Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

My Week with Marilyn was meh. Biopics in miniature form are still biopics.

Though they at least solve the problem of absent or laughably forced narrative thrust.

the anti-biopic sentiment around here is baffling, there are plenty of great ones.

not really, they hadda squeeze in as many of poor Norma Jean's offscreen tragedies as they could into that one forgotten little British film's making.

xp

Edvard Munch and Mommie Dearest, sure.

besides Andrei Rublev, what? xxp

Haynes's Superstar

My Winnipeg an entertaining bio-hazard-pic.

biopics - which ones are good?

'an angel at my table,' 'young mr lincoln,' 'lawrence of arabia' all great.

xp surprisingly short thread

unsurprisingly

Another film thread discussion shut down by ILX film snobs. All in a day's work.

hi-5

'alexander nevsky,' 'prick up your ears,' 'raging bull' of course. surely 'passion of joan of arc' ought to count if 'my week with marilyn' counts. 'w' is probably oliver stone's best film.

anyway the point is that not every biopic is 'gandhi.'

point is an awful lot of them are A Beautiful Mind

Or Ray.

yes, there is not-by-the-numbers, but pretty rare.

(and neither of these Hitch things are biopics, they cover consecutive periods in his early 60s.)

mary harron's two biopics are great too.

but yes i doubt any hitchcock biopic would be any good.

If the first thing most people are going to take away from the movie is that the actor playing the famous person gave a great impersonation, then it basically counts as a biopic imo.

there's a rash of these things made for UK TV now, basically indistinguishable, revolving around impersonations of much-loved 60s/70s TV stars and a banal run-through of some "secret" "scandal" in their private lives

anyway, Hitch bio shd be 30 minute 1-take scene of young Hitch getting locked up in the police cell and then cut straight to him throwing birds at Tippi Hedren

Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Three's Company' (xpost)

'Hitchcock' in 5 Seconds

'w' is probably oliver stone's best film.

tsk tsk, we might've accepted Born on the 4th of July

You two got the right ta-ta but the wrong ho-ho.

'w' is the only one that actually has any insight into its subject. i know y'all love 'JFK' and it is kind of a campy masterpiece but boy did it have a dire effect.

ok, JFK is a deathopic. I thot for a sec Eric was invoking The Doors.

anyone seen his Juno And The Paycock? I went to see it with a friend during the season at the BFI, we'd both seen a lot of the other ones that were on and me being Irish I'd done it at school so was interested. it was quite good. even had the Hitchcock "he's evil!" close-up on Johnny Boyle. really worth seeing, if in part cos it's a great play to begin with.

I thot for a sec Eric was invoking The Doors.

that'd be me haha

altho W. was on tv last night and yeah it is v entertaining and even insightful

got Juno on DVD and to my shame i don't think i've ever watched it - it's in a set with some other early films is my excuse

it's very rough around the edges, but was nice watching something that has story at its core. few weird accents. there's one character who's basically meant to be "a jew" except sort of like if dracula was from dublin, he has to be seen/heard to be believed, whatever they were going for doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did.

30s British movies are a treasure trove of lost accents, most of them probly did exist at some point

there was a small jewish community in dublin for sure, it's more the feeling that it's sort of anti-semitism mixed with bad acting or a bad accent. my friend with whom i saw it is of jewish descent so it provided a nice contrast to her irish mockery after.

ah i take your point, anti-semitic caricatures still going strong in Lean's Oliver Twist in 1948 anyway

haha I liked Ray very much but mostly because it gave young black actresses semi-strong roles for once.

kinda dodgy, especially given there's no jew in the original play, hitch would have had to write in a caricature. it's a tailor haranguing the family for money, of course. xpost

got Juno on DVD and to my shame i don't think i've ever watched it - it's in a set with some other early films is my excuse

― thread lock holiday (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, October 10, 2012 5:16 PM

This may be the same set we have -- something like 20 early Hitches on 4-5 DVDs? Ashamed to say I haven't watched any of them yet either.

mine's just 5, got it because i wanted to see Rich and Strange but it also has Juno, Secret Agent, The Farmer's Wife and The Lady Vanishes. don't think i've watched The Farmer's Wife either

bloody hell John Laurie's in Juno too, will watch this week

Seeing Alfred Hitchcock and Juno mentioned together is giving me visions of Michael Cera getting impaled on a weather vane after battling w/J.K. Simmons.

while Thelma Ritter amiably helps Ellen Page abort her c hild.

Brody on how guilt/concealment issues make Marnie such a personal film:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/10/how-hitchocks-obsession-with-tippi-hedren-shaped-marnie.html

Oh my god, Hitchcock is soooooo lame.

i believe it. it looks like something I'd pay to not see

The Girl looked like a much more interesting movie and I didn't even bother to watch that, even though it was on the Television Set as well as On Demand for Free even right now.

Watching The Girl now.

Miller is a lot better than I expected, Jones is creepily on the money. Sorta feels like it's missing something thoug, but I can't quite place it.

I really never thought of Frenzy as underrated -- it's stone great, and so is Shadow of a Doubt -- and it doesn't appear to be given how often it's mentioned here.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/the-criticwire-survey-underrated-hitchcock

I like Under Capricorn, I Confess and The Paradine Case too.

Someone gave me this for my birthday last month:

http://0.tqn.com/d/horror/1/0/E/_/-/-/AlfredHitchcockPremiere.jpg

When I looked on Amazon, lots of reader complaints about defective discs...I was feeling guilty about the person overspending, now I'm starting to wonder.