Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

tbh there aren't many directors who do Hitch well so if he's to be judged by the baleful qualities of his hack imitators...

It’s clearly relevant to Hitchcock’s films that he was a neurotic mess (and quite likely a highly unpleasant and unhappy person) who had unresolved mommy issues and lusted fruitlessly after a parade of icy blondes. But those things don’t explain his seductive, paranoid, mistaken-identity dreamscapes any more than Scott Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and bigotry can explain “The Great Gatsby,” or Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism can explain “The Ring of the Nibelungen.” Indeed, as Richard Brody of the New Yorker recently suggested in a post about Hedren and “Marnie” (a movie I pretty much can’t stand), the fact that Hitchcock was a defective personality may make his artistic achievement greater rather than lesser.

It and Gertrud form the great 1964 diptych of defective sexuality.

I like Marnie too, tho it falls a little short of Gertrud.

(add Dr Strangelove for a triptych)

True and true.

is Bruce Dern the last working actor who's been in 2 Hitchcock films? I guess Norman Lloyd is retired.

Hedren has 5 credits in the last 2 years and 3 in various stages of production.

ok, i wondered about that

btw, UK MWKTM on Criterion in January. Need to resee.

http://www.criterion.com/films/27999-the-man-who-knew-too-much

Me too. I need to rewatch a lot of the British ones. Don't have particularly fond memories of many aside from The Lady Vanishes.

The one w/ Sylvia Sidney & husband running the movie theater is pretty amazing. (I keep forgetting it's based on a Conrad novel)

Sabotage, and my favorite of the Britcocks.

the PBS outlet in NY used to show the Britcocks ALL the time when I was a teen.

Kinda starting to think that non-Lifetime biopics are the absolutely worst film genre.

Oh right, I liked that one too. Best bomb theory in practice.

funny you mentioned Sabotage as I remembered it yesterday when watching Day Night Day Night.

xxpost they very much are. Want to lobby a mod to change this thread title:

biopics - which ones are good?

to a "defend the indefensible"

Hoberman enthuses about Lorre in the Brit Man Who... (dead rong about the '50s version tho).

http://blogs.artinfo.com/moviejournal/2013/01/02/hitchcocks-peter-lorre-is-too-much/

yeah, the 50s version is lazily criticised by people who won't recognise it's a different film to the original. Lorre is amazing of course, cos he's Lorre. really wish he'd made a dozen B&Ws with Hitch.

watched Saboteur all the way thru for maybe the first time this week - i seem to know the last 15 minutes by heart but have always managed to miss bits from earlier. really enjoyed it, obv - some lovely set pieces and the only real negative for me is the clunkiness of some of the more obvious propaganda speeches. i figure he actually reworked it as much into the second Man Who Knew Too Much as he did NxNW, the whole society ball section especially. nice to have an unfamiliar guy (to me) as the wrong suspect for a change.

anyway, i was just in the mood. it's probly a shade long but it's an under-rated blast imo.

Robin Wood gets mentioned a number of times on this thread; found a cheap copy of his Hitchcock book with this cover on the way home tonight (only s second edition, unfortunately).

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/wood-hitchcock.jpg

now you can get Revisited and compare

Isn't there something after Revisited as well, Re-Make/Re-Model?

US tour of BFI-restored early flms:

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/rare-early-hitchcock-pics-to-tour-u-s-1200326013/

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/576925_10151486503447488_1840767835_n.jpg

Maybe this photo is famous, but I'd never seen it until this morning:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1nr5p7YBC1qm1ld5o1_500.jpg

(From a TV intro, I'm guessing.)

yeah yeah yeah

Guillermo del Toro's brief analysis on the Man Who Knew Too Much Criterion is rich. I wonder if his book on AJH will ever be translated? or has it?

watched north by northwest last night. that is all, tbh, i don't need morbs shouting at me this time on a sunday

lol

fine, u & Eric have had yr masterpiece vaccines

I find the best times for a lecture from Morbius are Wednesday mornings or Thursday afternoons. I have no explanation.

up to rushmore it's a stone cold classic

ironically, the cold stone was the problem

Martin Landau is about to step on your fingers.

away with him, google image search suggests he weighs about 5 stone these days

fine, u & Eric have had yr masterpiece vaccines

Because I dislike precisely one accepted Hitch masterpiece out of dozens.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/picture/2013/aug/12/alfred-hitchcock-film-statistics#zoomed-picture

According to the last graphic, the 4 untouchable classics when critics, "film fans" and the general public are given equal weight are:

Rear Window
North By Northwest
Notorious
Psycho

Those four are exactly right, but I would have thought by now that Vertigo would have moved into the inner circle. I'm going to start asking everyone I know if they're a film fan or a general public.

I'm fine with adding Vertigo and possibly Shadow of a Doubt to those four. Britcock has it's masterpieces but they are just a simpler species of fish.

Shadow of a Doubt is top three for me, but I thought it was still very underseen.

Actually, come to think of it, I thought there was general consensus among critics/non-critics on The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes.

according to that diagram vertigo and strangers on a train are the ones critics/"fans" like but that the general public cannot countenance

this is my favorite statistic in there: 20% of hitchcock dvd sales are north by northwest.

can't decide whether i care least for the opinions of critics, film fans or the general public

http://www.barbican.org.uk/film/event-detail.asp?ID=15029

Hitchcock’s East End is a season of screenings and unique events that celebrates Alfred Hitchcock’s connection to Waltham Forest. For our opening event we celebrate Hitchcock’s masterpiece – Vertigo.

IDGI

Strangers on a Train simply isn't shown by AMC as much as the others.

Vertigo still fails miserably within the "general public" sector.

this is my favorite statistic in there: 20% of hitchcock dvd sales are north by northwest.

I could puke right here.