wheel. Nah! Bigger budgets and more scintillating topics of current events and world affairs have paved that well-worn way. "MovieCHAT" is just our slant on that old idea.
I canvassed my friends and asked them to name ten of their favorite “old” movies. ( In fact, I asked that question a few years ago, when the idea was just a seedling, to posters over at TCM-City with the hopes of making this a bigger production for TCM. ) When I approached my friends, I told them they didn’t have to be cineficianados about it; just tell me the movies they know well and love. ( We’ll leave the "mise-en-scene" to the cineastes. ) When I looked at their lists, I found people had a number of films in common. So I lassoed this group of busy pals, put them in front of some cameras, plied them with food and alcohol ( Bob, I owe you lunch ) and sat around talking about our favorite classic movies.
I hope you enjoy my chat series. Saaay, I would love to add an extra chair for you. Ha! I'll make this a traveling show. Have Chat...Will Travel.
I'll start off with the chat I had with Robert Regan. I went out to his home where we talked about Alfred Hitchcock's favorite film. Please click onto the foto below:
MovieCHAT: ( "SHADOW OF A DOUBT" )
Joseph Cotton threatens Teresa Wright in "SHADOW OF A DOUBT"
I watched your clip Theresa, thank you to both of you for appearing on camera to talk about Shadow of a Doubt, I really have to watch it again. What made you chose Shadow of a Doubt? Did you kick other ideas around first before you settled on Shadow of a Doubt.
Fabulous Theresa, have you got other episodes in the pipeline?
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
I want to thank all of you who chose to watch the first installment of my web talk show, “MovieCHAT.” And a very big THANK YOU to those who took the time to contact me and comment on my efforts. I am heartened by the positive feedback. I am also thrilled by the remarks from far and wide, thanks to Robert Regan’s own band of merry movie buffs over at the MUBI message board. They provided in-depth comments on our commentary which Robert graciously shared with me.
( Thanxxx again, Bob!!! Can't wait until we chat...'in a lonely place.' )
Here is my next installment and I think it’s a pretty timely one too. “Sight and Sound” has once again conducted their poll and the new winner for “The Greatest Film Of All Time” turns out to be “VERTIGO.”
“The Greatest...” Of course that title is debatable. No one is ever going to agree on something so subjective as a film. And the proof is in the pudding on that score during the lively discussion with my friends on what is Hitchcock’s dizzying masterpiece. Never in a million years did I ever think I’d meet the star of this classic film, but I did thanks to the TCM Classic Film Festival this past April. As Kim Novak walked towards me at Grauman’s Chinese, well...
“The Greatest...” or not, all I know is this is one of my favorite films; beautifully acted, wonderfully constructed. Please check us out. See what side of the bell tower you fall from by clicking the foto below:
Hey, Just watched the first MovieCHAT episode, and gosh, I learned so much!
I've always liked the library scene, that's so cool that Robert brought it up. The librarian is played by Virginia Brissac, I believe, who I just found out was a highly regarded stage actress first with the Savoy Players, and later on with the group she founded and managed, The Virginia Brissac Company. They put on a play a week from 1915-1921. Its always fascinating to me when supporting players in Hollywood turn up in my reading, then suddenly I see them everywhere.
That was a first rate discussion of Shadow of a Doubt, my favorite Hitch film. I am in awe of the knowledge and thought behind this casual discussion.
You guys got me really thinking some kind of 'out there' thoughts.
I am totally in agreement that Charlie has to make a decision between her mother's 'good', more staid, seemingly empty life (at least in Charlie's eyes), and Uncle Charlie's exciting, 'special', but it turns out, false and really empty life (evil). The image this brother and sister each project is not the reality, and Charlie learns it the hard way, which is how we all grow up, isn't it? Seeing our parents become real people, realizing that they had dreams and big futures at one time, too...and that no matter how small their world is, maybe it isn't so bad after all, even if it isn't what we want.
There is something mixed into this simple horror movie, very much like in Psycho. There is something about women's choice, about work in relation to marriage, and about how people can be controlled by money, or more to the point, by the making of money. Some women after the war may not have wanted to go back to the old ways of always seeing to the home and hearth, the availability of jobs and choice was an issue. Did Alma have a lot of input here? Or is Hitch a feminist? Or am I just choosing to twist the movie into what I want it to be? Hmmm. could be! But here's how I see it:
Is it a coincidence that Uncle Charlie is a man, in a man's world and that young Charlie identifies with him? I don't think so. Young Charlie is a complex, conflicted modern girl, smart, not really like her mother, who is a wonderful woman, but limited. Young Charlie hasn't found her life yet, her calling, and is in that doldrum before leaving home to start her own life. She doesn't know what she wants, and is at the brink of womanhood, just like her mother said she was in that scene Robert pointed out. She knows what she doesn't want. Her mother's life.
Uncle Charlie has the same feelings young Charlie has at the beginning, they both hate the idea of women behaving...well, pretty much like young Charlie's mother, living off of a man. This is a subversive idea to introduce. By the end of the film, that little life, Charlie's innocent little life that her parents have made for her, seems like heaven, miles away from where she is now. Life moves too fast, to quote another Thornton Wilder script, and we don't have time to appreciate everything, the small, the homey. Decisions are thrust on us before we know it. Luckily, Charlie will get to choose what her life should stand for. She IS special, but she has to make a sacrifice for her family, just as her mother has sacrificed. Charlie's mom is ultimately a lost generation, her time is over, her ways are over. Charlie is modern. But at the core of it, they both sacrifice for family. And young Charlie comes closer to understanding her mother through that sacrifice, but also farther away. The umbilical cord is cut forever. It's the nature of their sacrifices that is different, and I think Hitch is saying that's OK, that's how new, modern women will survive and have families of their own. Their lives will be different from their mothers, and that's OK. SO I think the film pleases audiences on both sides of the feminist issues in brings up. I think this film, like Psycho, is about modern woman. Should she kill that want in herself, so similar to Uncle Charlie's want, of a better life than her mother's? Is THAT the evil inside her that young Charlie needs to get rid of? The movie at first glance seems to say she should, but I don't think that's where Hitch ends it.
I've never really thought about these ideas before, but it seems to me that women of that era started to take a little from both sides, the female and the male, and that is what Hitch is discussing. Young Charlie has to take something from both her mother and Uncle Charlie, ultimately rejecting the small but all-consuming grain of evil that Uncle Charlie espouses - his hatred - and turning it into something good. I think young Charlie shares his dislike of women who don't DO anything. I think the last thing she wants after all of her troubles is to become a silly, burdensome creature begging her husband for money or baking cakes. But in rejecting that life, she also rejects a little of her mother. I think this is what it all boils down to.
Charlie can't see herself doing the same as her mom, just raising kids placidly in one place, being a determinedly good woman in the shadows. And Uncle Charlie's route is appealing but a trap. Louise represents that trap, the 'ruined' version of young Charlie, a mirror of Uncle Charlie's widows maybe? or worse, the risk you take when you want too much, like him, without working for it, and you end up on the wrong side of town in a cheap hotel. Or like Louise, in a bar. Because it's about making YOUR OWN MONEY, something Uncle Charlie doesn't actually do either. Louise makes money of her own, but in a dive. She's the noir component, but a very female one, a female fear. I loved the way you brought up Gloria Grahame, by the way, in relation to Louise. Yes, I totally see it. She will take advantage of men's interest until they take advantage of her.
So what I think Hitch is saying, finally, is that young Charlie will have to use her own good skills to find her place in the world....to make her own money, but not off of people's weaknesses. She takes Uncle Charlie's decent ambition for herself, but must do it without trying to be more than she is, or feeding off of someone else. She will go to work, I think, but do so in a way that she can be proud of, like her mother is of her work, which is family. With love. This feels right to me, feels like the way the movie is leading us to think.
