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Author Topic: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons  (Read 75845 times)

chardy999

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #80 on: January 21, 2016, 06:39:20 PM »
Yeah he's not at his wonderful best.

It's a decent forgettable film.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #81 on: January 22, 2016, 06:58:17 PM »
Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)



Adam & Sam's take

Rebecca is another Hitchcock film that seems to be trying a different tone every thirty minutes, except he somehow gets away with it this time. First a romantic drama, then a psychological thriller with slight hints of gothic horror (between this and Suspiria, I'm getting a lot of contextualization for Crimson Peak in this marathon), and finally a twisty murder mystery. I wasn't crazy about the first part, partly because even Laurence Olivier couldn't make up for how much of a despicable character Max was : as Adam & Sam discuss, he asks Joan Fontaine to "never be 35", and he is not joking, not at all... It's a credit to his performance that I didn't constantly want to punch him in the face.

Joan Fontaine's unnamed protagonist, however, was pretty great. She's incredibly charming makes you really feel the loss of innocence by the time it gets to the end and she's covering up murders. The fish out of water narrative of her trying to live up to Rebecca's reputation was so effective because of Fontaine, to the point that I almost forgot we were in a Hitchcock film and there was probably some underlying mystery/darkness. I say almost, because Hitchcock shoots Manderley Manor in such a way (see above) that I was half-expecting this to turn into an actual ghost story. This hour or so is the high point for me out of these three films so far, a pretty tremendous mix of tones carried by Fontaine's enticing performance (despite her character being frustatingly simple at times).

I did enjoy the half-hour denouement as well, with its twists and turns playing out like the final few pages of a Christie novel, though it gets a bit silly and is somewhat harmed by the problematic moralistic undertones of the story : Rebecca is "the devil" because she's an independent woman (granted she also cheats on her husband, but Max deems her diabolical even before that in his telling, though it's always hard to tell since sex is only alluded to, as it must), in contrast to Fontaine's character who is entirely devoted to her husband. Still, if you can get past that, it gets pretty fun, especially once George Sanders shows up as Rebecca's ex-lover trying to first blackmail then expose Max as a murderer. He's having a lot of fun with it, giving a lot of energy to scenes that could otherwise have been too... talky, for lack of a better word.

8/10
« Last Edit: January 22, 2016, 07:01:15 PM by Teproc »
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oldkid

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #82 on: January 23, 2016, 09:31:55 AM »
Rebecca is one I've loved more the more I considered it.  What a great gothic.  And I don't think I would have really appreciated Crimson Peak without it.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #83 on: January 23, 2016, 11:01:50 PM »
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)



Adam & Sam's take

I'm a little baffled by this film. The plot makes no sense. We have two FBI agents (or something) who, after clumsily letting a serial killer get away, narrow it down to two suspects, one on each coast. So they go after one of them by... trying to get into his family house by pretending to be there for a survey ? And... sitting on their hands for god knows how long ? Before concluding that he is innocent simply because the other one died ? Well, one of them also asks the killer's niece to marry him, so I guess there's that. She's barely out of highschool at the most, of course. The whole film feels... unfinished, in a sense. At one point, our main character (the niece in question) goes on a date with the guy "taking pictures for a survey". We see them going off, then cut to them on a bench with her saying "You're a detective !?". It's jarring and feels as if there's just a scene missing, and that is how everything that has to do with plot feels here.

And yet, it's pretty fun. I'm starting to repeat myself, but I really liked the female lead, Teresa Wright. Almost as if this Hitchcock guy was good at directing actresses or something. She has a strong monologue early on about being depressed and thirsting for adventure, and then somehow makes you relate to her insane decision not to denounce her uncle whom she discovers to be a serial killer. The less that's said about any scene featuring the romancing detective, the better though. Hitchcock has fun with the small town setting : there is a running joke of the father having lengthy discussions with his neighbor about the most efficient ways in which they could murder each other. It's actually hilarious and a nice nod to the "seemingly wholesome family infiltrated by pure evil" general theme of the film.

Which brings us to the serial killer in question. Joseph Cotten is very good at being menacingly charming, though I didn't find him particularly convincing when he actually started to rant about how those widows are nothing but parasites anyway. That monologue occuring in the middle of a family dinner feels like it should say something about the hypocrisy of the "perfect wholesome family", but as I said, the script is too lacking to convincingly make much of a point there. He also has strong romantic/sexual chemistry with Teresa Wright, which makes their interaction very, very creepy, in ways that I'm not sure are entirely intended but work regardless.

One final aspect that helped save the film for me was the great sequence in which she decides to go to the police, and we get her running in the streets while he follows her, intending to stop her. That sequence brings the tension and menace that was missing from the rest of the film, if only for a few minutes.

6/10

Sidenote : Watching the first 10 minutes or so was a pretty surreal experience as big fan of Waxtailor's album "Hope and Sorrow", which features these two songs, both sampling lines from the film. Always a strange feeling to discover where a line you've heard countless times originally came from.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 08:50:38 PM by Teproc »
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chardy999

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #84 on: January 24, 2016, 08:47:42 PM »
Agree with all of that re Shadow of a Doubt. It feels unfinished. Plenty to like scene by scene but it is less than the sum of its parts. His rant about the old women is not quite the right content or tone. And that detective dating saga is a disgrace.

P.S. Rebecca is great! :)
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #85 on: January 28, 2016, 05:51:11 PM »
Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951)



Adam & Sam's take

Choosing a shot for this one was hard. There are so many of them ! Both of the fairgrounds sequences (with the murder seen through the reflection in the glasses being the highlight), the tennis match, the dog guarding the stairs (Hitchcock sure does love stairs), the opening focusing on the eponymous strangers' shoes... This one, with the murderer looking straight at the camera while the rest of the public follows the tennis ball, is an excellent example of visual characterization : he is in some ways a proto-Norman Bates, and as such must stand out in a crowd, in a pretty disturbing way.

I was just giddy with excitement watching this. A great premise, a great performance by Robert Walker (giving the performance Joseph Cotten wished he had in Shadow of a Doubt), finally a simple, efficient plot with no MacGuffins, and a few amazing sequences : namely the murder itself and the climax. The murder is the typical Hitchcockian meeting of sexuality and violence, perfectly executed. The ending sequence wraps everything perhaps a bit too neatly, but is nonetheless an impressive and visually striking setpiece.

In many ways this feels like an improvement over Shadow of a Doubt like North by Northwest is an improvement over The 39 Steps and Saboteur. Not as directly, but there are a few similar beats, such as Bruno strangling an old lady in the middle of a room full of upper-class socialites, which feels like a much more effective version of that dinner monologue in SoD, combined with some of that gallows humour too. And have I mentioned how great Robert Walker is yet ? Because he is. Farley Granger as the "hero" falls just on the right side of bland, which works pretty well as he then almost works as an audience surrogate (as Adam & Matt observe, there are many shots from his point of view).

Something that occured to me during the tennis match sequence is how much I enjoy Hitchcock's willigness to obfuscate information from his audience. The famous "surprise vs suspense" quote with the ticking bomb under the table seems to indicate the contrary, but he can do both, and this is an excellent example* : we know our protagonist has some sort of a plan but that's it, and it's really not that impressive of a plan but because we don't know exactly where this is going it ends up being thrilling, despite the fact that we are really just watching people play tennis. For a pretty long time, which really sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does.

9/10

I'm not entirely sure why I'm not calling this a masterpiece quite yet... maybe it's just that it gives me an excuse to revisit it later. Definitely gets in my top 100 regardless.

*Another one would be in North by Northwest when the FBI guy gives his instructions to Cary Grant just as a plane is taking off next to them, which basically amounts to Hitchcock coming on screen and winking at us. Loved it, failed to mention in in the top 100 club thread so I'll do it here.
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chardy999

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #86 on: January 28, 2016, 09:40:31 PM »
Alright, I just gotta see this.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #87 on: January 29, 2016, 02:17:40 PM »
Alright, I just gotta see this.

Sweet !

About the Elaine May marathon the guys just announced (spoiler), I'm guessing people will follow along in here (as in the forum not this particular thread) ? If so I'll do that too, otherwise, I'll just add it to the queue.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #88 on: January 30, 2016, 12:32:01 PM »
What did I say earlier about Hitchcock's love of stairs ? Well, here we go...

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)



Adam & Sam's take (starts at 30:30)

More than anything else in this marathon (and possibly in his whole filmography), Vertigo is a film that sets a very distinctive mood from the get go. From the opening notes of Bernard Herrmann's unsettling score accompanying Saul Bass's dizzying's opening titles, there is the constant feeling that things aren't quite right, which, duh. I say duh but I somehow didn't really see the twist coming, despite having seen Phoenix and knowing the two had been compared... probably because I was completely enthralled in Scottie's obsession for that first hour or so. I'm often annoyed by Hitchcock's love for car scenes because they tend to look very dated, but it was all worth it for the shots of James Stewart almost literally going down the rabbit hole in the streets of San Francisco as he tails Madeleine. Which, I now realise as I see it in front of me, must be a reference to Proust, neat.

As the guys mention, it is really striking to see what Hitchcock does with colour here, after having gone through 5 black-and-white films. The first time we see Madeleine in that green dress, surrounded by people wearing grey in a room so red it looks like something out of Suspiria... we don't even need Stewart to do anything, we got it. He is unsurprisingly great, by the way. Kim Novak... I don't know. I mean she's good, but their relationship always seems one-sided to me, which becomes problematic in the second half. We're told through Hitchcock's direction that this isn't just Stewart's obsession (that amazing 360 shot as they kiss), but I never really got that from her performance.

I do think the film overalll loses a bit in its second half. There are still many great moments : Judy "becoming" Madeleine with that green lighting recalling their aforementioned first meeting, the red collar, the nun's sudden appearance, which has to be one of the scariest thing Hitchcock has done outside of Psycho. In a sense, everything involving Judy feels more intellectualized... not that this is bad thing, the questions of identity it explores are fascinating* (and Novak nails that part), but it also feels like an inevitable crawl towards a sinister denouement. Speaking of which, Hitchcock's endings are starting to bother me a little. They often feel very neat, too convenient. It works here because there is no illusion that this is in any way a happy ending for Scottie, but sparing him from actually having to do the deed feels like a cheat.

All that being said, here I am again nitpicking...but this is a stunning film. Aside from Rear Window, it's certainly Hitchcock's most accomplished visually and ambitious thematically. The soundtrack is iconic for a reason, James Stewart's performance is simply phenomenal, and I didn't even get around to mentioning the "vertigo effect" (or whatever it's called, you know the one).

9/10
« Last Edit: January 30, 2016, 12:34:11 PM by Teproc »
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verbALs

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #89 on: January 30, 2016, 12:56:46 PM »
I'd be interested to hear what you think of people's ratings of his films in the directors thread. With Vertigo at the top it puts some of your other ratings into proportion. Do you think you were leaving yourself room, knowing Vertigo was coming and knowing its reputation?

It's interesting watching someone appraise Hitchcock. Films like 39
steps and Shadow of a Doubt are very difficult to have a proper perspective about for me. The BBC always had a Hitchcock season as part of Christmas tv so we were watching even his darker films as kids. So I sit there thinking "its ok its ok" when say 39 Steps isnt instantly loved. I wouldn't expect anyone to have the same feeling for them without the same context.

Vertigo and Rear Window aren't part of that Christmas season context. They were restored in the 80s and we went to see them at an art cinema on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Perfect context. That more intellectual cineaste setting really suited their profound tone. Most Hitch movies are entertainments. These two movies are works of art.
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore. - Banksy