Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

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!
http://www.ruhrtal-cruising.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/fassbinder.jpg
Es tut mir sehr leid, Alfred, aber ich bin der Beste.

German is sexy.

haha

eric u crazy, NBNW is great.

NxNW : Hitchcock :: Untouchables : De Palma

It's great because the syllogism works (I'd imagine) for both of us.

yeah. untouchables is one of the few de palmas i like. but that's partly cos i saw it when i was like nine and was all "damn, i saw an 18-certificate film."

See, that difference in our tastes I remember.

Tho I don't remember fetishizing T2 for being one of the first superviolent R movies I saw.

let's all be thankful de Palma doesn't have the chops to do a witty Hitchcockian chase film.

ha, I saw The Reivers was on late last night on TCM and my parents pulled us out of that one when the cathouse sequence started. (I think I was 12, sis 10.)

This was the first PG-13 comedy I saw with my parents:

http://is2.okcupid.com/users/962/364/9633658855222444878/mt1129944315.jpg

yes, Morbs, let's ... jesus christ