Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

Unless Vertigo and Rear Window turn out on reexamination not to be the masterpieces that most knowle-geable critics hold them to be,

http://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2018/05/29/angry-birds-prompt-warning-signs-from-city/

'Vertigo' after Weinstein

not sure i've read that Novak quote before; illuminating

LOL, I'd typed "Jeanne Dielman in 2022" even before reading the article and realizing it's actually framed around Vertigo defeating Kane in S&S 2012.

idgi, i don't think we're supposed to cheer for Scottie

yeah makes me want to re-watch. As for Hitch mapped onto Weinstein it actually felt a bit tacked on.

it's very WOKE

lol and Thomson is not a millenial what gives

arrogant prick

oh it's Thomson? I guessed without clicking.

lol sorry my last post is on the wrong thread. Thomson is mostly ok I think.

I like him but I’m a bit scared to read him of all people on #metoo tbh

He's one of my favorite film writers, in part because I've made marks on the wall where I've thrown his books (I finished his book on acting last week)

Speaking of me too & Thomson reminds me that when there was that terrible Ben Affleck statement everyone was dunking on, it went over extra weird for me cause previous to that the first thing the phrase “father of daughters” brought to my mind was Thomson’s biographical dictionary entry on Juliette Lewis:

She is of age now, but she was established first as a kind of Lolita, with a knowingness that was not permissible, and as a breed of illicit spectacle. What child has ever had darker or bluer eyes, or a mouth more filled and sated with intimations of our desire?
I know, it is not common or proper to talk about real people—professionals!—like this, much less in an apparent work of reference. But this is a book about response, and I cannot escape my own feeling of awe and dismay at seeing Lewis. For it carries not just the certainty that she is inspired, or magical, or understanding, but the anticipation of a Humbert Humbert and the father of daughters.

Is what Vertigo has to tell us, beyond this history of male control, that the medium itself is in some sense male? Is there something in cinema that gives power to the predator, sitting still in the dark, watching desired and forbidden things? Something male in a system that has an actress stand on her mark, in a beautifully lit and provocatively intimate close-up, so that we can rhapsodise over her?

thomson is a great writer but he falls back on this "is there, perhaps, something inherently WRONG with the movies?" line way too often.

men and their fucking rhapsodizing

it's very WOKE

Vertigo is very WOKE tbf

enjoyed reading that article

Can’t imagine Citizen Kane ranks so very much higher in the new woke canon.

Only Alan Alda films are going to undergo a major reevaluation next time. He's cuddly.

I enjoyed that piece quite a bit. But the last two sentences don't scan well to me:

It’s irrefutably clear that Vertigo is a confession to the damage done by men’s grooming of women’s desirability. And even if the film is tragic, and even if Novak’s performance more and more seems brave or poignant, I don’t think its fantasy can go unchastised.

First sentence is otm, so I don't understand why Vertigo needs to be "chastised" for its apt confession.

I suppose something can be a confession and still bad, like Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

Definitely, though I don’t think it applies to Vertigo. Scottie’s violent & vindictive reaction at the end, and then Judy’s suicide, his utter devastation, and the sudden ending are pretty damning of his behavior imo.

Scottie and C F Kane do not have particularly healthy sexual relationships

nor does Jeanne Dielman

I like the way she marinates pork chops.

lol

last several posts otm

Judy did not commit suicide, the nun freaked her out and oops!

with Barbara Harris' death, Hitch actors who are still alive:

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/08/rip-barbara-harris-alfred-hitchcock-actor-dead-still-alive-1201996648/

Norman Lloyd is still alive?!?!?!

he sure is... he went to a World Series game in LA last year.

I saw him do an "evening with" Q&A about a decade ago.

Rewatched Family Plot last night, which I like just fine. Karen Black has the least rewarding of the 4 main roles, but the others are all splendid, particularly Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern. There's lots of significant echoing between the two couples, including both men calling their partner "bitch." (Some of the first act's showy doity talk is a bit much -- I don't know whether to blame Dern's "You've got me by the crystal balls" on Ernest Lehman or Hitch.) The set pieces at the funeral (Katherine Helmond!) and the Catholic Mass are nice.

I never knew that Roy Thinnes started shooting the jeweler/kidnapper role, but was summarily fired when Hitch's first choice, William Devane, became available. Hitchcock was in pretty fragile health during shooting, even 5 years before his death.

The Blind Man, an abandoned Lehmann thriller screenplay for Hitchcock after North By Northwest (to include a chase scene at Disneyland, the project fell apart after Walt angrily declared that he wouldn't let his children watch Psycho, nor allow its disgusting creator to shoot a foot of film at his premises): completed by Mark Gatiss and adapted for radio starring Rebecca Front, and Hugh Laurie in the intended Jimmy Stewart role.

Free to listen via web or the iPlayer app (search "Unmade Movies") for the next 8 days.

Ersatz Hitch narration is done by Peter Serafinowicz.

Notorious reissue:

https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/09/sexpionage-bond-girls-hitchcock-honeytrap-red-sparrow?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true

The Ring
The Farmer's Wife
Champagne
The Manxman
The Skin Game

Hitchcock: British International Pictures Collection comes out on @KinoLorber DVD/Blu-ray 11/26. Includes Hitchcock/Truffaut interview audio plus commentaries by @NickPinkerton and @selfstyledsiren. pic.twitter.com/ZYMzkR0bZH

— R. Emmet Sweeney (@r_emmet) September 13, 2019

I've got Farmer's Wife and Manxman on a previous set but I'm a pathetic fanboy take my money

ive only seen The Ring of those

Great

FYI new Kino Lorber release of Blackmail is fucked up, it has 4 versions of the movie and every version except the 1:33:1 silent version is stretched.

Hitch, said (Bruce) Dern, was approached by Lorraine Gary (on the set of FAMILY PLOT). You may know her as Sheriff Brody’s wife in JAWS, but she was the real-life wife of Lou Wasserman, Hitch’s former agent and now the head of his studio, Universal — and Spielberg’s casting of her, twice, seems like a shrewd way to keep the boss on-side, though LG is also an excellent actress, well worth casting purely on merit. Anyway, she’s a woman of influence at this time.

Lorraine Gary says to Hitch, reportedly, something like this: “My friend Mary [not her real name so far as I know] is an actress, and she needs to work once a year to keep her union membership, and she would be just perfect for the role of the bra saleswoman in your film.”

“Out of the question,” says Hitch.

“Oh, but-“

“Out of the question.”

But the day comes to shoot the scene, and on the set is not the actor Hitchcock chose for the part, but Lorraine’s friend Mary.

Hitch makes no comment. He sets up his first shot — we’ll be over Bruce’s shoulder on Mary, then at the end of the scene she’ll leave and Bruce will turn and it’ll end as a single on him.

A bra saleswoman.

Take One. It goes fine. Hitchcock says, “Cut,” and walks up to the camera. Opens it. Unspools the film, exposing it: holds it up to the light.

“Oh dear,” he says to Mary, “It appears you’re not photogenic.”

“Wh-?”

“Your image does not appear on the celluloid.”

Mary starts crying and leaves, Hitch returns to his director’s chair to await the arrival of the actor he chose (pictured).

Dern had told Hitch that he wanted his chair right next to Hitch’s so he could study the Master of Suspense at work. So he leans over and asks, “What was all that about?”

“What that was about, Bruce, was DON’T FUCK WITH HITCH.”

https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/photogenics/

Brilliant thanks

cool story, bro

Very lame

you're a sock for Lorraine Gary?

Hitch’s cruelty post-Tippi Hedren is inexcusable, there’s a difference btwn going cold on Montgomery Clift when he begs for “motivation” and literally torturing his actresses.

That story isn’t endearing at all... I thought it was leading up to an unexpected moment of kindness, like he gets one shot of her so she can join a union, but pulling the film out? Ugh...

not meant to be endearing

Interesting story. Following a comment, the poster corrected something -- Gary was Sid Sheinberg's wife, not Wasserman's.

― not meant to be endearing (Dr Morbius), Thursday, October 3, 2019 10:58 AM (six minutes ago)

I saw The Lodger recently and thought this bit was cool

https://imgur.com/gallery/B7inWER

― not meant to be endearing (Dr Morbius), Thursday, October 3, 2019 10:58 AM (six minutes ago)

― now let's play big lunch take little lunch (sic), Wednesday, October 2, 2019 9:12 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah but it's just sad

has anyone seen The Paradine Case? only '40s film of his I haven't seen.