Topic: Alfred Hitchcock Marathon

[snowcat]

I think you might be mixed up... Notorious is the German spy one, but I can't recall a particular stairs scene with Grant. Bergman, yes. However the famous stairs scene for Grant is the one with the illuminated milk in Suspicion. No Germans in that one!

Is the scene in colour? That would wipe out both of these...

Hmmm....
I was thinking there was a scene in Notorious with stairs...maybe near the end of the movie.  Hmm...though perhaps she is walking down to him.  Now this is gonna bug me.

Yes, there is that. I didn't think of it particularly remarkable for editing though.

Emma, what's the purpose behind this? Are you doing some sort of assignment, demonstration, etc? If you are, the silent era is really interesting because it shows filmmakers dealing with new ideas tentatively while they worked out what an audience could handle. You see them developing continuous and parallel editing, but it still took them about 20 years to work out the rules of "reverse angles" (showing someone looking at something, then showing what they were looking at) or matching eye-lines. Then they started to develop the idea of using editing to represent a characters emotions and so came French Impressionism and German Expressionism.

But then came the Russians! Have you ever seen Battleship Potemkin? I haven't properly, but it's known as a milestone in editing and I've marvelled at the Odessa Steps more than once. Technically, no-one had stitched together so many shots in so little time (the average shot length was considerably less than other countries) and thematically, the Soviet Union was realising the power of using editing for propaganda, including frames that could only be subliminal.

Just watch this. It's magnificent:

Im writting a report about editing history, ive talked about  Battleship Potemkin, but its so over used as an example of editing, I used a few black and white films, but i jjust remember how well this stairs scene showed suspense... ill find it! im also using 500 days of summer as an example .... Sadly.... not a big fan of that film :/

[MEJHarrison]

The Paradine Case is part of the one set I got like 2 years ago.  The movie was ok, but not one of my favorites.

The Lodger is definitely worth getting.  It's a bit different because it is a silent movie, but well worth getting.

I remember that set.  I skipped it because of all the issues people were having with it.  And because I already had 6 of the 8 titles.

As for the movie itself, I'm really not expecting much.  I've not heard great things about it.  I got it more for completing the collection than to watch a great Hitchcock film.  Of course when I'm not expecting much is typically when I enjoy movies the most.  So I'm sorta excited.  It's the movies that get hyped way overboard that always disappoint me because I'm expecting something great and it can never live up to that.

[Dragonfire]

The Paradine Case is part of the one set I got like 2 years ago.  The movie was ok, but not one of my favorites.

The Lodger is definitely worth getting.  It's a bit different because it is a silent movie, but well worth getting.

I remember that set.  I skipped it because of all the issues people were having with it.  And because I already had 6 of the 8 titles.

As for the movie itself, I'm really not expecting much.  I've not heard great things about it.  I got it more for completing the collection than to watch a great Hitchcock film.  Of course when I'm not expecting much is typically when I enjoy movies the most.  So I'm sorta excited.  It's the movies that get hyped way overboard that always disappoint me because I'm expecting something great and it can never live up to that.

I didn't know what to expect when I watched it..I haven't seen many silent movies.  I think it is well done.  There are some really cool things done..interesting shots and things like that.  Those things do make the movie worth watching.

[Najemikon]

Im writting a report about editing history, ive talked about  Battleship Potemkin, but its so over used as an example of editing, I used a few black and white films, but i jjust remember how well this stairs scene showed suspense... ill find it! im also using 500 days of summer as an example .... Sadly.... not a big fan of that film :/

Did you choose the film? Whether you like it or not shouldn't affect your recognition of where it is remarkable or your enthusiasm for writing about it. Now I couldn't do that when I had to write about My Beautiful Laundrette, but that was forced on me, so it wasn't my fault!

Have you considered any Wes Anderson stuff? Not for suspense obviously! But I read a book about film history where the author argued that if film was considered an art, then it's classical period was 1930s Japan and the films by Ozu (Tokyo Story, etc) especially. Japan had ignored all developments in editing and composition throughout the 20s and still made films like they would plays with a narrator in the theatre. They weren't closed style, so characters would look directly into the camera. After Ozu came along, he found his own way of editing and framing that "broke" Western rules of narrative that included opening frames that weren't establishing shots, he'd film from waist height and cuts wouldn't be dictated directly by the story. Wes Anderson seems to follow that kind of approach sometimes, and has characters that look directly at the camera. I think The Life Aquatic is one of his lesser films, but I find his editing creates a world where you can't be sure what you're watching is closed for the characters, or staged for us. Especially when Bill Murray loses his friend in the first act and later, the entire sequence on the island.

[Dragonfire]

I recently saw The Wrong Man when it turned up on TCM.  I really enjoyed the movie.  I do have a draft of a review typed up to post on Epinions...I just need to add a little more and proofread and all that fun stuff.

I Confess was on TCM not long too.  I haven't seen it yet, but it is on my DVR.

[Tom]

Torn Curtain (1966/United States) IMDb | Wikipedia Universal Pictures (United Kingdom) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Writing: Brian Moore (Writer) Length: 122 min. Video: Pan & Scan 1.33:1 Audio: English: Dolby Digital 1 Subtitles: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish

Stars:
Arthur Gould-Porter as Freddy
Gloria Gorvin as Fraulein Mann
Paul Newman as Professor Michael Armstrong
Julie Andrews as Sarah Sherman
Lila Kedrova as Countess Kuchinska

Plot:
Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star in this classic tale of international espionage set behind the Iron Curtain. Newman plays world-famous scientist Michael Armstrong, who goes to an international congress of physics in Copenhagen with his fiancée/assistant Sarah Sherman (Andrews). While there, she mistakenly picks up a message meant for him and discovers that he is defecting to East Germany. Or is he? As Armstrong goes undercover to glean top-secret information, the couple are swept up in a heart-pounding chase by enemy agents in this action-packed Cold War thriller.

Extras:

• Featurettes
• Photo Gallery
• Scene Access
• Scenes Scored by Bernard Herrmann
• Trailers

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed the beginning and the end. It suffered in the middle. My favorite part of the movie was the bus ride.
It seems that this is one of Hitchcock's least favorite movies of his.

Rating:

[Dragonfire]

I finally saw this one after I found it on TCM.

This one is a bit different from other Hitchcock movies because it is based on a true story.  From what I read after seeing the movie, very few things were changed for the movie and Hitchcock even filmed at some of the actual locations.  I didn't know any of the details about the real case when I saw the movie, so I do think there was a decent amount of mystery to what was going on.  The pace is a little slower, which may bother some people.  I didn't mind the pace and I wasn't bored by the movie.  I really enjoyed it, though it isn't one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. 

The movie is entertaining, though some people will probably be disappointed since it isn't a typical Hitchcock movie.



I did post a review at Epinions.

The Wrong Man

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The scene which caused my brother to exclaim this time, that he thinks Hitchcock had lost his grip on reality, was very early on. A car was chased by the police. The car stops and the police crashes into it. That in itself is a little unrealistic, but what follows is just stupid: Another car crashes into the police car. Why would this car follow a police car which had sirens on? And doing it keeping such a close distance to the police car, that he cannot avoid hitting it? It are scenes like this which always pull us out of the Hitchcock movies.

If scenes like that pull you out of a movie it should be hard to find one that you like.

If you would expect Hollywood productions to be realistic in regard of car usage, the first thing you learn from many films is that American drivers are to stupid to use the break.

Come to think of it, and if you would ask the management of Toyota, they actually are.

[Tom]

The car breaks issue is something which always bothers me in Hollywood productions.

[Najemikon]

It's been a while since this thread was 'live' and it's funny reading again the comment that Hitchcock had lost his grip on reality. He never wanted a grip! The difficulty with this point is that you should not only expect it in a Hitchcock movie, but embrace it, because a sense of heightened, controlled reality runs through all his films. Consider he rarely used locations, but instead filmed on stages and with backdrops.

[Tom]

You cannot tell me, that in my given example, Hitchcock did this to loosen the grip on reality. This is just an Hitchcock fanboy excuse
I expect such a scene in movies like Naked Gun, where it can be excused as Rule of Funny. But not in a movie like "North by Northwest". Especially if the director is so highly regarded. In this kind of movie, I can excuse Rule of Cool.

[Najemikon]

  I haven't looked at the rules links; this fanboy don't need 'em! 

You say this sort of thing doesn't happen in real-life, therefore it is illogical. And you are right. But imagine if you did see it happen for real? What would you think of the drivers involved? You'd probably use some fruity language, but the conclusion would be that they were idiots causing a farcical situation you could only laugh at because of how inept they are. It's a metaphor, used for pure entertainment. Hitchcock famously never read into his own films, he always wanted to reduce the analytical theories, but its obvious he liked to poke fun at conventions. The behaviour of cars and their drivers is no less absurd as average gunplay, fist-fights and stunts taken as perfectly normal in a thousand other thrillers.

And you should always ask yourself, that he had such a tight grip and focus, so clearly he did it on purpose. So why?

[Achim]

And you should always ask yourself, that he had such a tight grip and focus, so clearly he did it on purpose. So why?

Well, why...?

(Clearly Tom doesn't know, or he wouldn't object, and I really don't know either...)

So, why...?

[Najemikon]

  Well I already gave my interpretation above the bit you quoted. What I was suggesting from the last line is that if you're at all interested -and this goes for any art- you should consider that film is simply a collection of creative choices, so if you don't agree with my reasoning, ask yourself why else did he choose to do that. It didn't happen by accident and when you put Hitchcock and this particular film in context, it suggests he must have had a reason.

Think of it another way. If you were doing media studies and the lecturer asked for half a page on why Hitchcock had such a daft scene, one line reading, "Just because. I didn't like it." isn't going to get you an A+!  If you don't care, move on, but film appreciation used to be about trying to understand it, not judge it.

[Achim]

 

Totally thought you were asking a question of the less rhetorical kind...

Of course you're right on that. Although what appears to be "creative choices" often is just done out of a whim without thinking. Heck, many director's are surprised about what the critics are reign into their films

I'll readily admit, I am usually also more of the straightforward watcher. Actually learning new ways on this forum, fom time to time...