Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

How early? 20s/30s? I like Sabotage an inordinate amount but it's probly the 1st Man Who Knew Too Much or The 39 Steps.

Rear Window does the light and breezy but still totally suspenseful thing WAY better than NxNW. C'mon people!

I've got that 5-movie box with Juno and Rich and Strange on it to watch over the weekend.

I would agree RW is greater, but cmon, they're significantly different stylewise!

Eric defines screwball broader than retro box sets define "noir."

This is the collection.

(7.0) Blackmail (UK-1929) - Anny Ondra/Charles Paton/Cyril Ritchard
(6.2) Champagne (silent-UK-1928) - Betty Balfour/Gordon Harker/Jean Bradin
(5.8) Easy Virtue (silent-UK-1928) - Isabel Jeans/Franklin Dyall/Ian Hunter
(6.3) The Farmer's Wife (silent-UK-1928) - Jameson Thomas/Lillian Hall-Davis/Gordon Harker
(6.2) Jamaica Inn (UK-1939) - Charles Laughton/Maureen O'Hara/Robert Newton
(4.7) Juno and the Paycock (UK-1930) - Barry Fitzgerald/Maire O'Neill/Edward Chapman
(8.1) The Lady Vanishes (UK-1938) - Margaret Lockwood/Michael Redgrave/Paul Lukas/Dame May Whitty
(6.9) The Man Who Knew Too Much (UK-1934) - Leslie Banks/Edna Best/Peter Lorre
(6.3) The Manxman (silent-UK-1928)- Carl Brisson/Malcolm Keen/Anny Ondra
(5.9) Number Seventeen (UK-1932) - Leon M. Lion/Anne Grey/John Stuart
(6.1) Rich and Strange (UK-1931) - Henry Kendall/Joan Barry/Percy Marmot
(6.2) The Ring (silent-UK-1927) - Carl Brisson/Lillian Hall-Davis/Ian Hunter
(7.2) Sabotage (UK-1936) - Sylvia Sidney/Oskar Homolka/Desmond Tester
(6.7) Secret Agent (UK-1936) - John Gielgud/Peter Lorre/Madeleine Carroll/Robert Young/Lilli Palmer
(5.7) The Skin Game (UK-1931) - C.V. France/Helen Haye/Edmund Gwenn
(8.0) The 39 Steps (UK-1935) - Robert Donat/Madeleine Carroll/Peggy Ashcroft
(7.1) Young and Innocent (UK-1937) - Nova Pilbeam/Derrick De Marney/Percy Marmot

ALSO-- ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS:
(#13) The Cheney Vase (S.1, 12/25/55) - Carolyn Jones Darren McGavin/George Macready/Ruta Lee
(#268) The Sorcerer's Apprentice (S.7, ???) - Diana Dors/Brandon De Wilde/Larry Kert

BONUS: 55 minutes of Hitchcock movie trailers

Wd rather see Rogen/Segel do Rope, tho.

YES

in the uk we have one box that has all the BIP films, and another coming out next week with all the gainsborough ones (ie pre-BIP) and gaumont films (ie post-BIP) plus the ones he did after gaumont.

Eric defines screwball broader than retro box sets define "noir."

I hate a lot of movies, so I have to.

is NXNW supposed to be "suspenseful"? I see it as a long romantic comedy (with some dead spots).

Is NxNW supposed to be "romantic"?!

or "funny"?!

It's a romp, guys.

Cary Grant drunk = height of comedy in 1959

Martin Landau as gay man = height of comedy in 1959.

If Hitch says so, I'll buy it.

xp: yes and yes and it is. (I'd love to sit thru The Awful Truth / NxNW in a theater with Eric and he could explain why everyone was delusionally laughing for four hours.)

Martin Landau was supposed to be gay in NbyNW??? What did I miss???

xpost You just want to see me cut my throat.

Landow is so not gay in NxNW. It's a pipe dream created by people who want to make the movie more interesting.

James Mason arguing with Landau says, "What's the matter – jealous?"

Landau: "Call it my woman's intuition."

I was just about to xpost that

I heard Landau say he was gay in NxNW.

(have you read Robin Wood?)

When I first saw the movie as a kid that line really made me go "huh?"

NxNW is more interesting than Spellbound, Dial M and Rebecca for starters.

Spellbound and Dial M, fer sure

I mean I love them all but Eric's dismissal just seems so arbitrary.

ha!

Leonard: You surely would have suspected. Why else would you have decided not to tell Miss Kendall why our little treasure here has a belly full of microfilm?
Vandamm: You seem to be trying to fill mine with rotten apples.
Leonard: Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms.
Vandamm: Truth? I've heard nothing but innuendos.

ha indeed. There's a lot of sexual Otherness in Hitchcock that isn't exactly gay in that repressed Hollywood way... more like, there's something going on here and you don't really want to know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?

btw, JJ Leigh makes a good Mrs Danvers, if more glam than Judith Anderson.

The first exchange might not not mean anything, but it's so weird and unexpected – and Hitch was not careless about dialogue – that it's the only possible explanation.

oooh i dunno if i'd say NxNW was more interesting than rebecca

It's maybe a bit Goth-y for me.

Agree with Morbs about Jennifer Jason Leigh but I assumed that was me being uncritical about everything she does.

(have you read Robin Wood?)

Yeah, like I'm going to read about NxNW.

oddly the first thing that comes to mind when I think about NxNW is that little kid in the background that plugs his ears right before Eva Marie Saint shoots Cary Grant.

Dial M could be conceivably less interesting than NxNW. I've skipped it so far. Spellbound and To Catch a Thief are both way down there alongside NxNW in disappointment, but neither are anywhere near as wildly beloved.

I love the hurt in Mason's voice when Leonard pulls the gun fulla blanks: "LEEONAARD?!?

Great opening credits on NxNW, I'll admit.

Spellbound kinda sucks

To Catch a Thief totally sucks

Sabotage = most underrated

Spellbound has got maybe 10 great minutes, and a lot of dialogue I don't remember. But it's hard to watch it without thinking of High Anxiety.

James Mason is the most polished, pained-looking Hitch villain ever! He can actually sell killing someone as a sequela of irritation.

Plus, an ad exec being relentlessly chased by killers brings me joy, having worked with such fuckers for 8 years.

Gregory Peck has a talent for smothering costars with a pillow of sincere, plodding suckdom.

The ski sequence might be his worst set piece that I've seen. If they cut out some of the "psychiatrists confer" sequences I could at least enjoy Spellbound as watchable trash.

James Mason is the most polished, pained-looking Hitch villain ever!

Claude fucking Rains.

I love the way James Mason says "Games?...*must* we?" in NxNW

Claude Rains is more anguished.

The audio commentary on Criterion Collection's Rebecca (currently out of print) is one of the best I have ever heard...astoundingly informative.

who did it?

I would agree RW is greater, but cmon, they're significantly different stylewise!
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Es tut mir sehr leid, Alfred, aber ich bin der Beste.

German is sexy.

haha