CARY GRANT

Discussion of the actors, directors and film-makers who 'made it all happen'
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knitwit45
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by knitwit45 »

.although I think in a grudge match, Barbara O'Neill from All This and Heaven Too would take her down through sheer nuttiness.
NOT to hijack this thread....
the lovely Barbara
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the Matriarch Barbara, Ellen O'Hara, GWTW
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the nutty Barbara, Duchesse de Praslin,All This and Heaven, Too
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and my favorite of her roles,Barbara, the Woman,Jesse I Remember Mama
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now returning you to your regularly scheduled program..... :lol:
"Life is not the way it's supposed to be.. It's the way it is..
The way we cope with it, is what makes the difference." ~ Virginia Satir
""Most people pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it." ~ Soren Kierkegaard
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Rita Hayworth
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by Rita Hayworth »

JackFavell wrote:I have a theory about why or when Hitch used Cary, and when he used Jimmy. I'm sorry if this bores the pants off of you guys, because some of you have heard me say it before. It's a simple theory. I think we love to watch Cary MOViE, and we love to watch Jimmy THINK.
Cary Grant entertains us and rightly so.

Jack Favell written above is the best piece of writing about Cary Grant ... Cary we watch - Jimmy we think.
Its WATCH verses THINK?

Enough Said! ... Thanks Jack for pointing this out!

Update: ... I took out the part of James Cagney ... I wasn't thinking straight ... Sorry Everyone!
Last edited by Rita Hayworth on September 10th, 2013, 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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movieman1957
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by movieman1957 »

Wendy, I agree with your assessment of Hitchcock's use of the two actors and I also think it is the way in which they carry themselves. Grant, imo, doesn't have the emotional depth that Stewart brings to his roles and Stewart can never be as cool and sexy as Grant is in his films. (I speak of their 50's films.) I don't quite buy Stewart pulling off the suggestiveness of the love scene in "North By Northwest" anymore than I buy Grant pulling off the terror felt in "Rear Window." (Well, maybe they could have done it but in my mind it sure doesn't give the same impact.)

They are perfectly matched to their films.
Chris

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
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JackFavell
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by JackFavell »

Thanks, Chris. I agree, they are like two totally different parts of Hitch's personality. I couldn't bear it if Hitch hadn't made his romantic films with Cary, only the ones with Jimmy. I think Cary is the person Hitch would like to be, and Jimmy is more like the inner Hitch. Well let's face it, we'd all like to be Cary Grant, but no one could ever live up to that! According to Cary, not even Cary Grant. And I think Hitch tapped into that split in Cary's personality.
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Lomm
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by Lomm »

CineMaven wrote:Thanks for bringing Cary Grant to the forefront Lomm. I haven’t seen so many immediate responses to a thread here at the Oasis in a long time ( other than when the Moderators bring us a special guest writer. ) And may I also extend my belated Welcome to you on this message board. Enjoy your time here.
It's a pleasure to see this thread so active! And thank you as well for the welcome. One thing I've discovered here is that I've never seen Mr Lucky and need to do so. It's not on Netflix for me to get the DVD, so it's a missing piece of my Grant watching experience, and a pretty good one based on the comments here. I don't really do DVR so I'll have to either buy the movie or hope it hits on a TV station at a good time for me.
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Lomm
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by Lomm »

Hitch definitely had a near perfect casting eye, and not just with Grant and Stewart, of course. That said, with regard to Cary Grant, I bet there are more IMDB blurbs for movies in his era that begin "the lead role was originally offered to/intended for Cary Grant before casting (so and so great actor name goes here)" than for any other actor.
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JackFavell
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by JackFavell »

Thank you, kingrat! Yes, I definitely picked the movies that I felt had the Grant performances that I thought were best, rather than picking the movies I liked that had Grant in them.
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by CineMaven »

THE MOVIE STAR:

Cary Grant and James Stewart.

Image Image

I tried to be as fair as possible in the selection of photos here ( though my heart does pitter patter more rapidly for one. ) Cool - emotional - sexy - boyish - dashing - quintessentially urbane - quintessentially American. You can pick which trait fits which actor.

SYNERGY: synergy |ˈsinərjē| (also synergism |-ˌjizəm|) the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects
( Hey, I don't know this stuff...I'm just cuttin' and pastin'. )

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Cary Grant and James Stewart were bonafide movie stars in their own right when they first met here in “The Philadelphia Story.” By 1940, Stewart had appeared in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” “Made For Each Other” “After the Thin Man” “Destry Rides Again” “The Mortal Storm” and the Academy Award-winning film “You Can’t Take It With You.” Grant has had some hits under his belt by that time as well. One could have seen him already in: “Topper” “Gunga Din” “Holiday” “Bringing Up Baby” “His Girl Friday” and “The Awful Truth.” The studio needed both men to help Hepburn’s flagging box-office. Hepburn could play both sides of herself to each man, and Stewart & Grant played off each other very well. You might think Grant's suaveness might overpower Stewart's boyishness but I think his reporter's cynicism protects him. The actors' paths cross again, by working with Alfred Hitchcock.

Welllll...if the paths don't exactly cross each other, they run parallel, like the train tracks in "Stranger on a Train."

THE TWO HALVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK:
[u]King Rat[/u] wrote:Wendy, I've never read a finer analysis of how Cary Grant and James Stewart work in Hitchcock films. That makes perfect sense. By the way, I believe that Henry Fonda wanted the lead in Vertigo, but Hitchcock wanted Stewart. Fonda would have been good, but nice guy Jimmy becoming crazily obsessed is even more chilling.
Glad Hitchcock and his casting directors ( if he used 'em ) were really on the ball. I think Fonda was toooo passive though a perfect leaf carried in the wind of circumstances in "The Wrong Man." But I could sort of see him sitting in a wheelchair, leg in a cast, Thelma Ritter breathing down the back of his neck.

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Both actors made four movies with Hitchcock. They both shared working with the Hitchcock Blonde: Grace Kelly. I offer feeble facts here because after reading Wendy’s post...I can add nothing substantive. Her comparisons of the actors’ representation of two halves of Hitchcock himself was excellent. Bore the pants off us? HA! Brilliant! observations, JaxXxon!
[u]Jack Favell[/u] wrote:He's [ Stewart ] the inaction hero. He's usually trapped by weakness, infirmity, or even by his sheer dumb blindness and indecision. He creates grand theses, only to have them proven completely wrong. He is closer to evil, as far as I am concerned, because he seems normal. But somewhere deep inside, he just has to set up the situation that will get someone else into trouble. Then he's helpless to do anything about it. He's a busybody, and though it seems harmless, he always has to go that step too far, playing God. But of course, he isn't.”
Jimmy the BusyBody. Ha!!!! I hear ya there. It’s especially true in “Rear Window” and tangentially in “Rope” I think. I agree with you that Hitchcock probably wanted to BE Cary Grant, but saw himself as James Stewart. I suspect men probably wanted to be either Cary Grant or Sean Connery as 007. But I digress...

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GRANT’S HITCHCOCK:

“SUSPICION” ( 1941 )
“NOTORIOUS” ( 1946 )
“TO CATCH A THIEF” ( 1955 )
“NORTH BY NORTHWEST” ( 1959 )

* * * * *

STEWART’S HITCHCOCK:

“ROPE” ( 1948 )
“REAR WINDOW” ( 1954 )
“THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH” ( 1956 )
“VERTIGO” ( 1958 )

I pulled out these two movies in particular ( "Notorious" and "Vertigo" - great one word titles ) because of their approach to love. In these two cases, Stewart is the action hero...going towards the thing he wants even if he has to recreate it in the second half of the movie. Grant pulls back in "Notorious." His secret agent puts the ball in her court because he's probably scared she'll say no to him ( even though Bergman puts out the green light, go all the way signals to Grant. ) He pulls waaaay back on his emotions. In a way, both men make their respective lovers prove their love to them. It kills one and almost kills the other.
“If there hadn't been all those movies before...if there hadn't been a Kane, for instance, there would most certainly be no Vertigo, now considered the best most influential film in movie history. The two films are so similar. Incredibly great and yet....”
This I’m not so sure about. Am I misunderstanding something. Hitchcock was making movies before Welles was a gleam in his Daddy’s eyes. Okay, maybe not a gleam, but definitely before Welles was in high school. I think Hitch's influences were already firmly set.
Then somehow, we end up at Pitfall, where the wife is a good woman, the other woman is a good woman, and nobody is to blame, except maybe the hero....very modern.... but we are once again, right smack dab inside the hero... I feel a link to Jimmy Stewart here, but can't quite get it into words.
Again...loving that movie. I think I see what you’re saying though it is difficult to verbalize. Near as my brain can connect with my typing fingers:

* Two men...dissatisfied with their station in life ( “old available Ferguson,” says Scottie. )

* Wives/girlfriends put on a shelf while they flirt with the Dangerous Blonde...who’s not so very dangerous; they're just caught up in circumstances.

* Scottie and John Forbes both are used as some sort of instrument of murder, whether as a human gun - Forbes killing Smiley or as a human shield for murder - Scottie not being able to get up the stairs. ( Am I making sense or floundering and splashing in that ‘stream’ of consciousness? < Glub! Glub! > )
Perhaps what I'm getting at is.....is it the masculinizing of the movies, after Hollywood got rid of all the female directors and writers, that puts us in the head of a guy every time? And we're still there. I don't know. We had Joan Harrison coming up, with none other than Hitch as her mentor. And Alma. And Ida. But still nothing really seems too different to me, from that noir we just watched. Earlier films seemed to at least address women.

Ahhhhh! You refer to the “male gaze.” I learned of that in film class ( a shout out to Professor Zucker, Bob!! ) As per the illustrious Encyclopedia Brittanica ( of Wikipedia: )

“...the introduction of the term “the male gaze” can be traced back to Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which was published in 1975. In it, Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera (and thus the gaze) comes from factors such as the as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres. While this was more true in the time it was written, when Hollywood protagonists were overwhelmingly male, the base concept of men as watchers and women as watched still applies today, despite the growing number of movies targeted toward women and that feature female protagonists.

It’s hard to escape the male gaze as it is insidiously and subconsciously planted in our brain, though I think about “The Women” and I wonder, are we women looking at women through the gaze of Cukor or are women looking at the absence of men. ( Don’t mind me. I’m just dabbling in semiotics - a flashback to my college film classes at Hunter. ) Men have more active lives in movies. They get to run and jump and shoot and stuff, most of the time.

Maybe there will be some answers in the next installments of The History of Film, to help me figure out how we now have no bad guys at all, but also no women.

Uh-oh!
"You build my gallows high, baby."

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JackFavell
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by JackFavell »

First of all, let me say I am loving your pictorials here, T! Thoughtfully presented, they remind me of yin and yang, or two sides of a coin. Perfectly matched!

You also make me realize that Cary and Jimmy are an outstanding screen pair, just as much as either man was with Kate. They bring out the best in each other, and both bring their A game to the table in their scenes together. Its exciting to watch them together doing their thing, respectively. I think you're right, the two together are more than the sum of the parts. But think about this...what would a Hitch film have been like had he been able to work with BOTH men, in the same movie? I almost wish I hadn't thought of this pairing, under Hitch's guiding light, because it's just too delicious a thought. I can almost picture what it would look like in my mind's eye.... And not Foreign Correspondent, either, but something of the tone of those later, 1950's or 60's Hitch films. Some kind of game played between them. I don't even mean a traditional good guy/bad guy thing either, but something different, a serious delving into character. Uh-oh...now I'm salivating....
I pulled out these two movies in particular ( "Notorious" and "Vertigo" - great one word titles ) because of their approach to love. In these two cases, Stewart is the action hero...going towards the thing he wants even if he has to recreate it in the second half of the movie. Grant pulls back in "Notorious." His secret agent puts the ball in her court because he's probably scared she'll say no to him ( even though Bergman puts out the green light, go all the way signals to Grant. ) He pulls waaaay back on his emotions. In a way, both men make their respective lovers prove their love to them. It kills one and almost kills the other.
I can see what you are saying here, T. Jimmy is the pusher, and Cary has pulled back. So Hitch deliberately forced the stars into opposite roles than they would normally play, or at least I see it that way. I can still see my viewpoint in these two movies, but I can also see it your way. Both are forced by circumstance to use their minds ALONE, straitjacketed so to speak... which leads them to wrong conclusions, which leads to a final explosive action on their part that is deadly. In Notorious, Cary can't act, because he is known as a spy, so he acts through Ingrid Bergman. He has to sit there and take it, playing the female role of waiting, wondering....all that time to think about what Alicia's doing. Hitch flipped the male and female roles. Emotions, those nasty things, they get in the way of action. Both men are crippled, emotionally, by their jobs. They are each given only half the story, and are left stumbling about in the dark while the woman goes about, unfettered, doing that job, or wandering about San Francisco, free. In both movies, the woman is willing to do anything for her man, but because of a past indiscretion, he can't see it. She is never fully trusted. If a woman were to have the freedom of a man, what would she do with it? The man doesn't really know the woman. He doesn't know what she does with her time. But in some ways, don't you think that this is what makes a woman attractive? She's always tantalizingly out of reach. Why is Scottie so in love with Madeleine rather than Judy? Because he doesn't really know her. He knows an image, but the real Madeleine is an illusion. She IS Judy. He knows both Judy and Midge in an instant, through and through, he thinks. But does he? And Dev doesn't really know Alicia, or what she's capable of when she sets her mind to something. She's opened herself to him, but is it real? So he's left thinking about her....thinking about her. Obsession. Love and Hate in the same thought at the same instant.

I like what you said about how they drive their women to prove their love. Their need is so great that the only thing that will prove it is for a woman to literally die for them. Or is it more that a woman can't ever really prove her love? Is something held back just what propels him to love her even more? (on a side note - as an audience, do we find Cary more attractive because he holds back?) The man must learn to trust, no matter what, or risk losing everything that's really deep down important to him - her, his happiness and future. No matter what she is? It's the inward journey we are watching, the learning process of a man getting in touch with his feelings, to use a 1970's expression. Does it take death or near death for a guy to admit he loves a woman with no strings attached? Sheesh. :D

At the end of Vertigo, before the climax but after the confession, do you think Scottie and Judy have a chance? Do you think he loves her enough to forgive? Or do you think Judy deserved what she got? Do you think he killed his love? After the film is over, do you see him yearning for Judy? Kicking himself for making her go there?
Again...loving that movie. I think I see what you’re saying though it is difficult to verbalize. Near as my brain can connect with my typing fingers:

* Two men...dissatisfied with their station in life ( “old available Ferguson,” says Scottie. )

* Wives/girlfriends put on a shelf while they flirt with the Dangerous Blonde...who’s not so very dangerous; they're just caught up in circumstances.

* Scottie and John Forbes both are used as some sort of instrument of murder, whether as a human gun - Forbes killing Smiley or as a human shield for murder - Scottie not being able to get up the stairs. ( Am I making sense or floundering and splashing in that ‘stream’ of consciousness? < Glub! Glub! > )


Yes! Thank goodness you were able to verbalize what was simply one word in my jumble bag of a post. That's exactly it. I think Hitch deals very well with man as a tool, an instrument of evil, beyond his own will, and his ability to think his way out of a bad situation. Again, it's a man's job that makes him an instrument of evil. He's tied to it, and loves it, and hates it. Does it define him?

This I’m not so sure about. Am I misunderstanding something. Hitchcock was making movies before Welles was a gleam in his Daddy’s eyes. Okay, maybe not a gleam, but definitely before Welles was in high school. I think Hitch's influences were already firmly set.


Are you really saying that Hitch never learned anything about film-making after 1928 except through his own experience? Can you at least see Welles as John the Baptist to Hitch's Jesus? No, I sincerely believe that there are things in Vertigo that would not be there without Citizen Kane as a precursor. Just as Welles would not have produced Kane without Hitch's influence. No one lives in a vacuum. No filmmaker, writer, or artist can create without input. They glean something from interaction with other people. Inspiration must strike, and it comes from within the artist, but he must have an outer force of some kind to act upon him. A closed off mind leads to nothing artistic. That Hitch was able to take from here and there, and make even greater pictures over time is proof of his greatness, not a reduction of him.

the “male gaze"


Oh SNAP. I thought I made that up myself. :D Yeah, that's pretty much EXACTLY what I thought. There goes the book I was writing on the subject. :D :D :D

It’s hard to escape the male gaze as it is insidiously and subconsciously planted in our brain, though I think about “The Women” and I wonder, are we women looking at women through the gaze of Cukor or are women looking at the absence of men. ( Don’t mind me. I’m just dabbling in semiotics - a flashback to my college film classes at Hunter. ) Men have more active lives in movies. They get to run and jump and shoot and stuff, most of the time.


Yes, I think we are looking at women through Cukor's eyes, and yes, it's not true women on their own, it's simply the absence of men. I'm not saying The Women is the be all end all of women's cinema, in fact, it's pretty contradictory, and sometimes leaves me feeling sick at the thought that women actually viewed themselves this way, through that male gaze internallized. But at that point, there were women writers who had control of the viewpoint. Now, I've seen exactly one movie this year written and starring women exclusively. And that was a risk on the studio's part, almost didn't get made.
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Vienna
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by Vienna »

I don't think I'd describe Jimmy Stewart as sophisticated, but Cary Grant, sophistication is in every pore . He moves with grace.
Just different and each right for their Hitchcock roles.
RedRiver
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by RedRiver »

Stewart was very unsophisticated. That was the source of his appeal and, I think, his greatness as an actor. He was one of us.

Favorite Cary Films

HIS GIRL FRIDAY
THE AWFUL TRUTH
BRINGING UP BABY
HOLIDAY
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY


Favorite Cary Performances

HOLIDAY
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART
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CineMaven
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by CineMaven »

AHHHH! WHAT A SMORGASBORD! :D
[u]Jack[/u] [u]Favell[/u] wrote:But think about this...what would a Hitch film have been like had he been able to work with BOTH men, in the same movie? I almost wish I hadn't thought of this pairing, under Hitch's guiding light, because it's just too delicious a thought. I can almost picture what it would look like in my mind's eye.... And not Foreign Correspondent, either, but something of the tone of those later, 1950's or 60's Hitch films. Some kind of game played between them. I don't even mean a traditional good guy/bad guy thing either, but something different, a serious delving into character. Uh-oh...now I'm salivating....
Grab a napkin. Get a bib. It’s food for thought you threw out there. It’d have to be well-written, and well thought out re: each actor’s performance strengths. And equal...pretty equal in terms of screen time and importance to the story. I think folks knew how to do that then. Things are so top heavy today; the balance is off. ( I’d love to see Meryl Streep play opposite Cate Blanchett or Vera Farmiga opposite Patricia Clarkson or Annette Bening opposite Laura Linney opposite Angela Bassett - yeah, I'm still pulling for Angie to have a real movie career. ) I also know what you mean about the tone of the Cary / Jimmy film. Yeah, all that would have to be taken into consideration.
I can see what you are saying here, T. Jimmy is the pusher, and Cary has pulled back. So Hitch deliberately forced the stars into opposite roles than they would normally play, or at least I see it that way. I can still see my viewpoint in these two movies, but I can also see it your way.
I support your way as well. I just used “Notorious” and “Vertigo” as an example of Grant & Stewart playing the opposite of your point. But I do see your point too. "To Catch A Thief" "North By Northwest" Grant is running climbing falling. In "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" Stewart is the voyeur. Even watches the boys in "Rope" when he finally catches on that they're hiding something. Who's the cat and who's the mouse.
In Notorious, Cary can't act, because he is known as a spy, so he acts through Ingrid Bergman. He has to sit there and take it, playing the female role of waiting, wondering....all that time to think about what Alicia's doing. Hitch flipped the male and female roles. Emotions, those nasty things, they get in the way of action.
Oh wow, yeah. Ha! I didn’t think of Hitch switching Grant to the “female role of waiting, wondering....” I wonder if Hitchcock knew what he was doing; what he was saying. What made HIM so smart? Probably was accidents. He was a man of his time, born 1899. He could flip the script on us, I don't know if he could flip the script on himself.
Both men are crippled, emotionally, by their jobs. They are each given only half the story, and are left stumbling about in the dark while the woman goes about, unfettered, doing that job, or wandering about San Francisco, free. In both movies, the woman is willing to do anything for her man, but because of a past indiscretion, he can't see it.
Hey man! Good point! But how “free” are either woman? Alicia has to sleep with a Nazi spy with her Attila the Hun mother-in-law down the hall and Judy’s privvy to a murder. Albatrosses are tethered to both their necks.

I don’t know why, but reading your remark:
She is never fully trusted. If a woman were to have the freedom of a man, what would she do with it? The man doesn't really know the woman.
...made me think of Kathleen Turner and Sharon Stone in “Body Heat” and “Fatal Attraction.” Here are two women who seem soo freeeeee in their movies, pulling the strings. Check it, Stone's character lived life with the freedom of a man. ( "What are you going to do? Arrest me for smoking!" One of the great roles in movies. ) Their respective men can’t catch them. One thinks he’s going to catch and tame and make her his own private Idaho; the other guy, kind of a lug, thinks he’s going to love her and get the money. They both pay.
Why is Scottie so in love with Madeleine rather than Judy? Because he doesn't really know her. He knows an image, but the real Madeleine is an illusion. She IS Judy. He knows both Judy and Midge in an instant, through and through, he thinks. But does he? And Dev doesn't really know Alicia, or what she's capable of when she sets her mind to something. She's opened herself to him, but is it real? So he's left thinking about her....thinking about her. Obsession. Love and Hate in the same thought at the same instant.
Sounds torturous when you don’t have open honesty. But to some folks, it doesn't feel like love if they're not tortured. ( "I want to hurt you just to hear you screaming my name." ) The mystery of Madeleine is attractive enough for Scottie to want to solve. Her breadcrumbs have him driving up and down the 'streets of San Francisco.' He knows Midge. He doesn’t know Judy. As for Alicia, she opens herself to Dev. If only Dev had told his boss “I can’t let her do this job,” Alicia would have been a happy camper.

...And no mother-in-law.
I like what you said about how they drive their women to prove their love. Their need is so great that the only thing that will prove it is for a woman to literally die for them. Or is it more that a woman can't ever really prove her love?
There’s the human nature of it all, isn’t it. ( At least in the movies. ) Dying for me will prove you love me? Huh? And then what? It’s all for the guy’s lack of self. When you fill a hole in from the ‘outside’ you need a lot of proof. And you can neve fill the hole enough unless death is the ultimate hole-filler. ( Gosh, I hope you’re following my metaphor. ) A woman can’t ever really prove her love to a man who does not Trust. If anyone asks her to prove it, tell her to head for the hills or she’ll only have to prove more and more and more and more. A pinkie swear is one thing, but when you start sleeping with Nazis......
(on a side note - as an audience, do we find Cary more attractive because he holds back?)
Well speaking for myself ( who else can I speak for? ) I find Cary Grant attractive, period. But he did give me a hardway to go in “Notorious.” He was a jerk. I was screaming "Get her! GET HER!!! Ack!!!" :evil: He acted out of fear. He needed proof. If I have to tell you to do something, you don’t really love me. Aye yi yi!!! Love is a mind-reading battlefield, now? :roll:
It's the inward journey we are watching, the learning process of a man getting in touch with his feelings, to use a 1970's expression. Does it take death or near death for a guy to admit he loves a woman with no strings attached? Sheesh. :D
Ha! Sheesh is right. I do like that we are watching that learning process. Dev almost learned his lesson too late. Too late for Alicia that is. Mothers-in-law. Sheesh! Nyah! Nyah! ( picture me doing the S.Z.Sakall cheek slap! )

NOW THAT SALT’S IN THE WOUND, LET ME TURN THE SCREW
At the end of Vertigo, before the climax but after the confession, do you think Scottie and Judy have a chance? Do you think he loves her enough to forgive? Or do you think Judy deserved what she got? Do you think he killed his love? After the film is over, do you see him yearning for Judy? Kicking himself for making her go there?
Good question(s).

When I saw “Vertigo” this time I thought to myself:

“Scottie, you have a right to be upset. Dude you just got rooked badly! But if you could just walk away...just walk away."

IMAGINED SCRIPT:

SCOTTIE: - ‘I can’t talk to you now. I need time to think. I’ve got to go to the police and tell them to look for Elster.’

JUDY: - ‘But Scottie, what about me? What about us?!’

Scottie looks at her and walks down the staircase with no vertigo.


And then Judy takes a dive off the tower. If only Scottie could have just walked away. But maybe humans don’t work like that. Babies cry and stomp their feet. They want the balloon they had, or that ice cream cone they dropped. They want THAT ONE OVER THERE!!!! Did Judy deserve what she got? By the letter of the law, yeah. But I’m no courthouse Henry Jones!!!! I go by the spirit of the law. No, Judy didn’t get what she deserved. ( I’m a Romantic. Save Judy! Save Judy! ) After the movie, Scottie’s a basketcase ( “Crap, I could have had her!!!!” ) But he was sooooooooo angry. He was probably angry at himself for getting taken.

And there’s the Hitchcock touch. Actually the Hitchcock sock in the jaw: “I’m going to take her bloody well away from you a second time!! Muahahaha!”

* * * * *
Are you really saying that Hitch never learned anything about film-making after 1928 except through his own experience?
No. :oops: Not now. Not in front of everybody reading here.
Can you at least see Welles as John the Baptist to Hitch's Jesus?
Wha'chu talkin' about Willis? Is that like Butch Cassidy to the Sundance Kid?
No, I sincerely believe that there are things in Vertigo that would not be there without Citizen Kane as a precursor. Just as Welles would not have produced Kane without Hitch's influence. No one lives in a vacuum. No filmmaker, writer, or artist can create without input. They glean something from interaction with other people. Inspiration must strike, and it comes from within the artist, but he must have an outer force of some kind to act upon him.
I do see what you’re saying. ( Can you tell me one thing you think “Vertigo” got from “Citizen Kane”? :P )

The male gaze blah blah blah.
Oh SNAP. I thought I made that up myself. :D Yeah, that's pretty much EXACTLY what I thought. There goes the book I was writing on the subject. :D :D :D
No Plan B, Blue Tolstoy?
I'm not saying The Women is the be all end all of women's cinema, in fact, it's pretty contradictory, and sometimes leaves me feeling sick at the thought that women actually viewed themselves this way, through that male gaze internallized.
Maybe “So Proudly We Hail” or “Cry, Havoc” are better examples? Wouldja believe “Westward The Women”? What am I bid for “Caged”?

I miss Alfred Hitchcock. And I miss actors like James Stewart and Cary Grant who could play Hitch like a fine-tooth comb! They were not interchangeable. They were their OWN man.
"You build my gallows high, baby."

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RedRiver
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by RedRiver »

I miss all this too. Movies have become too big. We need focus. We need the director to provide it. My brother (John Ford was the only great filmmaker) thinks the wide screen is detrimental to the experience. "Movies are about people, not landscapes. Show us faces. Faces tell stories."
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Lomm
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Re: CARY GRANT

Post by Lomm »

I think the widescreen opened up tremendous film possibilities and I treasure it for things like Lawrence of Arabia, say, along with any epic in which the landscape is as much part of the story as the characters. The problem I have today is over-reliance on effects and mindless action at the expense of real acting. There are very few actors today who are must-see to me like Cary Grant. Robert Downey Jr is one. Even though he's in movies that rely heavily on effects and explosions, he's still a major draw, without whom the movies would suffer greatly.
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