Friday, October 15

I never said actors were cattle. I said they should be treated like cattle.

Just finished watching Suspicion, with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. This means I have seen every feature length Alfred Hitchcock movie made between 1934 and 1964, 31 films in total. I am not including those for which Hitchcock is considered the director even though he isn't credited as such. (there are 2 of these examples, and I haven't seen either one.) For no particular reason, and in no particular order, here's my favorites, the ones I think everybody ought to see:

Rear Window

Obviously. Not only because it's easily the most tension filled, but because the sheer brilliance of every aspect of the film contributes to the startling whole. Where do you start praising this? Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly; it don't get any more movie star brilliant than this. Thelma Ritter is practically a clinic in how to be a character actress, prodding, relieving tension, lightening to make the dark seem worse than it is. The formal directorial devices, switching from the subjective to the objective, hell even the photograph Scotty was supposedly taking at the time of the accident are all brilliant. I have yet to meet anyone who does not fall under the spell of this film even if they don't immediately get all the slight of hand going on underneath the surface. After at least 10 viewings it still doesn't fail to make me laugh, or make me quake at the menace of Raymond Burr's footsteps in that hallway.

Shadow of a Doubt

Not only does Hitchcock invent the serial killer genre, he makes the best doppelganger statement and has characters comment on the genre at the same time. For lovers of all things symbolic the film never stops giving up the goods, plus it's funny and terrifying in all the right places. Probably the first "Film Blanc" where broad daylight carries just as much menace as shadowy night.

North by Northwest

Duh. more fun than a dozen James Bond films put together, this is the wrong man globetrotting action thriller that tops them all. Hitchcock not only invented this type of film, he's parctically the only practitioner of it. Whenever critics throw that "Hitchcockian" tag around this is definitely not what they mean, since nobody ever seems to get that the brilliance of this is the effortless balance between taut and charming, often within the same scene.

Rope

I'm a sucker for the most formally experimental piece in the canon. Designed to force the longest takes possible, Rope takes place in one apartment, over one afternoon/evening and contains only nine takes, sewn together by seamless transitions that make it appear to be one long cut. It's also blackly comedic and quite engaging as a look at the thrill kill phenomenon of Leopold and Loeb. It's also Hitchcocks first and most audacious use of colour, with a real time sunset occuring out the bay window in the background of every shot.

Young and Innocent

The best of the british work combines lots of themes that show up later, and also contains my single favorite individual shot, a sweeping crane over a busy ballroom that ties together all the dramatic momentum in one (literal) fell swoop. Foreshadows North By Northwest in its cross country chase and innocent man falsely accused. Charming and effortlessly brilliant. Also has some of the funniest and most self conscious model work I've ever seen.


There are lots more I like lots and lots; Strangers on a Train, Lifeboat, Foreign Correspondent, Rebecca, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Notorious. There's also three I definitely don't like, Mr & Mrs. Smith, a lifeless and forced screwball comedy directed with none of the visual wit one usually associates with Hitchcock, The Paradine Case, a bland courtroom drama whose storytelling is as stilted as Greg Pecks acting, and Vertigo, a movie which, frankly, bores me. I am of course completely alone in hating Vertigo. Everybody else hails it as an obsessive masterpiece, but its repetitive structure leaves me flat and quite frankly I got what he was going for the first time.

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