Hitchcock

..and why not?

Your five fav's

The Man who knew too Much
0
No votes
The 39 Steps
3
3%
Secret Agent
0
No votes
Sabotage
1
1%
Young and innocent
0
No votes
Jamaica Inn
1
1%
Rebbecca
5
6%
Foreign Correspondent
1
1%
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
0
No votes
Suspicion
1
1%
Saboteur
0
No votes
Shadow of a Doubt
7
8%
Lifeboat
1
1%
The Fighting Generation
0
No votes
Spellbound
2
2%
Notorious
3
3%
The Paradine Case
0
No votes
Rope
3
3%
Under Capricorn
0
No votes
Stage Fright
0
No votes
Strangers on a train
9
10%
I confess
0
No votes
Dail M for Murder
1
1%
Rear Window
11
13%
To Catch a Thief
0
No votes
The Trouble with Harry
1
1%
The Man who knew too much
0
No votes
The wrong man
0
No votes
Vertigo
11
13%
North by Northwest
10
11%
Psycho
10
11%
The birds
4
5%
Marnie
1
1%
Torn Curtain
0
No votes
Topaz
0
No votes
Frenzy
1
1%
Family Plot
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 87

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naughty boy
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby naughty boy » 02 Sep 2017, 09:41

No votes for the last four (yet) ?

I enjoyed Frenzy a lot - although because of the time and the place, there's an inescapably tacky tone to the thing. You keep expecting Dick Emery to pop up.
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Belle Lettre
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Belle Lettre » 02 Sep 2017, 10:11

:lol: very true
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby clive gash » 02 Sep 2017, 10:19

You are awful.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby The Modernist » 02 Sep 2017, 19:11

Hodgson wrote:No votes for the last four (yet) ?

I enjoyed Frenzy a lot - although because of the time and the place, there's an inescapably tacky tone to the thing. You keep expecting Dick Emery to pop up.


I like it a lot and was quite close to including it. I really like the atmospheric (pre-gentrification) Covent Garden location and Barry Foster is very good in it. It has some great set pieces and shots. The only bum notes are the scenes of domestic light comedy with the inspector and his wife, but its still a great film.

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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Darkness_Fish » 02 Sep 2017, 20:13

Spellbound has the worst skiing scenes in cinema history, if memory serves, probably the least competent images Hitchcock ever put to celluloid. Frenzy is good because it's got such a really nasty, horrible edge to it, there is no glorification of the sexual killer here, unlike so many other serial killer films. The character is nasty, the sexual violence genuinely jarring and unsettling. Not one I care to watch very often, for that reason.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Darkness_Fish » 02 Sep 2017, 20:23

Shadow of a Doubt
Rope
Psycho
Rear Window
The Birds

I only plumped for The Birds to round the list off, probably because I've seen it more than the other contenders (Lifeboat, Vertigo, Dial M for Murder, North by Northwest, Rebecca, Strangers on a Train). Probably my favourite director, especially since The Coens seem to have forgotten the art of film-making. I think there's probably only Family Plot from the films I've seen that I'd actively avoid watching again.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Darkness_Fish » 02 Sep 2017, 20:25

John Co(a)n wrote:I may well be (as usual) in a minority here but it doesn't have a quarter of the menace of, say, Peeping Tom, which is over 10 years older.

I really don't get the praise for Peeping Tom, I find it entirely risible. There's a man trying to kill me lugging a fucking massive camera around with a spike on it - should I stand still and scream, or walk slowly away and hail a taxi?
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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Re: Hitchcock

Postby toomanyhatz » 02 Sep 2017, 20:34

Darkness_Fish wrote:
John Co(a)n wrote:I may well be (as usual) in a minority here but it doesn't have a quarter of the menace of, say, Peeping Tom, which is over 10 years older.

I really don't get the praise for Peeping Tom, I find it entirely risible. There's a man trying to kill me lugging a fucking massive camera around with a spike on it - should I stand still and scream, or walk slowly away and hail a taxi?


It's been a long time, but I remember this being my reaction at the time. As a metaphor, it's a pretty damned obvious/simplistic one.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Jimbly » 02 Sep 2017, 23:28

John Co(a)n wrote:No. Frenzy is the first clear step of his final decline. Many set pieces are laboured, the dialogue is clunky and the acting hammy.
The potato sack scene is classic Hitchcock, but not much else.


You could say that about a few of his films though.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Matt Wilson » 03 Sep 2017, 00:49

Marnie is the beginning of the end.

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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Davey the Fat Boy » 03 Sep 2017, 01:05

I recently watched Family Plot. It was pretty great!
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby toomanyhatz » 03 Sep 2017, 01:29

I think his last two are a lot better than most of his 60s ones (Psycho and The Birds excepted, of course).
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Sneelock » 11 Sep 2017, 19:05

Family Plot & Frenzy better than "Topaz" and "Torn Curtain"?
I don't have a problem with that.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Sneelock » 11 Sep 2017, 19:32

I took:
Foreign Correspondent
Shadow of a Doubt
Notorious
Strangers on a Train
& North by Northwest.

at first blush I intended to pick a film from each of what I consider his "periods". you'll notice his "British Period" isn't represented at all. oh well, best laid plans. I guess I just decided to go with my bread-basket instead. I think he hit the ground running with his Hollywood films. He is especially getting that "wrong guy / guy on the run" thing down to a science by the time of "Foreign Correspondent" which I think is a dandy movie.

He told Truffaut that he wanted Gary Cooper but I can't imagine me liking it better. I probably like Gary Cooper better than I like Joel Mccrea but I LOVE Joel Mccrea and I think he has that puzzled expression that makes these movies so easy to get caught up in. I guess I can lump this together with "North by Northwest". probably his most famous and confident wrong guy on the run movie. it's slick, it's lean. the bad guys are just bad enough that you like watching them fall to their deaths. People that want to make movies are told they need to plan things ahead. I think few films do this better. the writer says Hitchcock told him scenes he wanted to do: rushmore, plane in cornfield, helping somebody and finding a knife in their back. He said his job was to string it all together. the right and left side of the brain working together in a romantic thriller. I think it's pretty special.

Hithcock was often very confident but the twitchy drummer in "Young and Rich" or the sniper waiting for the cymbals to crash in the "Man Who Knew too Much" remake seem like highlights. North by Northwest feels like a highlight reel pretty much from beginning to end.

Notorious might be my favorite in the batch. I think the performances are topnotch and the show-offy direction is all clever and manipulative in a way that moves the story and characters forward. I don't think any other actress was as good as convincing me she was in love with her leading man (I.Bergman) C. Grant's natural likability works a long way towards redeeming the fact that he is really pretty cold to her early on. I think everything works just so and reaches a wonderful conclusion.

I'll lump "Shadow & Strangers" together too. the most interesting guy in the movie is an unrepentant psychopath. Both go from light to dark in a way that I find very engaging. Both are pretty likable guys when you get down to it. I like how the main character in each is sort of trapped - an unwilling accessory.

Strangers is as confident as N by NW in a lot of ways. the "big ending" bugs some people but I think it's perfect.

I love Hitchcock. I've been meaning to get to this thread for a while. I try to go to the movies a lot and a lot changes. Our tablets and phones and game consoles are having an undeniable effect on our attention spans. Still, this guy who figured out how to make audiences hold their breath in the silent era was really on to something. I think, in many ways it is still a very modern approach. He shows you things and you figure them out. You feel very proud of yourself for figuring it out.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Sneelock » 11 Sep 2017, 20:21

Davey the Fat Boy wrote:I think it's pretty clunky. It relies on a kind of false Freudian notion that identifying trauma is the same as healing it. The characterizations are a bit stock too. Then there's the strangeness of the Dali imagery in the dream sequences. It doesn't really work, but it's beautiful.

All of this said, I completely get it leaving a strong impression. It haunted me for years too. So despite my criticisms, I actually get why you might rate it really highly.


I love "Spellbound" and think it has a lot going for it. First and foremost there's that Ingrid Bergman falling in love thing I already mentioned. Then there's Gregory Peck. I think his unusual quality helps the far-fetched aspects of the film considerably. Certainly the film takes a lunk headed approach to Freudian psychology but I think that's something movies can do so long as they don't contradict themselves. the rules the movie makes for itself are the rules up to a point. If Freddie kills us while we are sleeping in a "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie then we will die. If Gregory Peck remembers then he will be cured. sure, it's stupid but if you keep watching you either buy into it or keep it at arms length. Either way I think it's rightly regarded as one of Hitchcock's classics.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Sneelock » 11 Sep 2017, 20:26

Clyde Gash wrote:No. Frenzy is the first clear step of his final decline. Many set pieces are laboured, the dialogue is clunky and the acting hammy.
The potato sack scene is classic Hitchcock, but not much else.



I like the way he poisons our mind against Jon Finch early on. I like his performance myself and think it's one of the best things about the film. Also, I think the locations and so on - the "old fashioned" aspects of the film make for an interesting counterpoint in what is certainly one of his most unpleasant films.

according to many sources the "prayer/rape" scene was a scene Hitchcock had been wanting to put in a movie at least since the late sixties. well, LOL, how screwed up is that?

I like Frenzy. I think Hitchcock is enjoying certain freedoms of the era but still showing those same skills I talked about before which date back to the silent era. showing us something before the character sees it - that sort of thing.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Davey the Fat Boy » 11 Sep 2017, 21:41

Sneelock wrote:
Davey the Fat Boy wrote:I think it's pretty clunky. It relies on a kind of false Freudian notion that identifying trauma is the same as healing it. The characterizations are a bit stock too. Then there's the strangeness of the Dali imagery in the dream sequences. It doesn't really work, but it's beautiful.

All of this said, I completely get it leaving a strong impression. It haunted me for years too. So despite my criticisms, I actually get why you might rate it really highly.


I love "Spellbound" and think it has a lot going for it. First and foremost there's that Ingrid Bergman falling in love thing I already mentioned. Then there's Gregory Peck. I think his unusual quality helps the far-fetched aspects of the film considerably. Certainly the film takes a lunk headed approach to Freudian psychology but I think that's something movies can do so long as they don't contradict themselves. the rules the movie makes for itself are the rules up to a point. If Freddie kills us while we are sleeping in a "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie then we will die. If Gregory Peck remembers then he will be cured. sure, it's stupid but if you keep watching you either buy into it or keep it at arms length. Either way I think it's rightly regarded as one of Hitchcock's classics.


Yeah...you can't fault Hitchcock for not holding to the internal logic of his films.

I like Spellbound. It's a good film. I don't know how highly I rate it in the canon of Hitchcock's films, but even the floor is pretty high in that arena.
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Re: Hitchcock

Postby Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman » 12 Sep 2017, 20:49

This is perhaps the best example where one can only reply with the 'only at this very moment' intuition -

tomorrow it'd be different, I am certain.

I chose: Rebecca, Strangers On A Train, Shadow Of A Doubt, Vertigo, and Frenzy.

All fantastic. I recall Leslie Halliwell being very unkind to Marnie and Frenzy. That was his loss, although I can understand where he came from.

Frenzy has much delicious and very black humour. It is unfair to call it an 'old man's sex suspenser', as good old Leslie did. Frenzy is very much of its time, it's absolutely not erotically exciting. I'd say it's sort of a joyful deconstruction of a genre, and of a period when 'personal liberation' was all the rage.

But hey, we're talking one of the top 5 directors in my book.
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