The Hitchcock Poll

Well, it was really more that it was unplausible nonsense, which kept bringing me out of the movie. Performances were all great, it looked fantastic, the cahracters were all taking it very seriously, but... it was too silly, I guess? And, as I've said, that didn't bother me with Psycho or The Man Who Knew Too Much so it's not like I'm too easily thrown by a ropey plot.

Soto, I thought you'd have gone for the groovy dressing-the-corpse necrophilia!

I love the last half hour, but forty minutes of languorous shots of Stewart following Novak and anomic conversations and the corpse starts to stink.

Again (I think it's a distinction worth making), I didn't say it was cold; I said that I find it a cold film, and acknowledged that defenders feel very differently.

I'll give it credit for one thing: it's reputation grows as more and more people see it. When it was fairly high in the '72 and '82 polls, I think it was out of circulation at the time; I saw it for the first time in the early '80s, a pirate screening at a small rep, and I wondered if part of its stature was tied in with its inaccessibility. But since it was officially re-released sometime after the '82 poll, its standing has just grown and grown.

Wasn't RW also out of circulation?

Yeah--also The Trouble with Harry. I saw Rear Window at the same time (possibly even a double-bill); now that film I love, give or take a bit of stilted dialogue between Stewart and Kelly.

I watched RW with my mom this afternoon during my weekly visit -- I can watch it anytime.

RW is still probably one of my 3 favourite films ever - the thing's unstoppable.

One of my favorite shots ever: the close-up on Kelly wiggling the ring, followed by the camera gliding up to Raymond Burr, who shifts his gaze from the ring to Stewart.

Oops: spoiler alert.

or Wendell Corey, Kelly, and Stewart swirling brandy snifters in the evening light.

you know when a director reaches a zone where every single shot is immaculate? yeah that

midge is my favourite character in vertigo - dunno if that means I didn't get the film

it was really more that it was unplausible nonsense

ah, so you're one of 'The Plausibles' Hitchcock sniffed about! :)

forty minutes of languorous shots of Stewart following Novak and anomic conversations

love it all.

Those three '50s films you mentioned, plus Man Who Knew Too Much '56 and Rope, were held out of circulation by Hitchcock and his estate until they were re-released theatrically with great fanfare in '84. You can imagine how maddening how maddening it was coming of age as a Hitchcock fan in the late '70s not to have those films available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phmDP4LSz1Y

I wonder whether this accounts for Pauline Kael's silence. She had something to say on almost every Hitch film from the early thirties through The Wrong Man, then there's a gap between it and Psycho.

ah, so you're one of 'The Plausibles' Hitchcock sniffed about! :)

guilty, guilty. i'm certainly missing something, it seems.

any single frame of rear window would make a great poster.

I've definitely seen a Kael mini-review of North by Northwest

I was in the film program at the University of Toronto when I saw those pirate prints of Vertigo and Rear Window. (No idea how they got hold of them; it was a long-gone rep called the Nostalgic Cinema that seated about 50 people.) This was probably about '82. I have a clear memory of being really excited, and of raising my hand in one course to tell everyone that these two famous and impossible-to-see films would be showing at the Nostalgic. I expected to see virtually everyone from the class there--we were film students, right? Exactly one other guy showed up. Which may or may not say something about people who study film at universities.

I always assumed Kael's silence on Vertigo was disapproval; with only a small handful of exceptions, she didn't think much of Hitchcock's American films. (And even when she liked something, like North by Northwest, she could be very flippant.)

the Kael review of NxNwest was folded into her Cary Grant essay.

SPOILERS

In the long sequence in which Scottie trails "Madeleine," we are led to suspect some supernatural force — reincarnation, ghostly possession, perhaps — as motivating "Madeleine's" strange behavior. But the film disavows such forces by resolving the mystery with a rational explanation, grounding the story in the worldly realm where suspense more naturally results from the indeterminism of free will, as dramatized by Scottie's uncertain choices, rather than the possibility of some karmic comeuppance, irrelevant in its random nature. To fall back on fate after establishing the independence of freedom is a retreat.

is maybe a good explanation of how I felt the ending to be unsatisfactory- the nun popping up out of nowhere and Judy flinging herself out the window felt like an arbitrary cop-out right at the climactic resolution of both plotlines (Madeleine and Judy). Hitchcock all but promises us a reasonable explanation with his unveiling of the 'mystery' element midway through, only to pull the rug under us right at the death.

which might be fine next time i'm watching, but i sure as hell didn't appreciate it first time round. i'll get over it i'm sure.

Strangers On a Train is great, though it really shouldn't SPOILERS have a happy ending.

I wonder whether this accounts for Pauline Kael's silence.

Kael's North by Northwest blurb in 5001 Nights isn't flippant; I may have gotten it confused with her short Rio Bravo entry ("Silly, but with zest..."). I think the fact that there's no Psycho entry in 5001--no review by her in any collection, as I recall--supports the idea that Vertigo's omission is intentional. Obviously she saw Psycho, and I'm quite sure she would have seen Vertigo (and Rear Window) on initial release.

Eric H.: Do you want the Godfathers separated because you think there's a significant difference in quality, or is that you just think counting them together is inherently unfair? For me, they're equally great--sometimes I prefer one, sometimes the other--and, largely because of Pacino, they come together in my mind as a single film. But I think the inherently-unfair argument is a valid one.

If the two had been filmed simultaneously, it would maaaaybe be fair, but even then, not really. Say, for the sake of argument, I think the first one is one of the ten best movies of all time, but I am indifferent or worse to the second one, I sure as hell wouldn't want my vote helping the latter to ascend into the overall list of the top 10 (which it did -- I separated the votes back in '02 and the first one would've landed in slot #10 and the second was, I think, #12).

Strangers On a Train is great, though it really shouldn't SPOILERS have a happy ending.

It doesn't. Heterosexuality triumphs.

Does it? Granger's foxy enough for a lifetime of strangers on trains.

The haste with which he gets up with his woman suggests, if anything, he's forever locked that door and thrown away the key.

Anyway, can't believe anyone would call Vertigo cold after seeing Kim Novak finally acquiesce to pinning up her coif.

Novak acts like a man imitating a woman.

Never watched Rope til tonight. It's kind of boring.

The most curiously overrated Hitchcock movie.

Absolutely nobody in this film is subtle at all!

rope

Granger and Dall are fags, they hafta be over the top

Is Rope overrated? Most critics dismiss it as a curiosity at best.

don't think it's rated 'as such', but it's always going to be an interesting experiment -- so in other words, there's more to be said about it than, say a bunch of other hitchcocks

I'm a little surprised with Dial M garnering no votes...such a great little thriller. Maybe it suffered in a similar way to Psycho where it's someone's 2nd or 3rd favourite but not their first, so it slides in the final reckoning.

I also really need to see Notorious.

Dial M always seemed like a relative snooze after the scissors scene.

Yeah Eric, I only know of Robin Wood rating Rope highly, and that seems mostly bcz it made homosexuality clear to him.

I'm not talking critics, I'm talking casual watchers who get into Hitchcock. Most I've talked to invariably glom upon how much they loved Rope.

yeah the IMDB top 250, barometer of casual watchers/non-critic fans, has Rope on there.

had no idea. philistines are weird.

It was the first one I saw in high school, and I liked it because I believed then in auteurism. It's so obviously regarded as a directorial triumph that its merits are beside the point.

loved sabotage. only the kid on the bus should have been intercut w/ the guy being questioned at home watching the clock.

no-one's fave is The Lady Vanishes?! for shame.

I had never seen The Wrong Man before last night, not sure how that happened. Don't want to call it a dud, it's an interesting curio, but coming just before Vertigo it's certainly a minor film. I like the premise, but thought Henry Fonda's stoicism in the face of terrifying, Kafkaesque events was offputting and eventually kind of boring.

I think it's pretty major, but def not a very easy movie to love.

helps if you're Catholic imo (not that I love it)

Haven't seen it for years but I wdn't put it in the first rank of Hitch's work. It's no I Confess for example.

hmmm, I prefer it to I Confess. I could imagine Woody Allen loving it bcz despite the slapped-on epilogue card, it leaves you with that life-is-a-bitch-then-you-die feeling.

I like tangling with both Wrong Man and I Confess, even if they don't manage to negotiate Hitch's dark side with his showmanship as entertainingly as Vertigo.

Couple of good scenes in Dial M but yeah, not his best.

I like Fonda well enough but I like Monty Clift a lot more I guess