Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

I think Rope was deliberately stagy (as was the lesser Lifeboat, another formal experiment) to a point, but I agree that Hitchcock does not quite "solve" the problem of shooting in unedited long takes. Actually he applies some similar techniques much more effectively in Under Capricorn--a film he could only have made after trying trying them out in Rope. UC is shot entirely in long takes (none 8+ minutes, but quite a few 3+) but without foregrounding that decision as noisily as Rope.

Rope is indeed a deliberate formal experiment; it's meant to be stagy. That doesn't make it good, and it doesn't make the experiment successful. Unless the point was to make a stagy-looking film. That he had an explicit, conscious idea (granted, already more than most directors), and executed it as precisely to plan as the production process allows--there are no auteurs--doesn't keep the background from looking like a grammer school diarama. The performances by the killers are unmotivated, and the diaglogue, although witty, is stilted. That's not a receipt for a great film, regardless of how few cuts there were, how elaborate the lighting changes are, and how complicated the camera choreography is.

Hollywood has never felt particularly in debt to the theatre--unlike early Continental cinema--and that's generally been a strength. The media are in most respects unrelated. Even European film got over this perceived link pretty quickly.

One of the (utterly true) cliches in the film world is the importance of casting (,casting, casting). Cary Grant is just brilliant. So is Jimmy Stewart. Farley Granger isn't. I'm just not convinced that H. coaxed these performances out; he was lucky when they were good, but indifferent when they weren't.

Well part of Hollywood being "Hollywood" is the directors of the 00s and 10s and 20s trying to cast off their inevitable borrowings from the theater--the low theater and, sometimes, that high theater too. The anxiety of influence, etc. See a book called Eloquent Gestures to see how this played out on the level of acting styles.

Candidia, I agree that Rope is not a complete success. What I was saying that he perhaps foregrounded the technical feat of unedited takes at the expensive of the fluidity in performance style that he had achieved in earlier films. I still think it's an awesome achievement in itself, but UC is a more successful integration of dramaturgy/mise en scene.

*use other features please.

Okay, what I perhaps SHOULD have said that was for all it's supposed glamour, chemistry (both literal and metaphorical), and plotting, I found it rather ponderous and incredibly talky.

What do you think?

Has anyone seen Blake Edwards' take on Hitchcock: "Experiment In Terror"? I would think that David Lynch and Mark Frost watched this together in 1989.

(I wasn't calling you out for repeating yourself btw)

-rated: Psycho, North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much (original), Frenzy

-rated: Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much (remake), Vertigo, Rear Window

... don't you agree?

Vertigo DROOL DROOL I love above almost any other movie. My next favorites of his in line- Rebecca, Psycho, Birds, North By Northwest, Rear Window. Have to see 39 steps since I see it rated so much on this thread.

speaking of Shadow of a Doubt (as we were on Rear Window thread) -- LOVE that "zombie waitress" in the dive who looks at the ring:

http://truespies.org/mirror-stage/2007/08/12/alfred-hitchcock-presents-the-night-of-the-living-dead/