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WEEK THREE
ALL HITCHCOCK, ALL THE TIME. WELL...AT LEAST SUNDAYS IN SEPTEMBER.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK - THE MASTER OF SUSPENSE
8/13/1899 - 4/29/1980
“THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH” ( 1956 ) - QUE SERA SERA
“Why would he pick me out to tell?”
Why? Because you’re the affable, all-American
Jimmy Stewart, that’s why. I’ve no real clue
why Stewart’s picked, other than he’s a great foil to get pushed around by international forces beyond his control. Here we, again, have the theme of the world being beyond someone’s control. I enjoy the ride...at their expense.
“The Muslim religion allows for few mistakes.”
How prescient of Hitch to give us a glimpse of North Africa and its Muslim culture as a preamble to the intrigue that will follow in this movie. Could this film be made today? ( Current Middle East tensions and all... ) We get a peak into marriage with Stewart and
Doris Day. I really like Day in this, one of her better roles of her career. Any leading man is better off being “married” to Doris Day ( i.e.
Rock Hudson,
James Garner,
David Niven to name a few. ) She’s a smart gal here, picks up social cues her husband misses. She tamps down her sophistication, but she's no rube. Day plays an ex-singing star who has given up her career for marriage to a doctor and a nice home in the American mid-west. There might be just the slightest-bit-of-tension in
that trade-off between the couple. But whaddya want...it’s 19
56. I like Hitch giving her character a moment in the spotlight as their plane lands in London and fans call out for her. I know it doesn't
really speak to the fact that she had a "KA-REAR" before she was married; it's a plot device that'll play out later. They have to work together to stop a political assassination and find their kidnapped son
...in that order. Nothing like a little blackmail to spur one’s civic duty. Their silence bought, Stewart’s and Day’s teamwork has them decipher clues, leaving law enforcement out of much of this.
Now when we hear the great film scores of Hitchcock-collaborator,
Bernard Hermann ( “Psycho” “Vertigo” “North By Northwest” etc. ) the music serves as a beautiful observer of events. In “Rear Window” Hitchcock puts Music and Bernard Hermann
front and center. What a neat touch when the movie starts, we see the orchestra actually
PLAY under the movie's opening credits. Has any director done that before? ( We're usually not supposed to know the music's there. ) Later on in the film, Hitch intersperses Hermann and his orchestra, instruments, music sheets, close-ups of music notes with Day and Stewart trying to figure out the last piece of the puzzle. Music is a character in "Rear Window." Tension and suspense are taut as can be as Hitchcock shows Day’s tear-stained face looking up at the muzzle of the assassin’s gun.
No one expresses hysteria, full-blown or repressed, like Doris Day. In fact, my favorite scene in the movie is where Stewart gives Day pills just before he tells her their son has been kidnapped. She simultaneously plays out several emotions: anger, despair and helplessness as the pills take effect in a scene worthy of Ingrid Bergman's talents. ( I think Bergman is the queen of multiple emotions. ) I find it a very moving scene. The story goes Hitchcock said very little to Ms. Day during filming, having no notes of direction for her. Of course not. She’s a natural and pitch perfect. And so is Hitchcock. And yes please...a lovely lovely bouquet to Brenda de Banzie.
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“VERTIGO” ( 1958 ) - I LOST MY LOVE...AGAIN.
Author John Green says: “You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.”
There's something in that. Okay, it’s official. This is my favorite movie.
JAMES STEWART and
KIM NOVAK are star-crossed lovers in Alfred Hitchcock’s twisted tale of deception, obsession and resurrection. You all know the story: Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson is tricked when he follows and falls for Madeleine, a college friend’s wife. The husband knows Scottie’s vertigo will kick in, and prevent him from saving Madeleine from getting thrown from a church tower. When Scottie’s released from a sanitarium ( oh yeah...he cracked up ) he sees a ‘dead ringer’ for Madeleine named Judy. He makes Judy over, with disastrous results.
Here’s a man who pushes the envelope and goes over the edge to satisfy his desires. He has a chance to, if not quite
bring Madeleine back, at least recreate an eerie facsimile of her through Judy. How many of us are committed enough to carry out our desire to the
nth degree. I saw something in my recent viewing of "Vertigo" that I don’t think I noticed in my past 5,487 viewings. It comes in the scene where Scottie’s imploring Judy to change her appearance even more... and she's resisting.
Judy: "I wish you'd leave me alone. I want to go away."
Scottie: "You can you know."
Judy: "No. You wouldn't let me. And, I don't want to go."
Scottie: "Judy, I tell you this, these past few days is the first happy days I've known in a year."
Judy: "I know. I know because, 'cuz I remind you of her. And not even that very much."
Scottie: "No. No Judy. Judy, it's you too. There's something in you that----"
He takes her face in his hands, looks deep into her eyes and tells her 'there's something in you that...' That's the kernel right there. It's in
that moment I believe Scottie sees, feels the THING he loved, the essence of what he loved, the spirit of what he loved. But he can't hold onto that moment. He gets distracted by her outer appearance.
( "Your hair..." ) I think when Judy played Madeleine, there was something of Judy he was loving. Do we love
the person, or what the person IS
inside? Or is it all wrapped up in the same package? Both Scottie and Judy try to recapture something they’ve lost. He wants the love he felt for Madeleine, she wants the love she felt from him when she played Madeleine. ( Brother, that reminds me of
"That's enough about me. Now...let's talk about me." ) Look, Judy/Madeleine is in for a penny in for a pound; she's a girl in love. But it's all centered around what Scottie feels and wants. Pretty one-sided and selfish. When you want to go, but you cannot make yourself leave, that's a torturous position to be in. Now to make light of it, I think of Durante singing in
“The Man Who Came To Dinner”. But mostly I think movies like of movies like “The Night Porter” where Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde play out their sado-masochistic love affair.
Ultimately, Hitchcock makes me wonder, is there anything wrong with that type of relationship? It may not be for me, but if the sadist and the masochist both get what they want...what's the problem?
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“REAR WINDOW” ( 1954 ) - CURIOSITY KILLED THE...
Holed up in his apartment with a broken leg, a photo journalist played by
JAMES STEWART, whiles away his recuperative time watching his neighbors in the building across the courtyard. He uses the vignette of their lives as his own private cinema. And let me tell you something, if
Raymond Burr is a tenant, you know
SOMETHING is rotten in Denmark...and Greenwich Village. Hitchcock makes a slow methodical case ( in a slow methodical pace ) for circumstantial evidence pointing to a man suspected of murdering and dismembering his wife.
First Hitchcock draws in Stewart, along with us. Then he draws in wisecracking nurse
Thelma Ritter. The next into the fold is the glamorous
GRACE KELLY, more animated here than I’ve ever seen her. ( Thank goodness. I’m just about at the end of my rope with her "ice princess/still waters run deep" mode. ) As Stewart’s steady girlfriend, Kelly's focus is not outside the apartment, but inside, on Stewart, and getting him lassoed by his antlers to the altar. He’s resistant against everything she throws at him from her feminine arsenal. Rounding out the cast is Doubting Thomas
Wendell Corey with ice blue eyes and cold skepticism. He’s the detective friend who thinks Stewart is crying wolf.
Curiosity is no substitute for flat-footed police work. Ritter and Kelly take Stewart’s curiosity up another level as they up the ante with Nancy Drew-style investigative antics into Burr’s affairs. The reward for those efforts is to bring the Menace from across the courtyard, right to Stewart’s doorstep. I don't usually run with open arms to "Rear Window" as I do Hitchcock's "Psycho" or "Notorious" or "The Birds." For some reason, I need to be coaxed into watching this. Then when I get into the swing of things, I'm totally in. I don't know why. I can't explain me to me, sometimes. I don't know WHY I have reservations. Hitchcock has done something brilliant here. He creates smaller movies within the larger film with the stories of the tenants across the yard. And we are vested in their stories as well. Hitchcock makes that apartment building the visual, cinematic representation of what writers do when they create characters and weave their subplots throughout the main story. ( He creates some suspense in the poignant Miss Loneyheart's story. Will she or won't she kill herself. ) But it's really Burr as Boogey Man. There's only
one thing scarier than him showing up on Stewart's doorstep. And that's the shot of his darkened apartment with just the glowing light of his cigarette.
Hitchcock, how
could I have doubted you.
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“TO CATCH A THIEF” ( 1955 ) - CAT & MOUSE
Sean Connery and Luciana Paluzzi in "Thunderball."
I can't warm up to
"To Catch A Thief." I'm not crazy about it. It's beautiful to look at, no doubt; the lush and colorful Riviera setting. Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are also beautiful to look at. I thought Cary Grant was as nimble as a dancer in this. He could have played James Bond in this with his stealthiness. ( Cary Grant as James Bond. ) I didn't like the French girl. ( She's no Elsa. ) The movie doesn't feel real to me. It feels like a big coloring book or an Erector set. Hitchcock has all the pieces but it doesn't come together for me.
If any one wishes to make a case for "To Catch A Thief" by all means, please do. I'd love to read it. Tell me, what am I missing?